Polish Officer Told President Roosevelt of Jewish Slaughter During World War II
WASHINGTON, DC – Earlier today at the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum, President Barack Obama announced he will
award a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom to Jan Karski, a former
officer in the Polish Underground during World War II who was among the first
to provide eye-witness accounts of the Holocaust to the world.
The Medal of Freedom is the Nation’s highest
civilian honor, presented to individuals who have made especially meritorious
contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to
world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private
endeavors.
President Obama said, “We must tell our children
about how this evil was allowed to happen—because so many people succumbed to
their darkest instincts; because so many others stood silent. But let us
also tell our children about the Righteous Among the Nations. Among them
was Jan Karski—a young Polish Catholic—who witnessed Jews being put on cattle
cars, who saw the killings, and who told the truth, all the way to President
Roosevelt himself. Jan Karski passed away more than a decade ago.
But today, I’m proud to announce that this spring I will honor him with
America’s highest civilian honor—the Presidential Medal of Freedom.”
Karski served as an officer in the Polish
Underground during World War II and carried among the first eye-witness
accounts of the Holocaust to the world. He worked as a courier, entering
the Warsaw ghetto and the Nazi Izbica transit camp, where he saw first-hand the
atrocities occurring under Nazi occupation.
Karski later traveled to London to meet with the
Polish government-in-exile and with British government officials. He
subsequently traveled to the United States and met with President
Roosevelt.
Karski published Story of a Secret State, earned a Ph.D at Georgetown University,
and became a professor at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. Born in
1914, Karski became a U.S. citizen in 1954 and died in 2000.
Wanda Urbanska, Director of the Jan Karski U.S.
Centennial Campaign, was notified recently of the President’s decision to award
Karki with the Nation’s highest civilian honor.
The remainder of the honorees selected by the
President will be announced over the coming weeks and the awards will be
presented at a White House ceremony later this spring.
Photo source: E. Thomas Wood
Author:
E. Thomas Wood
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