historicxllexi

[historicxllexi]

The Holocaust Whistle-Blower: Jan Karski

He tried to save the Jews of Europe.

Jan Karski was a Polish resistance fighter and diplomat who warned world leaders about the Nazi extermination of European Jews. Tragically, none of the leaders of Allied countries did anything to stop the atrocity – including U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt.

Jan was born in 1914 in Lodz, Poland to a devout Catholic family. His father died when he was a small child, and his mother struggled to provide for her eight children. They lived in a neighborhood of overcrowded tenements where most of the residents were Jewish. Jan attended military school where he trained to be a mounted artillery officer and graduated first in his class.

He then trained to be a diplomat, and between 1935 and 1938 he worked at Polish consulates in Romania, Germany, Switzerland and the UK.  At the beginning of 1939 Jan returned to Poland to work at the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the fall of that year, World War II started when Germany invaded Poland. Jan – Officer Karski – was called up to lead a unit of the Krakow Cavalry Brigade. On September 10 the Krakow Army was defeated by the Germans in the Battle of Tomaszow Lubelski and Jan was captured as a prisoner of war. He managed to escape and went to Warsaw, where he joined the SZP, the first resistance movement in occupied Europe.

At that time, the Polish Government in Exile, overthrown by the Germans, was based in Paris. Jan organized secret courier missions to transport important information to the exiled Polish leaders. He traveled frequently between France, Great Britain and Poland, at great risk to himself. In July 1940 his luck ran out and he was arrested by the Gestapo while traveling through Czechoslovakia on his way to France. He was imprisoned and tortured so badly that he was transferred to a hospital. Fortunately Polish resistance leaders found out where he was and managed to smuggle him out of the hospital.

Returning to Warsaw, Jan served in the information bureau of the Polish Home Army, the main resistance movement in Poland. He and other Polish resistance leaders were horrified by the Nazi persecution of Polish Jews, and increasingly aware that the Germans planned to exterminate millions of them. Desperate to alert the rest of the world about the destruction of Polish Jewry, they chose Jan to gather evidence and then travel to Paris to report to prime minister Wladyslaw Sikorski, leader of the Polish government in exile.

Jan worked with Jewish resistance leader Leon Feiner, who smuggled him into the Warsaw Ghetto to observe conditions there. Jan later described the experience: “My job was just to walk. And observe. And remember. The odour. The children. Dirty. I saw a man standing with blank eyes. I asked the guide, what is he doing? The guide whispered, ‘He’s just dying.’ I remember degradation, starvation and dead bodies lying on the street. We were walking the streets and my guide kept repeating, ‘Look at it, remember, remember.’ And I did remember. The dirty streets. The stench. Everywhere. Suffocating. Nervousness.”

Jan also visited a transit camp for Jews on their way to death camps. He took photographs of what he saw there and in the ghetto, and carried them out of the country on microfilm. His testimony and pictures formed the first accurate account of the genocide of European Jews. Polish Foreign Minister Edward Raczynski published Jan’s reports in a pamphlet which was widely distributed. Jan traveled to several countries and met with high-level government officials including British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, but they either didn’t believe him, or they feared the political consequences of helping Jewish refugees.

In July 1943 Jan traveled to the United States, where he personally met with President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Oval Office. Jan vividly described the Warsaw Ghetto and the concentration camps where Jews were being murdered en masse. After telling his grim tale, Jan expected Roosevelt to be emotionally affected and want to learn more. Instead, Roosevelt displayed no reaction and didn’t ask a single question. The president heard first-hand about the murder of millions of Jews – and saw the evidence – but he refused to help in any way and showed Jan the door. Ironically, the majority of American Jews voted for Roosevelt, and many Jews still revere him.

While in the States, Jan met with other important personages including Jewish Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. Jan told his story, answered a few questions, and then the great jurist said, “I am unable to believe what you have told me.” Like Roosevelt, he chose to ignore the inconvenient truth of what was happening to the Jews of Europe. A Polish diplomat later confronted Justice Frankfurter and asked if he thought Karski was lying. “I did not say that this young man was lying. I said that I was unable to believe what he told me. There is a difference.” The difference was likely not clear to the millions of European Jews being tortured and murdered while a Jewish Supreme Court justice chose ignorance over a difficult reality.

Jan Karski’s identity was discovered by the Nazi occupiers in Poland, and he was unable to return home. He stayed in Washington DC, and earned his PhD at Georgetown University. After graduating, he began teaching at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service. Jan remained at Georgetown for forty years, teaching generations of American political leaders about East European and international affairs and comparative government. Jan’s students included Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright. Jan wrote several books about the Holocaust, and gave lectures around the world about the horrors he witnessed, and the tragic inaction of world leaders. He was determined to make sure the Jews of Poland were not forgotten.

Jan said that he had two missions in life. The first was to bear witness to the genocide of the Jews of Europe. The second was to reveal the tragic indifference of Allied leaders.

In 1965, Jan married Pola Nirenska, a Polish Jew who was an acclaimed dancer and choreographer. He adored her, but Pola was scarred by losing 75 (!) members of her extended family in the Holocaust, and suffered from mental health issues. Pola tragically killed herself in 1992.

Jan Karski was honored as Righteous Among the Nations by Israeli Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem. He was made an honorary citizen of Israel and received many other awards and honors in Poland, the United States, and Israel. He was nominated for a Nobel Prize. In 2000, Jan Karski was formally recognized as a human rights hero by the UN General Assembly. Soon after, Jan died in Georgetown at age 86. Jan continued to be honored posthumously, and in 2012 President Obama awarded him the country’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He has been the subject of multiple books, plays and movies. There is a statue of Jan sitting on a bench on Madison Avenue in New York City.

For bearing witness to genocide and speaking truth to power, we honor Jan Karski as this week’s Thursday Hero.

[historicxllexi]

I’d almost respect American leftists more if they just admitted that the reason they prefer the idea of revolution over participation in electoral politics is that they want to feel like the main character. Imagine having absolutely 0 experience of conflict while also routinely denigrating anyone with professional experience in war and governance, and thinking that your revolution would help anyone except violent opportunistic young men.

[historicxllexi]

how many more ethel cain costumes with her hebrew tattoo on the forehead of even more goyim do i need to see before the universe decides it’s enough

[historicxllexi]

me when my polish teacher said that germans were also victims of ww2 and were brainwashed and didn't know what was happening to all minorites in their country; started calling nazis mentally ill as if they weren't regular people who loved their ideology and were well-educated people (doctors, lawyers, teachers itd.) who CHOSE violence and hatred

[historicxllexi]

Hey so I’m not sure if anyone knows this but uhh. Pogroms are bad. Chasing Jews down in the street to beat the shit out of them is bad. Shouting “cancer Jews” and setting shit on fire is bad. Claiming that all of this widespread violence is about a fucking football match that happened days ago and not rampant antisemitism is bad. Going on “Jew hunts” is bad. Denying the existence of antisemitism while you’re cheering on a pogrom is bad.

Harming and/or killing Jewish people because they’re Jewish is bad.

[historicxllexi]

i once saw a request in a comment on a youtube video that "never again" should apply to all people. i don't see any other term as universalized as this one

I know everything that can be said on this topic has been said to death and no one but Jews will ever acknowledge it but it is still absolutely infuriating how every brand of gentile from every part of the political spectrum has collaborated to turn the word "Nazi" into a generic word for "fascist" or "bad person" or "person I don't like." Nazism isn't just fucking fascism and it isn't a synonym for bad person. It's a specific ideology that is centered at its root around blaming Jews for every problem in the world and wanting to exterminate them.

No, generic racist Republicans are not "Nazis." No, TERFs are not "Nazis." No, your crappy corrupt European leader is not a "Nazi." No, cops are not "Nazis." You know why they aren't Nazis? Because their entire ideology and behavior, as harmful as it may be to certain groups, is not centered around hating JEWS.

Nazism is an ideology centered around hating JEWS. Other people and groups may be caught in the crossfire, but ultimately, a Nazi's goal is to exterminate Jews, and you cannot just ignore that! I read a 12 paragraph essay yesterday written by a gentile analyzing the reasons people in Nazi Germany flocked to Nazism, and antisemitism wasn't mentioned as a motivation even once! They thought it was all because of gender norms and sexual repression! Oh my god!

The comfort with which gentiles have near universally divorced Nazism from antisemitism in colloquial speech is a direct precursor to the separation of Nazism from antisemitism in academic discourse. It's a direct predecessor to the rise of institutionalized antisemitism that we are seeing happen in real time now, because you have all gotten so used to appropriating Jewish trauma and Jewish oppression to the extent that you have convinced yourselves it isn't even uniquely real. That antisemitism doesn't exist as a specific bigotry that stands on it's own, that antisemitism is always some kind of footnote tied to some other, more important form of oppression. Do you think that Jews don't see what is happening here, that we don't see the deliberate generalization of Jew hatred and appropriation of the language we can use to refer to it? Jewish trauma becomes everyone's trauma, Jewish oppression becomes everyone's oppression, and soon enough the world at large has stolen the language of Jewish oppression right out of our mouths, until huge swaths of people can say "Jews are the new Nazis" and not see anything absurd about that at all.

Because you won't. Fucking. Acknowledge. What Nazism actually is. You won't fucking acknowledge that any ideology is specifically targeted at JEWS, and not YOU. Stop it!! Stop it! Cut it the fuck out. Nazism cannot be divorced from antisemitism and the insistence that it not only can be but MUST be by gentiles just shows how deeply ignorant and biased against Jews most of you really are.

[historicxllexi]

The Reichstag Building, Berlin, photography made by me

[historicxllexi]

i wish left-leaning understood that most right-wing people don't have bad intentions. most conservative apologists for fascists or even fascists themselves don't wake up with the desire to be harmful. nor do they even have the full awareness of the evil they commit. sure, there are some people who are knowingly morally bankrupt and have no shame in the matter, but this is relatively rare (more people are apathetic than malicious).

but good intentions can still hurt others. good intentions can and does lead to violence. even fascism is rooted in a desire for "purity and goodness," which sounds nice without any of the context of what fascism actually entails. this is why everyone is susceptible to believing fascist ideology. though admittedly, some are more susceptible than others due to, usually, their material conditions.

[historicxllexi]

if you are wondering how is antisemitism doing in modern poland, especially in leftist spacies then i can assure you, it hasn't changed much

(screens of the chat from kasia babis video, a polish youtuber, artist and activist)

kasia was talking about the rules of shabbat the jews need to follow

mako_tek: what a weird cult

bartekkfx: xDD it's so stupid. it's so hard to believe that anyone can actually live like this

Krejtek: I've never heard of a more exhausting method to not do anything

cyjon72: even if it wasn't written i would still be afraid of doing anything because it could be considered forbidden and i didn't know about it

"syjoniści" is a polish word for zionists

[historicxllexi]

i'm not gonna discuss with somebody who has a grade in ww2 an has a western world mentality. shut the fuck up, your family was never touched by the tragedy of ww2 and nazi occupation. and you use words without knowing their actual meaning.

leftist are trying so hard to compare israel to nazi germany but fail every time bcs they don't know shit about nazi germany and how it worked and that's the funniest thing on earth. like weren't you supposed to be "punch the nazi" type of people??? like you literally don't know what are you opposing to and you repeat same nazi propaganda slogans

[historicxllexi]

1 - no, israel doesn't use its jewish population as justification for their actions. israel bombed hezbollah's members because hezbollah ideology has antisemitism and antizionism in its programme and is supported by iran and syria anti-israel countries + those countries policy is denying holocaust. this evil big israel has 9,5 million people. "israel's gov mass murder muslim countries" while about 380 000 000-500 000 000 muslims live in arab world.

2 - ad personam and false accusations

today i was in the museum of world war ii in gdańsk (poland) and hmmm.......

A)

B)

C)

what a coincidence

[historicxllexi]

my favourite random moment from polish history is when the polish soldiers, during the partition of poland by prussia, russia and austria were send to haiti by napoleon (who "granted" poland that, thanks to him, they will get their land back) to suppress the uprising organized by the slaves but poles and haitians developed a kinship and 400 poles stayed in haiti after the defeat of the french. also haitians gave said poles haitian citizenship

[historicxllexi]

leftist are trying so hard to compare israel to nazi germany but fail every time bcs they don't know shit about nazi germany and how it worked and that's the funniest thing on earth. like weren't you supposed to be "punch the nazi" type of people??? like you literally don't know what are you opposing to and you repeat same nazi propaganda slogans

[historicxllexi]

i swear western lgbtq people are the worst. "my existence is illegal in 60+ countries🤪🤪🤪". yeah and every single gay person in those countries hates you

[historicxllexi]

Hi Eastern European allies. l love you and I'm giving you a big hug.

[historicxllexi]

you're thinking that by comparing zionists to nazis you are making zionists and israelis feel ashamed meanwhile you only make nazis proud, because you are openly wishing death to zionists aka jews you don't agree with and celebrate the destruction in the only jewish country in the world

[historicxllexi]

yeah i agree that not everybody should watch films documanting real-life violence and the films that disturbingly fall under snuff film category but some of y'all should watch documantary films from concentration camps before you start saying anything about holocaust or spread some sick lies about it