{"id":34,"date":"2012-05-29T18:23:00","date_gmt":"2012-05-30T00:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/2012\/05\/speaking-truth-to-power-the-irony-edition\/"},"modified":"2016-05-02T11:10:37","modified_gmt":"2016-05-02T17:10:37","slug":"speaking-truth-to-power-the-irony-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/egregioustwaddle\/2012\/05\/speaking-truth-to-power-the-irony-edition.html","title":{"rendered":"Speaking Truth to Power: The Irony Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
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Today President Obama awarded the nation\u2019s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to 13 people<\/a><\/b>, three of them posthumously. On the list were a number of familiar names\u2013Bob Dylan, Madeleine Albright, Girl Scouts founder Juliette Gordon Low, John Glenn. I was glad to see the inclusion of Dolores Huerta, whose efforts alongside Cesar Chavez in support of the rights of migrant farm workers I celebrated<\/a><\/b> a couple of weeks ago. Among the less familiar (to me, anyway) names, I found one honoree whose presence, for many Catholics and others involved in prolife activities, struck a note of irony, a note that rang all the louder the more I learned about him.<\/p>\n

Jan Karski, who died in 2000, had been an officer in the Polish Underground during World War II. Smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto and the Izbica transit camp, he saw the horrors of the Holocaust at first hand, and was deputized to bear witness to the Allied leaders. Karski\u2019s testimony\u2013which he shared all the way up the chain of command to President Franklin D. Roosevelt\u2013was among the first eyewitness accounts of the plight of the Jews under the Nazis to get to the West while the war was going on.<\/p>\n

As with many examples of prophetic testimony, Karski\u2019s speaking truth to power earned him little thanks. He was disbelieved\u2013often, as Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter confessed, because his message was incomprehensible. \u201cI did not say this young man is lying,\u201d Frankfurter responded. \u201cI said said I am unable to believe him. There is a difference.\u201d The pleas he conveyed from Jews in Poland\u2013to make the liberation of the Jews a central aim of the Allied war effort, to use Allied propaganda resources to convey the truth of the Holocaust to the German people\u2013were dismissed in favor of broader military objectives.<\/p>\n

As reported in a New York Times profile<\/b><\/a>, Karski shared his frustration:<\/p>\n

\u201cAlmost every individual was sympathetic to my reports concerning the Jews,\u201d Mr. Karski said. \u201cBut when I reported to the leaders of governments they discarded their conscience, their personal feeling. They provided a rationale which seemed valid. What was the situation? The Jews were totally helpless. The war strategy was the military defeat of Germany and the defeat of Germany\u2019s war potential for all eternity. Nothing could interfere with the military crushing of the Third Reich. The Jews had no country, no government. They were fighting but they had no identity.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Karski was so sure his efforts had failed that he experienced a suicidal depression. Historians later credited him, however, with making a real difference in Allied policy. It was determined that it was too dangerous for him to return to Poland, so he remained in the United States, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1954. Jan Karski married a Polish dancer, the daughter of an observant Jew whose entire family had been lost in the Holocaust. Honored by Israel as one of \u201cthe righteous among the nations,\u201d Karski told Elie Weisel that he considered himself a Jew and a member of his wife\u2019s family.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the irony. Jan Karski was born\u2013and remained throughout his life\u2013a devout practicing Catholic. \u201cI am a Christian Jew,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

It was Jan Karski\u2019s Catholicism that President Obama chose to emphasize when he honored Karski earlier this year on Holocaust Remembrance Day, as CNN notes:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe must tell our children about how this evil was allowed to happen \u2014 because so many people succumbed to their darkest instincts; because so many others stood silent,\u201d Obama said. \u201cBut let us also tell our children about the Righteous among the Nations. Among them was Jan Karski \u2014 a young Polish Catholic \u2014 who witnessed Jews being put on cattle cars, who saw the killings, and who told the truth, all the way to President Roosevelt himself.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n\n
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Perhaps the President sought to make that reference to Karski\u2019s Catholicism an olive branch in his ongoing battle with the bishops over the HHS mandate and his ongoing wrangle with Catholic values on a number of levels. But I can\u2019t be the only one wondering if the President ever listens to himself. It cannot have escaped a man as firmly committed to Planned Parenthood as he is that prolife activists often refer to abortion as a modern holocaust. And while I understand that people of good will may differ on the definition of when life begins, I think it\u2019s difficult to dismiss the comparison when we talk about late-term abortion and allowing the death of infants who survive abortion\u2013both of which the President has determined to be legal and correct. The lives of these helpless ones\u2013like the Jews of Poland\u2013have no identity, carry no political collateral.<\/p>\n

Those in power did not listen, at first, to the truth Jan Karski spoke. Indeed, as Karski told Elie Weisel, even when they listened, they listened too late for millions, and Karski compared their silence to a kind of second Original Sin:<\/p>\n

\u201cMy faith tells me the second Original Sin has been committed by humanity: through commission, or omission, or self-imposed ignorance, or insensitivity, or self-interest, or hypocrisy, or heartless rationalization.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But there is more than irony in the story of Jan Karski. There is hope\u2013hope that those who dare to speak truth to power will be heard, no matter how long it takes, no matter how hard the truth is to hear, no matter how obstinate the ignorance, insensitivity, self-interest, hypocrisy, or heartless rationalization. With the help of the Holy Spirit, people will \u201ccontinue to tell the truth, all the way to\u201d the President himself.<\/p>\n

Maybe, like today, the President will even speak truth to himself. Let\u2019s pray he will start listening.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today President Obama awarded the nation\u2019s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to 13 people, three of them posthumously. On the list were a number of familiar names\u2013Bob Dylan, Madeleine Albright, Girl Scouts founder Juliette Gordon Low, John Glenn. I was glad to see the inclusion of Dolores Huerta, whose efforts alongside Cesar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1086,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nSpeaking Truth to Power: The Irony Edition<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Today President Obama awarded the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to 13 people, three of them posthumously. 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