{"id":76845,"date":"2015-07-19T01:00:45","date_gmt":"2015-07-19T06:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aleteia.org\/?post_type=post&p=76845"},"modified":"2015-07-19T01:00:45","modified_gmt":"2015-07-19T06:00:45","slug":"remembering-jan-karski-the-catholic-spy-who-warned-about-the-holocaust-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/deaconsbench\/2015\/07\/remembering-jan-karski-the-catholic-spy-who-warned-about-the-holocaust-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Jan Karski, the Catholic spy who warned about the Holocaust"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
<\/div>\n
\n

\"Karski.Powell_Colin\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A new documentary is telling his remarkable and courageous story:<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s the only person I ever met whom I considered truly noble,\u201d says noted Holocaust scholar, filmmaker and writer Michael Berenbaum, referring to Jan Karski, a Polish resistance fighter who warned Western leaders of the impending genocide of Europe\u2019s Jews during World War II. Speaking at the screening of a new Polish documentary, \u201cKarski & the Lords of Humanity,\u201d at the recent Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow, Berenbaum said, \u201cI\u2019ve met Nobel Prize winners, but I truly felt I was in the presence of nobility when I was with him. He elevated every conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

That may be, but somehow Karski\u2019s commanding presence and death-defying mission to save Polish Jewry evaded Hollywood and even the independent lens until now. But after 10 years of trying to bring the elusive member of the Polish underground\u2019s larger-than-life story to the screen, director S\u0142awomir Gr\u00fcnberg succeeded.<\/p>\n

\u2026A Catholic born in the city of Lodz, Karski (formerly Kozielewski) grew up surrounded by Jewish families, for whom he felt a great affinity. On the path to becoming a civil servant, he traveled to Nuremberg, Germany, as an intern for the foreign minister, witnessing the Nazi propaganda rallies of 1933 and the humiliation of German Jews that ensued. It sensitized him to their plight and gave him a tremendous sense of foreboding.<\/p>\n

When war broke out, he joined the Polish underground, becoming a courier between the underground in Poland and the Polish government in exile \u2013 first in Paris, and then, after France fell, in England.<\/p>\n

Because the government in exile wanted information about the various underground factions, he met with a diverse array of groups, including the Jewish Zionists and Jewish Labor Bund. It was the Jewish leaders who informed him of the impending Holocaust, inviting him to sneak into the Warsaw Ghetto and a concentration camp, and imploring him to tell Western leaders, \u201cOur entire people will be destroyed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The genocide of the Jews taking place behind ghetto walls and barbwire shook him to the core.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read more.\u00a0<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

And you can learn more about his life and legacy here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

By coincidence, the acclaimed actor David Strathairn is starring in a play now being developed about Karski\u2019s life. From The Washington Post:\u00a0<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

At the core of the project remains the 66-year-old Strathairn, who\u2019s made a specialty of portraying cerebral, brooding men of recent history, such as Edward R. Murrow (\u201cGood Night and Good Luck,\u201d for which he was Oscar-nominated) and J. Robert Oppenheimer (in a PBS series). Karski was so traumatized by his experiences as a courier for the Polish underground, taking his reports on the Nazi genocide of the Jews all the way to the office of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, that he could not bring himself to speak of the events again for decades. It is his reckoning with the past that forms the central theme of \u201cMy Report to the World.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s really fascinating is discovering the roots of his psyche,\u201d says Strathairn, during a lunch break this week from rehearsals in New York; the piece runs at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Lower Manhattan \u2014 with the short detour to Washington \u2014 until July\u200925. \u201cWhat compelled a man to do that: Why was he silent? And how he reconciled himself with the celebrity of it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the rest.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new documentary is telling his remarkable and courageous story:\u00a0 \u201cHe\u2019s the only person I ever met whom I considered truly noble,\u201d says noted Holocaust scholar, filmmaker and writer Michael Berenbaum, referring to Jan Karski, a Polish resistance fighter who warned Western leaders of the impending genocide of Europe\u2019s Jews during World War II. Speaking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":132,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inspiration"],"yoast_head":"\nRemembering Jan Karski, the Catholic spy who warned about the Holocaust<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A new documentary is telling his remarkable and courageous story:\u00a0 \u201cHe\u2019s the only person I ever met whom I considered truly noble,\u201d says noted Holocaust\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/deaconsbench\/2015\/07\/remembering-jan-karski-the-catholic-spy-who-warned-about-the-holocaust-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta 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