Jan Karski Quotes

Despite the worldwide opinion that women are loquacious and indiscreet, my own experience has led me to believe that women on the whole make better conspiratorial workers than men…. They are quicker to perceive danger … superior at being inconspicuous and generally display much caution, discretion and common sense…. Men are often prone to exaggeration and bluff and … subconsciously inclined to surround themselves with an air of mystery that sooner or later proves fatal.

In 1942 the Polish resistance fighter Jan Karski gave eye witness testimony to the Supreme Court judge Felix Frankfurter of the clearing of the Warsaw Ghetto and the systematic murder of Polish Jews in the Belzec concentration camp. Listening to him, Frankfurter, himself a Jew, and one of the outstanding legal minds of his generation, replied, "I must be frank. I am unable to believe him." He added: "I did not say this young man is lying. I said I am unable to believe him. There is a difference.

My dear girl,' I answered in high spirits, for I felt elated at being active again. 'You are about to witness the birth of an immortal literary masterpiece. In a few moments, I shall begin the composition of an eloquent letter. This letter is going to be received by everyone in the Reich who has a Polish name. Or at least that is what shall try to accomplish. We want to remidn everyone of Polish origin that, although they are nominally German, Polish blood continues to flow in their veins.' Danuta interrupted my oratory. 'Calm down, Witold. Don't excite yourself so. If you raise your voice much louder you shan't have to send any letters. Everybody in the Third Reich will have heard you, including the Gestapo.

The photographer was installed in the back of an inconspicurous dry-goods store in the poorer neighbourhood of Warsaw. He seemed to know all about me. His job was to prepare a picture of me which resembled me sufficiently to be claimed as mine, but in which the features were so vague that I could disown it if the need should arise. He was a bold, spry little man who hardly replied to my few remarks. His deliberate taciturnity was not lost on me and I remained quiet while he concentrated on the task of turning out what proved to be a miniature masterpiece of photographic ambiguity. When it was finished he handed it to me with a pleased smile. I glanced at it and marveled aloud at his skill. 'It's incredible,' I said. 'It makes me feel as though I had met myself before but can't quite remember where.

In Poland there is a meaning to defeat that perhaps is unknown in countries differently situated. Along with a strong sense of unity as a people, there is present an awareness that a defeat in war entails unique and drastic consequences. Other nations may be oppressed and dominated after losing a war; they may have war reparations imposed on them, or limits on their army, sometimes even their boundaries are changed. But when a Polish soldier was beaten on the battlefield, the specter of total annihilation swooped down upon the entire nation: its neighbors would pillage and divide up its land, and try to destroy its language and culture. That is why, to us, war took on the character of total war.

Koestler wrote more than seven decades ago, so surely we have learned our lesson by now. But when the Burmese military attempts to eradicate the Rohingya people of Myanmar; when the Chinese government locks up over a million Muslim Uighurs in prison camps across Xinjiang; when white supremacists march on an American city chanting “Jews will not replace us”; and when Holocaust denial is enjoying a resurgence, we are reminded that every day each of us has a duty to bear witness, to seek accountability, to pursue justice, and to act in the spirit of Jan Karski.

With the president’s suggestion in mind, I cannot conclude this without reminding readers that the enablers of evil are not confined to one side of the Atlantic. In the period just before World War II there arose a multidimensional pro-fascist network within the United States, spurred on by German agents, fueled by demagogic media personalities, enamored of the slogan “America First,” and built on a foundation of antisemitism, racism, isolationism, and fear. This was no trivial movement.

The man came from another place and time, one felt, a place of dignity and integrity, a time of courage and commitment, a community of just men and women who cared for each other deeply and equally. But he seemed to come from a place of peace only because first, and profoundly, he had passed through such suffering. “I saw terrible things,” he would simply, searingly say.