THE MISSION THAT FAILED: AN INTERVIEW WITH JAN KARSKI
Kozlowski, Maciej
Jan Karski, proper name Jan Kozielewski, was born in Lodz, Poland, in 1914. He has lived in the United States since 1944, and is now a professor of government at Georgetown University. (Those...
...He sent them to London...
...I have remembered these scenes all my life...
...Finally, the two leaders told me about the preparations for the armed uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto...
...I had a chance to speak with four members of the highest authority, the War Cabinet...
...As I mentioned above, I was under the spell of the president...
...Colonel Rowecki...
...How can we understand that...
...Any messages to relay to Poland would be given shortly before I left...
...The Allies could not use the methods the Nazis used...
...He was not interested in what Karski or anyone else did to help the Jews...
...I knew too many secrets...
...When I was in Paris, I delivered some reports, among them the report about the situation of the Jews, to the commander of the Polish underground in France, Aleksander Kawalkowski...
...Lanzmann made a great film...
...M.K...
...I cannot carry such a message behind the back of the Home Army Commander, who is my superior, unless you authorize me to see my commander in person...
...This film will shape the consciousness of millions of people...
...They were fully aware that the deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto as well as from other ghettos in Poland would lead to the extermination of the Jewish people...
...Did you regret it after seeing the film...
...You did not say anything about the results of your mission...
...I carried my mission for the civil authorities only...
...But among witnesses there were also decent people, without resentment against Jews...
...330 He made a detailed report, and committed suicide...
...The younger elements there were planning a "Jewish War" against the Third Reich...
...We were with the Polish ambassador to the U.S., Jan Ciechanowski...
...J.K...
...Frankfurter's answer was, "I am not saying that he is lying...
...J.K...
...What were the reactions to this part of your report...
...I refused to carry the message to General Sikorski...
...The Pope underlined this, praising the film and its director...
...I could not ask the commanderinchief what his opinion was about this or any other question...
...The Holocaust, the systematic extermination of an entire nation, happened for the first time in the history of mankind...
...At first I refused...
...The meeting took place in the late afternoon, in one of the half-ruined buildings in the suburbs of Warsaw...
...Shoah aroused much controversy...
...J.K...
...He had given them something, but not much...
...And finally, I consented...
...Money, medicine, food, and clothing were needed for survivors in ghettos as well as for Christians hiding the Jews...
...How was the Warsaw Ghetto when you saw it...
...He spent eleven years making it...
...I saw boys from the Hitler Jugend shooting into a crowd of running people...
...M.K...
...The Poles can save some individuals but they are unable to stop or even postpone the extermination...
...You presented them personally...
...On the first day after my arrival I met General Sikorski...
...This was not only because of ill will...
...Many people thought you had died...
...I was persuaded by Claude Lanzmann...
...What was the attitude of the Americans you met to the other dramatic demands of the Polish Jews...
...b. German prisoners of war who, having been informed about their government's crimes, still profess loyalty to the Nazi authorities, will be held responsible for those crimes...
...I experienced this myself...
...I also met President Roosevelt...
...I will take you into the camp, but once inside you will be on your own...
...In 1982, when I was in Israel to receive the Jad Vashem medal, in a Kibbutz made up of former inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto, I heard that this man's name was Guzik...
...Roosevelt was very friendly...
...I was only a courier...
...Four or five minutes of the briefing were devoted to the fate of the Jews...
...When I got back to London I learned that the Germans knew about my trip to the United States...
...3. Make formal public appeals to the German people to exert pressure on their government to stop the extermination...
...Not only did I witness starvation and misery, I witnessed a "hunt...
...Not about the Poles'—or any other nation's—attitude towards the Jews, not about the attempts to help...
...You carried this message to General Sikorski...
...Roosevelt at once asked for the creation of the American Refugee Board...
...It was after Sikorski's return that I was able to see some Britons...
...J.K...
...That means that the information you transmitted to the West was not complete, but even so it was horrible enough that people could not believe you...
...He fulfilled his duty, but he must have had some conscience still alive within him...
...In fact at that time its commander, SS Captain Gottlieb Hering, was on trial before an SS court...
...It was evident in the press, both in Poland and abroad...
...Such a film becomes important because Shoah is so powerful...
...J.K...
...On the right side I saw a railway sidetrack...
...They knew that the Jews were being transported to extermination camps (those were their exact words) although they did not know the details of the operation...
...But by then, the Polish Jews will no longer exist...
...The Home Army was responsible for the technical matters, but I was a political courier, not a military one...
...M.K...
...The general told me only that I would receive the highest Polish Order of Merit, the Virtuti Militari Cross...
...Let this new film show the endeavors of millions of Europeans who risked their lives or freedom to save the Jews...
...The representatives of the Polish Jews in London, Szmul Zygielbojm and Dr...
...This report was presented to A. L. Aestermann, a liaison man between the Jewish Congress and the British Foreign Office...
...He does not speak Polish...
...In order to avoid any risk of anti-Polish propaganda, I was forbidden to discuss this point with any non-Polish Jews...
...Apart from polite generalities, he said nothing important, either on Polish or on Jewish questions...
...Hearing the justice's comments, he was indignant...
...General Grot made that very clear during our conversation...
...M.K...
...And as in London, you met with disbelief...
...During the trials of the German war criminals in the late 1940s, some Polish railwaymen who cooperated with the underground were cross-examined as witnesses...
...My guide noticed that I was not behaving normally and he shouted over the Jewish crowd, "Folge mir, folge mir...
...But this truth could not get through...
...Hitler plans the extermination of the Jews before the end of the war regardless of its outcome...
...A guide contacted me...
...One may regret, as I do, that Lanzmann did not mention in his film the problems involved in helping the Jews in Poland, France, Hungary, Holland, Denmark, or Bulgaria...
...Commanders of all the districts asked him for weapons...
...They have no country of their own, nor representatives in the high Allied command...
...It is a film about the Holocaust...
...He knew them and was in touch with them...
...So the American part of the mission was completely fruitless...
...The Jewish leaders wanted the Polish government to issue strict orders that Poles blackmailing, or informing on, Jews in hiding be sentenced to death by the Polish Underground...
...The Jews were being transported from Belzec to Sobibor...
...M.K...
...M.K...
...The most trustworthy witnesses were rejected...
...I was standing close to the main gate through which the Jews were being taken out...
...They told me, "Try to understand us...
...Witness for the Jews M.K...
...But the entire interview was not shown on the film...
...They cannot count on the Polish underground or Polish society as a whole...
...Altogether the conversation lasted for twenty minutes...
...And they were not intellectuals, city dwellers, and educated persons, but peasants and people from small cities who lived close to the death camps...
...He is a difficult man, very emotional and obsessed with his film...
...I was also urged to appeal to governments, representatives of public opinion, and political leaders for technical and financial aid...
...He said only that Poland had a friend in the White House and that the Nazi criminals would be punished after the war...
...M.K...
...When did your trip to the United States take place...
...I was to travel to Paris with the documents of one of the French workers who was employed by the Germans in Poland, and who was to go on a holiday to France in October...
...My guide was well known there, and after showing some documents, we were allowed in...
...Once again, I cannot say...
...The Germans would deal with it, I remember his words well, "in a few hours...
...I will inform him of your complaints and ask for his comments...
...They could help only individuals, there was no other choice...
...The decision had to be made by the commander-inchief...
...J.K...
...Hitler will lose this war, but he will win the war he declared against the Polish Jews...
...So let the churches, governments, international organizations, and people of talent and good heart, find a way to cooperate in the production of such a film...
...I met Arthur Koestler, who tried to do whatever he could...
...There are things which minds and hearts refuse to accept...
...There was a special cell in the Home Army "Zegota" concerned only with helping the persecuted Jews...
...Eden, for instance, stopped me short saying, "We already received Karski's report...
...J.K...
...In all four of my missions, I acted as a mailbox or a gramophone record, hurried from one side of the front to the other...
...But I am unable to say anything about the Polish Government's reaction because I simply do not know...
...Lanzmann was criticized for presenting a biased view and for distorting historical truth by the selective way he chose those he interviewed...
...When the two learned that my mission covered meetings not only with the Polish authorities in London, but also with the highest circles of the Allied governments, they asked me to transmit a number of specific demands...
...The Swede made a report and sent it to Stockholm...
...citizenship, these false papers were the only ones I had...
...Part of this report was to be an account of the tragic situation of the Polish Jews...
...They had turned to the Home Army for weapons and been denied...
...Finally, I found myself in the United States as a member of the Polish Embassy staff...
...After further efforts, I finally obtained permission to contact General Grot...
...But by now it was 1944...
...You came back to this part of your life in Lanzmann's film...
...At that time it was divided into four smaller zones...
...It was a station that broadcast from Britain but passed as broadcasting from occupied Poland...
...J.K...
...J.K...
...No one was prepared to grasp the atrociousness of what was going on...
...M.K...
...An uprising in the Ghetto did not make such sense...
...J.K...
...I started seeking contact with General Grot...
...At the end of our conversation, the general said that he was a well-disciplined soldier and if he received an order from London to transfer a specific number and kind of weapons to the Ghetto, he would carry out that order...
...The uprising in the Ghetto lasted for over three weeks and the Germans sustained heavy losses...
...German radio broadcasts claimed that a certain Karski, a Bolshevik agent paid by American Jews, was slandering the Third Reich, presenting false, fabricated stories...
...M.K...
...Not because of ill will, but simply because the facts were beyond human imagination...
...333 J.K...
...M.K...
...The identity of those punished and the nature of their crimes should be made public through the underground press...
...Apart from diversion, sabotage, and the current struggles, the most important task of the Home Army was to build reserves of human forces and weapons so that 328 at a critical moment, difficult to foretell, they could plunge a knife into Germany's back...
...M.K...
...The Polish version of this interview was published in Tygodnik Poweszechny, No...
...I was deeply moved by what I had heard, but I tried to explain that their demand that German POWs be punished in retaliation was unrealistic...
...M.K...
...Did you agree to transmit all these demands...
...The "Jewish Question" in occupied Poland was solved...
...note: All non-English names are transliterated...
...Walter Laqueur, in his book The Terrible Secret, claims it was Menachem Kirschenbaum...
...You arrived in London in the middle of November...
...After the war Gerstein was caught by the French...
...I was marked by the scars on my wrists...
...You were also taken to the Belzec extermination camp...
...It was a very ineffective way of killing...
...I knew that if something happened to me the Jews would take responsibility and inform the 329 government's delegate...
...To tell the truth, the Polish government did not know what to do with me...
...That is true...
...He had to give arms to the units of diversion and sabotage, and the partisans fighting in the forests...
...I know English people," I explained, "they would not do that...
...According to him, the main task of the Allies was winning the war, and therefore anything not strictly of a military character was regarded as a side issue...
...About it only and nothing else...
...What can you say now, forty years later, about the results of the "Karski Mission...
...It was the middle of October...
...They explained the scene I saw...
...We both left by the same route...
...Because of these Mikolajczyk decided that my return to Poland would be too risky...
...I still do not know who the Zionists' representative was...
...You would not believe what I saw either...
...J.K...
...The news was being transmitted through the underground radio, which was controlled by the Chief of Civil Struggle Stefan Korbonski...
...People were not prepared for such truth...
...The man gave me precise instructions: "You will follow me...
...J.K...
...An entire year passed before the report reached London...
...Apart from talks with officials, you were asked by Jewish leaders from Poland to influence public opinion...
...That was the origin of my present name, because later, when I applied for U.S...
...But at the time I understood his arguments as I did those of the Jews...
...I was sick, vomiting blood...
...There were many other sources...
...My testimony from the Ghetto and Belzec...
...And that is why these truths were rejected, even subconsciously...
...I saw Minister for Foreign Affairs Sir Anthony Eden, the Conservative leader Lord Cranborne, Arthur Greenwood from the Labour party, and the Chairman of the Board of Trade Hugh Dalton...
...I saw terrible things...
...J.K...
...There were passages through basements, through sewer systems, and guards could be bribed...
...Lanzmann told me he was interested in interviewing three categories of people: the Jews who lived through the Holocaust, those who were instigators, and the witnesses...
...I was to come back with another mission...
...We did not introduce ourselves and we did not talk...
...Sometimes one transport had not been completed by the time a new one arrived...
...They were abandoned by governments, social structures, church hierarchies, but not by ordinary men and women...
...In the summer of 1943...
...I also had a special mes327 sage for the president of the Polish Republic, Wladyslaw Raczkiewicz...
...What were your other reservations...
...M.K...
...There were hundreds of Poles who helped Jews at the risk of their own lives...
...They demanded that General Sikorski, commanderin-chief of the Polish armed forces, change the attitude of the command of the Home Army...
...Assessing the Mission M.K...
...It is understandable that I was intimidated...
...I met with disbelief many times...
...They understood as well as I that in my future talks with the Western statesmen I would be much more convincing if my report were backed by eyewitness testimony...
...Zygielbojm was a tragic figure...
...This message, like all the other messages, I repeated as accurately as possible, first to Szwarcbard and Zygielbojm and then to General Sikorski...
...He was tortured but did not betray any secrets...
...I knew that I had to be brief because at any given moment the person I was talking with could close the meeting...
...In August 1942 a certain German officer, Kurt Gerstein, arrived in Belzec...
...I also spoke several times with Lord Selbourne, who was responsible in the British government for the contacts with underground movements in occupied countries...
...Provision had to be made that those Jews who succeeded in leaving Poland would be accepted abroad...
...He asked many questions concerning the political situation in Poland...
...I already told you about my meeting with Justice Frankfurter...
...The engines overheated, and the whole process of killing lasted for a long time...
...J.K...
...I was a nobody...
...You must understand that people such as Roosevelt or Churchill, men who held the fate of the world in their hands, appeared like gods to a young soldier like me...
...He was the first director of the American Refugee Board, an institution set up to take care of the refugees from occupied Europe, mostly Jews...
...Matters will take their due course...
...334...
...Acting on Lord Selboume's suggestion, he wrote and read several speeches for BBC radio, speaking as Karski...
...Unbelievable...
...J.K...
...M.K...
...The extermination in Belzec was done by exhaust gases from engines salvaged from Soviet tanks...
...officials, they said that Karski was easier to pronounce than Kozielewski, and so I became Karski...
...Who was the initiator of this part of the mission...
...You left Warsaw with the documents of a French worker...
...Let us go back to Warsaw and to your talks with the Jewish leaders...
...The only comment Wells made after my briefing was, "I wonder why in every country where there are Jews, there is anti-Semitism...
...Thousands of copies were published...
...Lieutenant Karski is on an official mission...
...After all, it is not true that the Jews were totally abandoned...
...And it is not Lanzmann's fault that they are presented the way they are...
...Did your superiors agree to that risk...
...The Polish Jews are helpless...
...Lord Selbourne was more interested in the fate of the Jews, but he told me very frankly that the demands made by the 331 Jewish leaders could not be met...
...It was a great experience for me...
...But a large part of the Polish press, both in Poland and abroad, did not understand his intentions...
...A few weeks later, he was sent to France again, but this time his mission failed, and he was arrested by the Gestapo in Slovakia...
...M.K...
...I could not see the gas chambers...
...I went with a false diplomatic passport as Jan Karski because I was still supposed to go back to Poland...
...My government's authority stands behind him...
...I witnessed such a scene...
...After the war, after publishing your book, you disappeared from the public scene...
...Professor Kot, by the way, was deeply concerned about the fate of the Jews...
...How was the meeting with the Jewish leaders organized...
...We started our work in February 1944...
...Actually, the Jews were making it...
...I was working for BIP and it was not clear if my superiors were military or civil authorities...
...I attempted to reach the most influential people in cultural and artistic milieus...
...How did the Jewish leaders react...
...The German people will be informed that the bombings are in retaliation for the Nazi crimes against the Jews...
...As to the Jewish part of my mission, it was an obvious failure...
...He spoke perfect Polish and was very matter-offact...
...For every meeting I prepared scrupulously...
...It was a sensation not only in the United States, but in the whole world...
...You don't want to understand either...
...After the war, when the full extent of Nazi crimes became well known, there were many voices expressing surprise...
...You saw the Warsaw Ghetto in its last days...
...But critics of the film preferred to ignore the Pope's remarks...
...Such was the practice...
...Colonel Rowecki was present...
...M.K...
...The extermination of the Jews was without precedent in the history of mankind...
...Two people came and introduced themselves with pseudonyms, saying they represented the Bund and the Zionist organization...
...The Jewish report, made by three men from BIP—Henryk Wolinski, Ludwik Widerszal, and Stanislaw Herbst—was over forty written pages, put on microfilm, hidden in a specially designed key...
...I also broadcast from the "Swit" station...
...Everybody had me swear that I would tell what I heard to authorized persons only...
...Taken prisoner of war by the Soviets, he managed to escape and, after many adventures, returned to Warsaw, where he joined the Polish underground...
...How did you get into the Belzec camp...
...He appeared to be a Jew, but of course I cannot say for sure...
...He was to put things in order, that is, to instruct the inefficient commander in the virtues of Cyklon B gas compared with exhaust gas...
...All names of the German officials taking part in this action, as well as specific facts and methods used, should be publicly denounced...
...Some research should be done about this problem...
...When the leaders of the two most important Jewish underground organizations, the Bund and the Zionist organization, learned that "Witold" was going to London, they asked the government delegate in Poland if they could use his services in the same way as the other underground political parties...
...I also saw the British and American ambassadors to the Polish government, the influential member of parliament Ellen Wilkinson, and many other people...
...When I explained the story to the U.S...
...The camp was enclosed, partly with barbed wire, partly by the wall...
...You must not speak to anyone...
...How were these undertakings conducted...
...The Polish government learned about the report and made an uproar...
...It is not true, as sometimes has been written, that I was the first one to present to the West the whole truth of the fate of the Jews in occupied Poland...
...Hard currency was needed to bribe the German officials...
...As far as I know, you did not return to your war adventures until you agreed to be interviewed by Claude Lanzmann for his film Shoah...
...I told them, "I understand you and your situation, but I am a soldier in the Home Army...
...After his recovery he worked in the Cracow section of the Union of Armed Struggle, the military underground organization preceding the Home Army...
...We went together to Lublin, changed trains, and arrived in Belzec...
...The Bund representative accompanied me...
...He ordered his own subordinates to acquire weapons themselves...
...It would be against international law...
...Several hours later a man arrived...
...Both Jewish leaders heartily agreed...
...4. Declare that if such pressure is not exerted and the extermination continues, the responsibility for the crimes will be placed on the German nation as a whole...
...Wherever I could, I presented these demands...
...Everybody who wanted to know about German crimes against the Jews could have known and not only through me...
...Some peo332 ple, like Rabbi Stephen Wise, the leader of the American Jews, were interested in some details...
...We are desperate, we are dying...
...They were described in your book...
...J.K...
...Did you talk alone with him...
...There are no political issues...
...It didn't mention Gerstein, of course...
...They wanted me to see with my own eyes at least part of what I had heard from them...
...How did you fulfill this part of your task...
...many of you will die...
...Following an abortive suicide attempt in his prison cell, he was rescued in a daring action by a commando of the Polish underground...
...During that conference Pehl said, "Karski's mission really shocked the president...
...My duty was to transfer information...
...I was to meet government officials, representatives of public opinion, and church dignitaries...
...I have talked with Professor Karski about this mission and particularly about the part connected with the Holocaust of Polish Jewry...
...M.K...
...Even among Poles, after their first hysterical reactions, after trumped-up charges and exaggerated figures concerning help given to Jews during the war, some sobriety was evident, especially among those who had seen the entire film...
...I never had any further contact with those men...
...Maciej Kozlowski: Your mission was to carry a report to the Polish government in London and to the representatives of the political parties on the situation in occupied Poland...
...In 1939 he was drafted into the army as a second lieutenant of mounted artillery...
...Lanzmann made a film about the mechanism of the Holocaust...
...Above all, it is truly necessary that those generations that did not live through the Holocaust, that did not witness it, Jew and Gentile alike, not lose their faith in mankind...
...He did not instruct them how and what to say...
...We entered the camp without any trouble...
...Returning, he met a Swedish diplomat on the train and told him the whole story...
...I thought that Belzec was a transitory camp...
...Because I was working in the Bureau of Information and Propaganda (BIP) I asked for a contact from Jerzy Makowiecki, my immediate superior...
...It was not easy, as I was only a lieutenant...
...At this time I had completed the political preparations for the mission...
...Therefore, I had to make the decision myself...
...I would like now to mention some events that were taking place at the same time but were fully revealed only after the war...
...Were they very dangerous...
...I was waiting for the documents...
...According to Gilbert, who used British archives opened thirty years after the war, this report was handed to Under Secretary of State Richard Law on the 26th of November...
...The second part of the interview, from the point of view of the filmmaker, was not to the point...
...J.K...
...The tragedy was that these testimonies were not believed...
...J.K...
...But Lanzmann persuaded me...
...But the Swedish authorities, in an effort not to antagonize the still powerful Germans, kept this report secret...
...You cannot say to his face that he is lying...
...But handing out weapons in the amount the Jews asked for was beyond his capability...
...I saw terrible things...
...Let us come back to your mission...
...The Alliance of Political Parties...
...Moreover, as Commander of the Home Army, he had specified duties to fulfill...
...Streetcars ran between them...
...There were some Jews who managed to escape...
...He was a military commander...
...The Jews were Polish citizens...
...But after the war Poland will be restored, your wounds will slowly heal...
...M.K...
...After the war, I learned from Martin Gilbert's book, Auschwitz and the Allies, that a detailed report had been prepared, based on my revelations to Professor Kot as well as on microfilms that had been sent from Paris...
...J.K...
...In such cases the new transport was directed to Sobibor, where the death machine was running much better...
...I had many meetings with journalists, and before my trip to the United States I collaborated with Thomas Mann and Aleksy Tolstoy on a booklet of Nazi crimes against the Jews...
...Hypocrisy...
...The organized structures fell short of expectation, but not ordinary people...
...The guide took me to a hardware shop...
...I wrote about them in my book, Story of a Secret State, which was published in 1944...
...I didn't even think about asking anybody...
...The help they did receive, heroic help, was provided only by individuals...
...The film is a masterpiece...
...Later I learned that he was going to Washington to meet President Roosevelt...
...It was an appeal to Pope Pius XII to use every means, excommunication included, to stop the crimes against the Jews...
...M.K...
...By German standards, Belzec was run very inefficiently...
...Those who saw Claude Lanzmann's Shoah will remember that during his interview Karski was so overcome with emotion that he had to leave the room to compose himself before returning to continue...
...Getting into the Ghetto was quite easy...
...M.K...
...This film, which has yet to be made, should show what love for one's neighbor means, how powerful a force it can be...
...We cannot judge what is and what is not realistic...
...In the Ghetto there was no danger...
...They varied...
...Therefore, the entire historical responsibility rests on the Allied governments, which must take extraordinary measures...
...Apart from the Jewish problem, you had an important mission to carry out...
...After a while, I will give you a sign, and we will leave together...
...Therefore, I see the necessity of making another film, one as great and powerful as Shoah, a film that would also shape the consciousness of mankind...
...Not completely...
...Its title was Fate of the Jews...
...Not any nation, not any government, not any church...
...For many years I could not understand it...
...Usually I prepared a twenty-minute briefing...
...Any one of them or all together...
...At first General Grot praised my attitude, but then he said he was astonished that the Jewish leaders asked me to conduct such a mission behind his back...
...11, March 15, 1987...
...We are putting forward these demands to stop the extermination...
...I saw terrible things in Belzec...
...I did not make a detailed report because the general told me that he was leaving...
...It will teach the results of intolerance, anti-Semitism, racism, and hatred...
...It was after the war that I learned that it was a death camp...
...I only said that I cannot believe him, and there is a difference...
...You have to determine that...
...I broke down right there...
...I knew that the Germans never used Poles in the death camps...
...But as in London, I was not informed about the results of my mission...
...No democratic government could do that...
...All his actions had to make military sense...
...For instance, he asked me about the blank passports...
...5. Make formal public announcements that if the extermination is not halted, the Allied governments will take unprecedented steps: a. Chosen targets in Germany will be bombed...
...The extermination was to be kept secret...
...In this is hidden a sense of optimism, and this optimism should be passed on to those generations for whom the Holocaust is only a page from a history textbook...
...Nothing else...
...But it was too late, then...
...The trip to Belzec was much riskier...
...M.K...
...Why did you not return...
...No other courier made this trip in such a short time...
...Ignace Szwarcbard, were to be charged to make every possible effort to bring these demands to the Allied governments...
...As far as I know, you want to see the camp...
...J.K...
...And as you know, I did not come back, although it had been planned that I would...
...I do not agree with such opinions...
...J.K...
...At the end of 1943 you were supposed to go back to Poland...
...I was waiting for the technical preparations to be carried out by the liaison cell of the Home Army...
...When I arrived in London, I stayed with Pawel Siudak, an associate of Stanislaw Kot and Stanislaw Mikolajczyk in their contacts with occupied Poland, and kept under cover...
...Therefore, he took only a part from my interview, which lasted for many hours...
...A few months later, following the same route through Hungary and Czechoslovakia, he returned to Poland bringing instructions and nominations for the leaders of the underground...
...For a month after this conversation I was allowed to see only a small group of Poles...
...He had an Estonian guard's uniform for me...
...M.K...
...J.K...
...There were others...
...Before the war he graduated from Jan Kazimierz University in Lvov and began his career in the Polish Foreign Service...
...I spent less than an hour in the camp...
...Not fully...
...A few years ago I read an account of John Pehl's press conference...
...Six million Jews died and no one offered them effective help...
...Someone helped them: nuns and peasants, workers and underground organizations...
...You were a soldier, under orders...
...Both men were in despair...
...Why did you decide to speak up after so many years...
...You were also charged with relaying the demands of the leaders of the Jewish underground to the Allied governments and the public opinion in the West...
...J.K...
...M.K...
...Most of those who saw the Holocaust were Poles...
...He changed his attitude and the attitude of the State Department...
...At the time, I did not understand this statement...
...They both stressed that unless dramatic, extraordinary measures were immediately put into effect, the entire Jewish people would perish...
...Afterwards, he worked in Warsaw in the Bureau of Information and Propaganda...
...Your itinerary took you through Germany to Paris, through the Pyrenees to neutral Spain, and from the port of Algeciras you took a boat to a waiting British ship, which in turn took you to Gibraltar...
...Also, at that time, in the autumn of 1942, my personal situation was not very clear...
...I remember the exact words of the Bund representative: "You Poles are also suffering...
...It was mid-September 1942...
...Later, after the war, I learned that the Bund representative was a pre-war lawyer, Leon Fajner...
...First they summed up the situation in more or less this manner: The systematic extermination of the Jews in occupied Poland is not motivated by military needs connected with the war...
...He told about the exhaust gases, the collapsing tank engines, the whole story about the extermination of Jews in the Belzec camp...
...Today I see this conversation in a different light...
...My mission in the United States had the same purpose as in London...
...they were, as I learned later, deeper inside the camp, on the other side of the mass of people being directed into the cars...
...Some Jews would be able to leave Poland if blank, genuine foreign passports were provided...
...His suicide, which was to have been a dramatic cry of protest, did not affect the fate of Polish Jews in any way...
...He himself did not have enough weapons...
...Because, I repeat, the Jews were not totally abandoned...
...I did not tell them why I wanted to see General Grot, but only that it concerned my mission in London...
...What was his reaction...
...I regret that my interview was shortened, but I have no grounds for complaint...
...When I was in the United States and told Justice Felix Frankfurter the story of the Polish Jews, he said, at the end of our conversation, "I cannot believe you...
...My meeting with H. G. Wells, whom I met through the Polish writer and poet Antoni Slonimski, was very different...
...They had an unusual proposition for you...
...When I spoke with Eden in midFebruary, he may have already read the report, and perhaps that was the reason why, among many questions, he asked none concerning the Jewish question...
...And there were millions of such people...
...J.K...
...Over half a million Jews survived the Holocaust in Europe...
...It was true that the Jews had asked him for weapons...
...He sent me to his superior, Colonel Jan Rowecki...
...They demanded that the governments do the following: 1. Announce publicly that prevention of the physical extermination of the Jews will be part of the overall Allied strategy...
...Besides, whom was I to ask...
...Jan Karski: The Jews...
...Even the war is merely mentioned in it...
...Szmul Zygielbojm met with the same attitude and therefore he committed suicide a few months later to protest against it...
...In most cases, he was unable to give them arms, but instead he issued money, because weapons could be bought from the Germans in the black market...
...In the autumn of 1942 "Witold" (his conspiracy pseudonym) was charged with a mission to London...
...The next demand was to be presented to Prime Minister Wladyslaw Sikorski and the Interior Minister Stanislaw Mikolajczyk...
...I was in the Ghetto twice...
...M.K...
...But these facts should have been known...
...According to some sources, it was Jakov Berman, the representative of the left wing of the Bund, who was at that time living outside the Ghetto...
...You do not understand my role in that damned war...
...Knowing that I was supposed to return to Poland, he tried to convince me that the Polish eastern border had to be changed and that Poland would obtain compensation in the West...
...We know today how wrong he was...
...J.K...
...M.K...
...In December 1939 he was sent, as one of the first couriers, to France, where he briefed the new Polish government-in-exile about the situation in occupied Poland...
...Even today, although over forty years have passed, I cannot forget the scenes I witnessed there...
...Facts that had been revealed were generally regarded as sensational fabrications...
...You speak neither Polish nor German...
...2. Inform the German nation through radio, leaflets, and other means about the government's crimes against the Jews...
...M.K...
...I remember that date because my trip broke a record: twenty-one days from Warsaw to London...
...The delegate, Cyryl Ratajski, called me and presented me with this proposition, adding, "I think, Witold, you should do it...
...My voice would not be recognized, and Lord Selbourne said that Koestler spoke with the same bad accent as I, so he could act a courier from Poland...
...They had a right to fight the common enemy, regardless of the outcome...
...J.K...
...He told me that it was my duty to speak...
...He radiated power and dignity...
...I had instructions from the government delegate and the League of the Political Underground Parties, as well as opinions and 326 views of some important political leaders...
Vol. 34 • July 1987 • No. 3
