Poland to honor partisan who warned about Holocaust

2014 will be dedicated to Jan Karski, the man who informed the allies about the Holocaust and died in 2000

Poland’s parliament named 2014 the Year of Jan Karski, honoring the man who alerted the allies about the Holocaust.

Last week’s unanimous vote in the Sejm marked the centennial of Karski’s birth.

Karski, who is not Jewish, was born in Lodz in 1914 and was a courier for the Polish resistance during World War II.

He infiltrated the Warsaw Ghetto and the Izbica transit camp and was among the first to relay first-hand news of the Holocaust to the West.

Karski appealed for intervention to British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and later to President Franklin Roosevelt, without success. His 1944 book, “The Story of a Secret State,” became a best-seller.

After the war, Karski became a professor at Georgetown University. Yad Vashem named him a Righteous Among Nations in 1982, and Israel made him an honorary citizen in 1994. He died in 2000.

President Bronislaw Komorowski will be honorary patron of the events, which will include international conferences, new editions of Karski’s work, scholarships and educational programs.