Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Jan Karski's Story of a Secret State stands as one of the most poignant and inspiring memoirs of World War II and the Holocaust. With elements of a spy thriller, documenting his experiences in the Polish Underground, and as one of the first accounts of the systematic slaughter of the Jews by the German Nazis, this volume is a remarkable testimony of one man's courage and a nation's struggle for resistance against overwhelming oppression.
Karski was a brilliant young diplomat when war broke out in 1939 with Hitler's invasion of Poland. Taken prisoner by the Soviet Red Army, which had simultaneously invaded from the East, Karski narrowly escaped the subsequent Katyn Forest Massacre. He became a member of the Polish Underground, the most significant resistance movement in occupied Europe, acting as a liaison and courier between the Underground and the Polish government-in-exile. He was twice smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto, and entered the Nazi's Izbica transit camp disguised as a guard, witnessing first-hand the horrors of the Holocaust.
Karski's courage and testimony, conveyed in a breathtaking manner in Story of a Secret State, offer the narrative of one of the world's greatest eyewitnesses and an inspiration for all of humanity, emboldening each of us to rise to the challenge of standing up against evil and for human rights. This definitive edition--which includes a foreword by Madeleine Albright, a biographical essay by Yale historian Timothy Snyder, an afterword by Zbigniew Brzezinski, previously unpublished photos, notes, further reading, and a glossary--is an apt legacy for this hero of conscience during the most fraught and fragile moment in modern history.
Synopsis
In 1939, Jan Karski, a brilliant young Polish student, enjoyed a life of parties and pleasure. But when war broke out his familiar world was destroyed. Karski became a liaison officer of the Polish underground and POW of the Red Army who eventually infiltrated both the Warsaw Ghetto and a German resettlement camp, carrying the first eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust to a mostly disbelieving West. He met with President Roosevelt in 1943 and pleaded for Allied intervention; Roosevelt then established the War Refugee Board, a federal agency that helped settle surviving Jews. Soon after this Karski wrote of his experiences in Story of a Secret State, which was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1944 and became a Book on the Month Club selection. Near the end of the war Karski, a devout Catholic, remained Washington and earned a PhD at Georgetown in the School of Foreign Service and later taught at Georgetown for forty years; he died in 2000. In 2012 Karski received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. According to Alan Furst, Story of a Secret State "stands in the absolute first rank of books about the resistance in World War II."