The event included the Polish premiere of the American film Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski and a panel discussion under the motto “The role and Importance of the Witness in the Contemporary World.”
The film Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski is based on a one-man play under the same title, which was shown in London, Spain's Bilbao, Washington, Chicago, New York and Berkeley, Colorado, as well as four Polish cities in recent years.
Written by Clark Young and Derek Goldman, the film, and the theatrical show, stars Oscar-nominated actor David Strathairn as the eponymous character. The actor’s credits include the films Nightmare Alley, Nomadland, Lincoln and Good Night and Good Luck.
During World War II, as a member of the anti-Nazi resistance, Jan Karski took part in courier missions with dispatches from the Polish underground to the Polish government-in-exile, then based in France.
During one such mission, in July 1940, Karski was arrested by the Gestapo, the Nazi German secret police.
Rescued by the Polish resistance, he soon resumed active service in the Information and Propaganda Bureau of the Polish Home Army’s High Command, and in the summer of 1942 he was assigned to perform a secret mission to London on behalf of the Polish Government’s Delegate in Poland and several political parties.
In order to gather evidence on the plight of Polish Jews, he was twice smuggled by Jewish underground leaders into the Warsaw Ghetto.
He later met several Allied leaders, including Anthony Eden, Britain’s foreign secretary, and US President Franklin Roosevelt, but failed to secure support for European Jews.
After the war, Karski settled in the United States. In 1954, he became a US citizen.
He remained an advocate of Holocaust memory until his death in 2000.
Karski’s honours included the Order of the White Eagle, the highest Polish state award, the US Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Righteous Among the Nations Medal from the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem, and the honorary citizenship of Israel.
(mk/gs)