“I think that I'm just doing my job,” said Jourová, who is vice-president of the European Commission for values and transparency.
"The only thing I do is going to places and speak," she told public broadcaster Polish Radio after the award ceremony on Friday.
She added: "I don’t make any sacrifices. This is not heroism; this is not braveness; this is just doing the job. That's why I am always surprised when somebody wants to reward me somehow."
Jan Karski was a Polish World War II underground courier who carried the first eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust to the world in the 1940s.
Radio Poland’s Michał Owczarek has more.
Click on the audio player above to listen.