Recollections of the Holocaust are relatively frequent and sometimes even fashionable events but the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation’s tribute to Polish diplomat and resistance hero Jan Karski at the Polish Embassy last week was a rare occasion when more anger seemed to be directed at Allied apathy than at Nazi atrocities.

Polish Ambassador Eugeniusz Noworyta began the ceremony by presenting Karski as strongly Catholic like so many Poles. Born in the textile city of Lodz in central Poland in 1914, his real name was Jan Kozielewski. Jesuit-educated, he graduated in Law from the University of Lwow and embarked upon a diplomatic career.

When war came in 1939, Poland could only offer courage, Noworyta said – a courage fully reflected by Karski on the Eastern front in 1939 and even more by his later work for the Polish underground resistance. A polyglot with a photographic memory, he was a natural choice as a Resistance courier.

In 1942 Karski ran the enormous risk of twice entering the Warsaw ghetto disguised as a Jew and also secretly penetrated Belzec death camp for an hour, becoming probably the first non-Jewish and hence entirely objective eyewitness of the Holocaust to tell the tale. As soon as his work took him to London, he recounted the Jewish tragedy to Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, the leading Conservative Lord Cranborne and the Labour politicians Hugh Dalton and Arthur Greenwood.

But his graphic account of Holocaust atrocities fell on deaf ears. He was told that if the Germans were so foolish as to lose sight of military strategy with such ’secondary’ objectives as the extermination of the Jews, the Allies had no intention of repeating the error.

‘If Hitler wants to waste his trains transporting Jews to concentration camps, let him!’ and ‘What do you expect us to do? Bomb the camps so that they die quicker?’ were among the responses he received. The writer H.G. Wells a lifelong socialist, told Karski: ‘You’ve got to look at the reasons why anti-Semitism has emerged in all the countries where Jews live.’

It was no better in the United States where President Franklin D. Roosevelt, New York Cardinal-Archbishop Francis Spellman and Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter were among those whom Karski met in mid-1943. FDR pumped Karski for four hours for information on Europe behind the lines but showed zero interest in the plight of the Jews. Frankfurter, a Jew himself, simply refused to believe his story, as did other US Jewish leaders.

Karski’s 1944 book The Secret State places on record that Western leaders were well aware of the Nazi genocide for years before the end of the war.

After the war Karski was a professor of law philosophy and political science in the USA, often visiting his native Poland in the last 10 years of his life before his death last July. He was made an illustrious citizen of the State of Israel and also received the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest decoration.

The occasion was also addresed by writer Marcos Aguinis, Father Horacio Moreno and Lodz Ghetto and Auschwitz survivor Jack Fuchs while the Foundation’s Executive Director Gustavo Jalife read out endorsements of the event from all over the world including United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, Czech President Vaclav Havel and New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Aguinis, who together with Swedish Ambassador Peter Landelius presented the Polish Embassy with a sculpture honoring Karski, underlined world responsibility for the Holocaust, pointing out the failure of a 1938 internatinal conference on the Jewish refugee question to offer any alternative to the ‘final solution.’

The ceremony took place on June 20 at the embassy of Poland in Buenos Aires. Writer Marcos Aguinis, Holocaust survivor Jack Fuchs, Father Horacio Moreno and the ambassador of Sweden, Peter Landelius made a speech.

The ambassador of Poland, Eugeniusz Noworyta, received the sculpture “Homage to Raoul Wallenberg”, an exclusive piece of the IRWF made by the Argentine artist Norma D’Ippolito.

During the ceremony Karski’s testimony to the filmmaker Claude Lanzmann for the movie ‘SHOA’ was projected.

Among the people present was the Chief Rabbi Salomón Ben Hamú, survivors of the Holocaust, as well as ambassadors and numerous diplomatic delegations and communities.

The adhesions included greetings from Vaclav Havel, President of the Czech Republic; Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican’s State Secretary; Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General; Anibal Ibarra, Mayor of the city of Buenos Aires and Andrés Delich, the Argentine Secretary of Education.

In his letter, President Havel, honorary member of the IRWF points out:

‘Allow me join you in remembering Jan Karski. The memory of the victims of the Holocaust and all those who tried to prevent its horrors, reminds us that every expression of hatred towards minorities tends to be the beginning of an attack on the fundamentals of basic humanity itself.’

Minister Delich wrote:

‘The stories of life of Jan Karski and Jack Fuchs allow us to remember not only tragedy but also heroism and dignity. This memory must turn itself into a daily commitment and a critic to prejudices, stereotypes and fallacies. To remember means to understand the present in the light of what has happened and thus, to prevent and to prepare us for the future.’

Dr. Ibarra, Mayor of the city of Buenos Aires, pointed out in his adhesion that

”We are aware of the great historical and educational importance in paying tribute and remembering those who resisted and condemned the terrible crimes committed by Nazism, as a way of preventing its repetition in the present and in the future.”

Buenos Aires Herald – Holocaust blindness exposed

Raoul Wallenberg was the young Swedish diplomat who risked his life to save tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews when Nazis started deporting them in mass. Jan Karski was also a diplomat, but in this case of Polish nationality, who also risked his life to condemn the murderous machinery of the Third Reich.

Karski was born shortly before the Fist World War in the city of Lodz, Poland, in a Catholic family. He was raised by Jesuits and studied Law. He spoke many languages, traveled throughout almost all Europe and entered the diplomatic career. He was refined, elegant and very devoted.

He was called to arms in 1939, when the world was going up in flames due to Hitler’s warmongering. Shortly afterwards, when Poland had been divided between Germany and the Soviet Union, he was taken as a prisoner by the Red Army and put into a concentration camp. He was able to escape and headed for the region occupied by the Nazis, where underground groups of resistance had started.

”An anonymous messenger”

His knowledge of languages and countries determined his bold mission as a courier. His heroic deeds achieved legendary proportions.

With an outstanding memory, not only visual but of texts as well, he crossed enemy lines to transmit secret information to the different groups of the Polish resistance and from them to the government agents in exile. In June of the year 1940 he fell into a trap, he was arrested by the Gestapo in Slovakia and he was subjected to many humiliations. He was afraid that torture would make him confess things that endangered others, and, in spite of his Catholicism, he tried to slash his wrists with a razor he had hidden in the sole of a shoe. But he was rescued in time in an action worthy of a movie and taken into a safe place where he could recover from his poor health condition, broken by sadistic beatings. A few months of recovering allowed him to resume his job, which grew in importance and consequences.

With modesty, in the books and statements Jan Karski made after the war, he said he had barely been an ”anonymous messenger”. But that function forced him to cross barriers behind which death was waiting. In spite of his lonely performance, he reached the most important leaders of Europe and the United States, as well as vast numbers of writers and journalists. ”My credentials were my scars and some military medals.” Because of him, it was known about the structure of the Polish underground movement, the relationships between political and military organizations, the resistance methods, the underground press, the characteristics of the Nazi oppression. Finally, he added the slaughter of Jews to his reports, which was unprecedented not only due to its systematization but also due to its effectiveness.

”I saw Belzec”

He got used to set out clearly for not more than twenty minutes and he only dedicated the final minutes to the Jews’ tragedy. However, this last part became what he proudly called ”my Jewish mission”. His unexpected mission appeared shortly before he slipped away to London. He was dedicated to collecting messages and false documentation when he was told that the representatives of two Jewish underground organizations wanted to see him. Karski asked for authorization to the chief of the Polish resistance, the fat and old Cyril Ratajski, who answered: ”Jan, you must help them”.

He kept dramatic meetings with both leaders. ”They gave me their messages, terrible messages! What was happening was unparallel. Nazis had decided to murder all the Jewish population in the world.”

He understood that it was not enough with transmitting reports from other people, so before abandoning his land, he decided to see reality with his own eyes. He knitted the star of David on his worn-out jacket and infiltrated twice into the Warsaw ghetto. It was October 1942. Of the original 600 thousand victims the Nazis had gathered at the beginning, only 50 thousand remained, the rest had been sent to the gas chambers. The terrible scenes he saw there not only confirmed the reports, but also forced him to visit an extermination camp. He did not pay attention to the risk and entered Belzec. In his memories he remembers: ”I saw Belzec. I stayed for less than an hour and it was enough. I could not take it. I suffered some kind of nervous collapse. After I left the camp I vomited blood.”

He secretly got to London and had a meeting with Polish, British and American officials. After talking with the president of the Polish government in exile, in December 1942, the latter, moved by what he had heard turned to the allies so that they warn Germans about their responsibility for the crimes. The president also sent a letter to the Pope Pious XII, from whom he never had a reply. ”At your feet, Holy Father, I implore you for intervention on behalf of the Polish citizens, Jewish and non-Jewish.”

The British Minister of Foreign Affairs, Anthony Eden, replied each and everyone of Karki’s demands with a categorical ”no”; he did not even allow the entry in Palestine of the refugees who could barely run away from hell. Karski could not either move the Cabinet of War. In his meetings with writers and journalists, he got different results, that varied from tears to skeptical expressions: H. G. Wells, for example, preferred to digress about the causes of anti-Semitism instead of joining into rescue measures.

In 1943, after the amazing uprising of the Warsaw ghetto, Jan Karski was sent to the United States. There he initiated a tremendous activity, which took him to the Oval Room. President Franklin D. Roosevelt held him for four hours, interested in the political problems on the other side of the border. Though he worried about the Jews’ tragedy, Roosevelt was not willing to distract efforts: he would not destroy trains taking crowds to the slaughterhouse, and he would not bomb the extermination camps. Then, Karski turned to leaders, officials, bishops and journalists who expressed their sympathy but chose to suppose that the report was exaggerating.

”After the war – he wrote – the Western leaders manifested their horror for what had happened. These personalities insisted that they ignored the genocide policies of the Third Reich, because they were kept in secret. Such opinion, however, is false. They knew it!”

They knew it due to this unforgettable Pole, catholic, brave and good-hearted, who was included in Jerusalem among the Righteous who fill the world with dignity and whom the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation have just paid homage to from Buenos Aires.

* Marcos Aguinis‘ most recent book is The cruel charm of being Argentine

In 1940 he was captured by the Gestapo in Slovakia. After he was savagely tortured he tried to commit suicide by slashing his wrists, but the underground resistance could rescue him avoiding that any of the secrets he knew were revealed to the enemy. Between 1942 and 1943 he was the protagonist of a story that would mark him for the rest of his life: what he called ‘my secret Jewish mission’. Karski was one of the first ones to transmit a detailed narration of the Nazi atrocities.

In October 1942 Karski, whose real name was Jan Kozielewsky, contacted two Jewish organizations: the Bund (Jewish socialist party) and a Zionist organization. Both of them asked him to inform the allies about what was going on with the Jewish communities in Poland.

Pretending to be a Jew, he got into the Warsaw ghetto twice in October 1942. And afterwards, to the extermination camp of Belzec. Karski´s secret visit to the camp only lasted for an hour, which was more than enough for what he had seen to remain in his memory forever.

In London he had a meeting with the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Anthony Eden; with Lord Cranbone, of the conservative party as well as with Hugh Dalton and Arthur Greenwood of the Labour party. They were all part of the British cabinet of war that in that moment was the political center of power in England. Eden answered that they could not do anything of what the Jewish leaders proposed because the allied strategy consisted in defeating Germany militarily, and that no ‘secondary issue’ had to interfere with the objective. Lord Cranborne, apparently a nice man, told him:

‘Mr. Karski, you are a very bright man. Do you realize that the message you are giving us is untenable?’

Arthur Koestler, Jewish, passionate anti fascist and anti-Soviet whom Karski visited in London, is not favored in the messenger’s narration. He describes him as a man so tied down to his personal interests, to his vanity of man of arts. Another writer, H.G. Wells, when he received his chronicle answered:

‘there should be a study of what causes anti-Semitism to arise in every country where Jews live’.

The situation is not better in the USA. In the summer of 1943 he has a meeting with President Roosevelt, the Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, Cardinal Cicognani, Archbishop Spellman, the President of the Jewish-American Congress, Nahum Goldman, the Judge of the Supreme Court of Justice, Felix Frankfurter and with the director of the Herald Tribune, Ogden Reed. Roosevelt listened to him for four hours. He was especially interested in political issues and told him that Poland would receive a territorial compensation. Not a single comment about the Jews´ situation, not a single question that showed his worry about the ghetto chronicle and the extermination camps.

The dialogue with Felix Frankfurter, member of the Supreme Court, is equally clarifying. Frankfurter asked him: ‘Mr. Karski, do you know who I am? ¿Do you know that I am Jewish?‘ After Karski´s narration of the facts, Frankfurter walks a few steps, thinks for a while and answers him categorically: ‘A man like me has to be completely honest, so I tell you that I cannot believe what you are telling me’. Other Jewish leaders did not believe him either.

In 1944, a year before the war was over, Karski published the book The Secret State, that in a very short time sold 400 thousand copies, and he started lecturing in the USA, where he took as a Professor in Political theory at Georgetown University.

‘After the war -he wrote in 1987- I read how leaders from the west, State men, militaries, intelligence services, ecclesiastical authorities and civil leaders were horrified by what had happened to the Jews. They declared not to know anything about the Holocaust because the genocide had been kept in secret. This version of facts still remains but it is just a myth. The extermination was not a secret to them.’

The State of Israel named him honorable citizen. This time he gave a thank you speech where he defined himself: ‘I am Polish, American, Catholic and now I can also say that I am Jewish’. His testimony is probably one of the most touching registered on the movie Shoah by Claude Lanzmann.

For me, also born in Lodz, Jewish Polish, Jan Karski´s story is a reason of shudder and anguish: Why that man, that maybe I bumped into in the streets of my city, was not listened to? Why the testimony of an ordinary man had no effect, why that unbearable indifference?

On June 20, 2001 the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation and the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Argentina will remember the figure of Karski at the Embassy of Poland in Buenos Aires.

* By Jack Fuchs, Deported from the Lodzs ghetto to Auschwitz. He was found by the allies in Dachau at the end of the war. Member of the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation.