‘Every government and church says, “We tried to help the Jews,” because they are ashamed, they want to keep their reputations. They didn’t help, because six million Jews perished, but those in the government, in the churches they survived. No one did enough.’

Jan Karski

Born in Łódź in 1914, and originally named Jan Kozielewski, Jan Karski is remembered in the history books as the man who tried to stop the holocaust. Son of a local factory owner and the youngest of eight children Karski read law at the University of Lvov, from which he graduated with flying colours. Gifted with a photographic memory and a fluent command of foreign languages he soon came to the attention of the Polish diplomatic services, landing prestigious posts in London and Paris. With Europe gearing up for war Karski joined the horse artillery, and his unit found itself shunted across Poland as the nation made a desperate bid to defend its borders from Nazi and Soviet invasion. Captured by the Red Army Karski avoided death in the forests of Katyń when his Soviet captors handed him over to the Germans in an exchange of prisoners. He escaped from a train transporting him to a POW camp, and then headed to Warsaw where he made contact with the Polish underground. Realizing the value of his remarkable memory his superiors decided to employ him as a courier, a perilous position that involved crossing frontlines in order to swap information with other allied nations. It was during this time he assumed the pseudonym Jan Karski, and one such foray onto foreign soil saw him captured by the Gestapo while crossing the Slovakian Tatra mountains. He slit his wrists following an intense bout of torture, and found himself sectioned in a closely guarded hospital in Nowy Sącz. Determined not to lose their star courier a crack team of Polish troops broke him out and Karski resumed his duties after a period of recovery. In 1942 he was chosen to undertake a daring mission to meet Władysław Sikorski – Prime Minister of Poland’s government-in-exile – in London, the purpose being to reveal the extent of German atrocities taking place in occupied Poland. To gather information he was smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto, and given a graphic tour of the hunger and horror manifesting behind the walls. The experience proved so powerful that Karski later found himself questioning his own memory, and decided a second visit was in order to convince himself that what he had seen was real. This time, disguised as a Ukrainian guard, he infiltrated a transit camp, and was witness to random brutalities, as well as cattle wagon transports leading Jews to the gas chambers. He successfully made it to England via Germany, France and Spain, and was granted an audience with foreign secretary Antony Eden, as well as Sikorski and the leader of the Jewish Bund. Preposterously his revelations fell on deaf ears, the majority of politicians dismissing his account of mass-exterminations as the fruit of an over-productive imagination. He fared little better when meeting President Roosvelt months later, and found his testimonies criticized as Polish propaganda. In spite of this Karski chose to remain in the States, and published a wartime best-seller about life in occupied Poland. After the war he taught for four decades at Georgetown University, lecturing primarily on Eastern European issues. In the following decades his attempt to stop the holocaust was allowed to gather dust, and only came to public attention with the release of the 1978 epic film, Shoah. He became an overnight hero; in 1982 he was named one of the ‘Righteous Among Nations’ by Israel’s Yad Vashem institute, and in 1994 he was awarded Poland’s highest military honour. He died in 2000, eight years after his Jewish/Polish wife, herself a holocaust survivor, had committed suicide.