Jan Karski to be awarded America's highest honour

photo - PAP/Tomasz Gzell (archives)

The award to Jan Karski - the man who tried to warn the West about the Holocuast being perpetrated by the German Nazis in occupied Poland – was announced by President Obama during a ceremony at the Holocaust Museum in Washington.

“I’m proud to announce that this spring I will honour [Karski] with America’s highest civilian honour—the Presidential Medal of Freedom,” Obama said during a tour of the museum, Monday.

“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,” Obama said.

“But let us also tell our children about the Righteous Among the Nations [those who saved Jews during WW II]. 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, who died in 2000, was a courier for the Polish Underground and escaped occupied by Poland and made it to London, where he gave eyewitness accounts of the horrific conditions in the Warsaw Ghetto to the Polish-government-in-exile and British government.

After the war, Karski settled in the United States and became a lecturer at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service.

He was made an American citizen in 1954. (pg)