biography
| name: |
Karski, Jan
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original surname Kozielecki
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1914–2000)
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| biography:
| Polish resistance hero, born in Lodz, C Poland. A Roman Catholic, he graduated from Lvov (Lwow) University in 1935, worked in diplomatic posts until 1939, then joined the army. Taken prisoner first by the Soviets then by the Germans, he escaped and became a government courier. After discovery by German intelligence, he emigrated to the USA in 1942, where he wrote the best-selling Story of a Secret State (1944). He became a US citizen, a professor at Georgetown University, and a lecturer for the Pentagon and State Department. While in Poland, he secretly toured the Warsaw Ghetto and a concentration camp, gathering evidence of Nazi atrocities against Polish Jews, and was the first to present documented proof of Hitler's extermination policy to Allied leaders in Britain and the USA. Embittered by the Allies' failure to take decisive action, he refused to speak about his activities in the post-war years, but his story became known in 1979, after the writer Elie Wiesel made contact with him, and he was the subject of a biography by E T Wood & S M Jankowski, One Man Tried to Stop the Holocaust (1994). He was made an honorary citizen of Israel in 1994. |
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