Published: 12 November 2016
Last updated: 4 March 2024
Award-winning Polish-born American director Slawomir Grunberg has taken that footage and fleshed it out with a round of new interviews with those who knew Karski personally, plenty of harrowing archival footage and some thoughtful animation to create the documentary Karski & the Lords of Humanity.
Perfect candidate for the Resistance
Karski was ideally suited for a role in the Polish underground. Born in 1914, the handsome, multilingual diplomat was blessed with a photographic memory that allowed him to recall the most intricate details of meetings and events.
One early example of this, and a portent of things to come, was when he was asked not long after the start of the German occupation to report to Stanislaw Kott, the Minister of the Interior in the Polish Government in Exile in London, on the behavior of the Germans and his fellow Poles towards the Jews. “I told him that less-educated Poles showed a distinct lack of sympathy for the suffering of the Jews. The next day Kott called me and said, ‘It is not our job to criticise our own people. This issue creates a narrow bridge where the Germans and significant numbers of Poles share the same opinion.’”
Over the next two years Karski was involved in a number of clandestine operations, one of which led to his arrest, imprisonment and torture by the Gestapo, after which he unsuccessfully attempted suicide by cutting his wrists with a razor blade.
After being transported to a nearby hospital, he was able to escape with the assistance of the underground, an act for which he later discovered the Germans had exacted a terrible reprisal.
Warsaw ghetto and transit camp
In September 1942, Jewish underground leaders found out about Karski and asked for a meeting. They met twice outside a nearly demolished house in Warsaw where they related what was really happening and how dire the situation had become for the Jewish community. “They said, ‘When you get to England they will probably not believe you – it would help if you saw the Warsaw Ghetto with your own eyes.’”
The Warsaw Ghetto was a fairly large area that had initially contained about 450,000 people. By September 1942, however, there were only about 70,000 left. Karski was able to enter and leave the Ghetto through a tunnel under the basement of an apartment house.
“They told me to just walk, observe and repeat what I’d seen in London. The stench was unbelievable and the conditions unbearable. There was starvation, degradation and death everywhere. I will never forget I saw a man standing with blank eyes. I asked the guide what he was doing. ‘He’s just dying, that’s all’ was his response.”
After visiting the ghetto, Karski made an extraordinary journey to Izbica Lubelska, a transit point for the Belzec death camp. “I saw maybe a thousand or two thousand people. Some were dying, old, young, Rabbis, children. The Germans were shouting, there was not enough room on the train, they were pushing and shoving everyone, and mothers had their children ripped from them by force. As soon as I left the camp I vomited blood.”
Following those life-changing events, Karski determined that he would bear witness to what he’d seen to those in authority. As part of his hazardous journey back to Paris en route to London, he went to a dentist and had an injection that swelled his cheek so that he would have to wear a bandage that masked his Polish accent.
Bewildering responses
One of the things that make this documentary so compelling is the way in which Karski relates his meetings with Allied and Jewish leaders in London, accompanied by some commentary from those who knew Karski personally.
After reaching London armed with a sizeable amount of evidence on microfilm, he started to present his findings, yet was met with responses that verged on the incredulous. For example, when he met British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, he was told that helping the Jews would lead to resentment from other minorities who were suffering. “He said to me, ‘What about the Russians? What will they say when they find out we’ve helped the Jews and not them?’”
At another meeting, in December 1942, Karski presented a report to Szmul Zygielbojm, the leader of the Polish Jewish Bund. “It was a painful meeting. He said to me, ‘You are not a Jew, why are you telling me this?’ He jumped up and started screaming. I later found out that on 13 May 1943 he had turned on the gas in his apartment and died in the same way so many of his people were dying in Europe.”
Karski’s information formed the backbone of the earliest report into the Holocaust, which caused some declarations by the Allies and two minutes of silence in the British House of Commons, but ultimately failed to result in significant intervention, much to his dismay.
In May 1943, a telegram containing information supplied by Karski reached the US and a story famously appeared on page 16 of The New York Times.
Karski then visited the US personally, where he met President Franklin Roosevelt in the White House. He was initially in awe of Roosevelt.
“He projected power and grace, he had a beautiful accent. I believed that he and Churchill were the Lords of Humanity, with the power to save millions of lives. He asked me many questions, jumping from point to point. I said, ‘Mr President, before leaving Poland, I was charged with the mission of relating to you how horrible the situation is. Without outside help, the Jews in Poland will perish.’
“He replied, ‘You tell your leaders that we shall win this war and the guilty ones will be punished for their crimes. Justice will prevail. You can tell your nation that you have a friend in this house.’ When I told him that up to one million Jews had already been murdered, he didn’t show much interest.”
Part of this indifference may have been due to Roosevelt being overly conscious of German propaganda against him and the accusation that he’d entered the war on behalf of the Jews. On 6 October 1943, hundreds of rabbis gathered in Washington DC to beseech the US government to do more, yet Roosevelt successfully avoided them by attending an army ceremony followed by a weekend in the country.
Accolades in later life
Karski was haunted by the belief that he had failed to make a material difference, something that weighed on him for the rest of his life.
Having said that, his actions did have some positive impact, including establishment of the War Refugee Board, which saved up to 200,000 Jews in Hungary and Rumania.
In 1944 Karski’s book Story of a Secret State was published, which became a New York Times bestseller. In 1952, he began lecturing at Georgetown University, where he remained for 40 years.
He was recognised by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations in 1982 and was made an honorary citizen of Israel in 1994. A year later, he was awarded the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest decoration.
In 1992, Karski’s Jewish wife Pola took her own life. Karski himself died in July, 2000, aged 86. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama in 2012, the highest civilian award in the United States.
This documentary lasted only 70 minutes but it felt longer, not because it ever lagged, but because of the sheer weight of information it contained. It’s the story of a flawed but courageous man who tried to make a difference but was ultimately overwhelmed by the scale of what unfolded and the general indifference shown by those who could genuinely have made a significant difference.
It’s also not easy to watch – Karski himself breaks down often relating his story. As an account of an essential figure in the history of the Holocaust, I would highly recommend it, especially to those unaware of Karski’s exploits.
I was lucky enough to see and hear Karski speak when he visited the Canberra Jewish Community sometime in the late 1980s, and I recall being highly moved by his account. As he himself related, “We have infinite power to do good, or follow evil – the Lord left us that choice.”
The 2016 Jewish International Film Festival runs until November 23 in Sydney and Melbourne, and until November 20 in Canberra, Auckland and Brisbane. For tickets, venues, and session times for Karski & the Lords of Humanity see jiff.com.au
This The Jewish Independent article may be republished if acknowledged thus: ‘Reprinted with permission from www.thejewishindependent.com.au ’
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