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Wood and Jankowski, relying on interviews with Karski, ascribe his battle against the Holocaust to the fact that he was “raised [by his mother] to respect and maintain friendly relations with the Jewish community,” which in fact he had done. But this can hardly have distinguished Karski from many other Poles. Karski’s story is not the story of a man with a good mother and some childhood Jewish friends. Rather it is the story of a man with an uncommon dedication to right in a world in which there is not only much evil but also many willing to accommodate it. Among these were Poles indifferent to the fate of Jews, and Americans and Englishmen indifferent to the fate of Poles. Although Wood and Jankowski’s biography is not rich in detail about Karski’s personal life, what it gives us also suggests his abiding sense of right.
I recall how shocked he was — this man who had personal experience with Nazism, Communism, and Western betrayal — at evidence of unprincipled behavior by his students at Georgetown. All grades would be based on exams, he announced: he would no longer assign term papers because he had discovered that these could be bought. Each time I visited him in his office, he gave me the same lecture after discovering that my wife was working while I was in graduate school. He had seen men put through Georgetown medical school by their nurse wives, only to abandon them after becoming doctors. This was an unconscionable thing, he said, seeming to imply that if I ever did such a thing he would retroactively change my grade to an F.
A real man of principle, this Karski, one who would be worth studying even were he not also a witness to momentous events, a great intellect, and a hero. Wood and Jankowski’s account is more workmanlike than graceful, but it covers Karski’s public life in welcome detail: Karski says he learned a lot from reading it. We are indebted to them for bringing him closer.
Joshua Muravchik is a research scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
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Albert Constantine Jr.| 6.1.12 @ 8:41AM
I can think of few things so frustrating as bearing witness to great evil, and having those that you warn fail to believe, comprehend, or act appropriately.
Occam's Tool| 6.1.12 @ 10:27AM
Felix Frankfurter was a useless human being. A Liberal Attorney---there are few things more moronic to do with one's life.
He was a Paulbot's idea of a Perfect Jew.
One Mediator 1 Tim. 2:5. | 6.1.12 @ 11:55AM
Tell that to RCV, heh.
RCV| 6.3.12 @ 6:49PM
Love ya, too, Margie!
Stuart Koehl| 6.1.12 @ 12:05PM
The actual exchange was more along these lines:
Frankfurter: Mr. Karski, I cannot believe you.
Frankfurter's friend (who had escorted Karski): Felix, you can't call him a liar like that!
Frankfurter: Mr. Karski, I did not say you are lying. I said I am unable to believe you.
If you can understand this conversation, then you understand the uniqueness of the Holocaust and its place in human history.
Stuart Koehl| 6.1.12 @ 12:08PM
This is the Karski rendering of the story.
RCV| 6.3.12 @ 8:34PM
The full quote makes clear what Frankfurter is saying: I know you're telling the truth, but no human being can believe such a horror is real.
Occam's Tool| 6.1.12 @ 3:41PM
Yes. Thus showing the lack of imagination and misunderstanding of the possibilities of evil that should have DQ'ed him from the Supreme Court Bench. Or, in other words, when he had a chance at the plate, one of the most powerful Jewish attorneys of the 20th Century struck out in the biggest at bat of his life. (I like scrambled eggs and metaphors)
Meanwhile, a much more useful Jew, Hank Greenberg, was at a battlefront, having volunteered.
I really cannot convey to you my dislike of Frankfurter sufficiently.
RCV| 6.3.12 @ 6:43PM
Ironically, Occam, though he served as a judicial advisor to FDR, in his later years on the bench, he became a judicial conservative and firm advocate of judicial restraint in he face of the Warren court's activism.
RCV| 6.3.12 @ 8:45PM
To follow up, Occam, the conservative legal voice, Phillip Kurland, penned a tribute to Franfurter's legacy of judicial conservatism, called I believe, "Mr. Justice Frankfurter and the Constitution". Frankfurter was a rare breed: a political liberal who understood the proper limited nature of the judiciary in a constitutional republic. He's on most lists of the best Supreme Court justices in history, especially lists by conservatives.
Occam's Tool| 6.1.12 @ 10:28AM
Karski is a Mensch.
Stuart Koehl| 6.1.12 @ 12:07PM
Even from beyond the grave.
RCV| 6.3.12 @ 6:43PM
Amen to that.
Stuart Koehl| 6.1.12 @ 12:07PM
Josh was at GU shortly after me, but his experience of Karski, as teacher and as man, was exactly the same as mine. And everybody called his classes "Karski 1, Karski 2 and Karski 3".
Of all my professors at GU, only three had lasting influence on me: Karski, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and Edward Luttwak. Only Luttwak remains, but he is still a great mentor.
nathan| 6.1.12 @ 12:09PM
Regarding Karski's meetings with both Eden and FDR he probably wasn't telling them their intelligence services hadn't already told them. There were recon photos taken of Auschwitz which clearly showed Birkenau noting the gas chambers and other parts of the complex. Jewish groups asked that Birkenau be bombed and destroyed and they were told that Eighth Airforce planes could not make the round trip without stopping in Russia. That was true but Ninth Airforce planes in Italy could make the trip and were not offered.
We read constantly about "selling Poland out" to the communists, to Russia. Was that really true? Did the Americans and British have any real options here? Max Hastings history of WWII should be required reading. Russia suffered the overwhelming percentage of the deaths in Europe, something like 80 percent of loss of life in that theatre of war. But also, they did almost all the heavy lifting. We glorify D-Day and the march through France but in reality Russia was responsible again for what about 80 percent of the Germans killed. Given those numbers, were they really going to just listen to anything the Americans and British had to say regarding Poland, Hungary or the rest of eastern Europe. By their calculations they had earned the right to do bloody well what they pleased in the countries they had over run and to a fair extent they had a point. Did America "sell Poland out" or simply recognized the reality as it was?
Cpm| 6.1.12 @ 2:36PM
Exactly. What were we supposed to do to make those 550 Red Army divisions go away?
Occam's Tool| 6.1.12 @ 3:43PM
Hi, Nathan! In August of 1945 we had what Mr. Tomato, one of Rocky Marciano's backers, would have called an equalizer.
Do I, uh, need to explain da concept of an equalizer to ya?
Cobalt| 6.1.12 @ 6:48PM
The United States should have done more to accept Jewish immigrants in the late 1930s, before the Holocaust.
You can blame FDR, or say he did what he could, under the circumstances. Same thing goes for the State Department. We just should have done more.
SS St. Louis
Mistral| 6.2.12 @ 2:44AM
This concern is fine providing we do not forget that the SWW was about wider issues than the genocide of one ethnic/culture group. The Chinese and Russians lost more poeple than any other nations through this insane war. Note too that in Poland half the losses in Nazi death camps were Catholics including thousands of priests.
Lest we forget!
Cobalt| 6.2.12 @ 11:21AM
The Soviets had a lot of Polish blood on their hands, as well..
Katyn Massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre
Cobalt| 6.2.12 @ 11:26AM
Daniel Craig's 2008 film "Defiance" might be worth renting, for some people anyway.
RCV| 6.3.12 @ 6:45PM
There's good reason the Poles detest the Russians, and the legacy of the Katyn massacre will live for generations.
GoldMorgCom | 6.12.12 @ 6:33PM
My father whitnessed that the camps and incinerators were a public secret and with specific weather conditions the smell of burned human flesh traveled all the way to the Netherlands.
Also the resistance in the Netherlands was deliberately withheld any substantial support.