Jan Karksi

Inside the Warsaw Ghetto

(Interview with Jan Karski, photos added to enhance the text)

In the middle of 1942, I was thinking to take up again my position as a courier between the Polish underground and the Polish government in exile in London. The Jewish leaders in Warsaw learned about it. A meeting was arranged outside the ghetto. There were two gentlemen. They did not live in the ghetto. They introduced themselves – leader of Bund, Zionist leader.

Now, what transpired, what happened in our conversation?

First I was not prepared for it. I was relatively isolated in my work in Poland. I did not see many things. In thirty-five years after the war I do not go back. I have been a teacher for twenty-six years, I never mention the Jewish problem to my students. I understand this film is for historical record, so I will try to do it.

They described to me what is happening to the Jews. Did I know about it?  No I didn’t.

They described to me first that the Jewish problem is unprecedented, cannot be compared with the Polish problem, or Russian, or any other problem. Hitler will lose this war, but he will exterminate all the Jewish population.

Do I understand it?

The Allies fight for their people – they fight for humanity. The Allies cannot forget that the Jews will be exterminated totally in Poland – Polish and European Jews.

They were breaking down. They paced the room. They were whispering. They were hissing. It was a nightmare for me.

Did they look completely despairing? Yes, Yes.

At various stages of the conversation they lost control of themselves. I just sat in my chair. I just listened. I did not even react. I didn’t ask them questions. I was just listening.

They wanted to convince you?

They realised, I think…. they realised from the beginning that I don’t know, that I don’t understand this problem. Once I said I will take messages from them, they wanted to inform me what is happening to the Jews. I didn’t know this. I was never in a ghetto. I never dealt with the Jewish matters.

Did you know yourself at the time that most of the Jews of Warsaw had already been killed?

I did know. But I didn’t see anything. I never heard any description of what was happening and I was never there. It is one thing to know statistics. There were hundreds of thousands of Poles also killed – of Russians, Serbs, Greeks.

We knew about it. But it was a question about statistics.

Did they insist on the complete uniqueness…..? Yes.

This was their problem: to impress upon me – and that was my mission – to impress upon all people whom I am going to see that the Jewish situation is unprecedented in history.

Egyptian pharaohs did not do it. The Babylonians did not do it. Now for the first time in history actually, they came to the conclusion: unless the Allies take some unprecedented steps, regardless of the outcome of the war, the Jews will be totally exterminated.

Read the full article here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/survivor/karskiwarsaw.html

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org


Hitler; Himmler Shoah; Third Reich; Final Solution; Nazi; National Socialism; Jews; Judaism; The Holocaust; Auschwitz; Deathcamps; Sobibor; Belze; Treblinka; Krakow; Lublin; Action Reinhard; Wirth; Globocnik; Goering; Goebbels; Anne Frank; Propaganda; Genocide; Murder; Racism; Aryan; anti-Semitism; Israel; Torah; Talmud; Sephardic; Mengele; Euthanasia; Wannsee; World War II; Axis History; Gas Vans; Chelmno; gas chamber; Zyklon B; Buchenwald; concentration camp; Dachau; Bergen Belsen; Stuthoff; Gross Rosen; Mauthausen; Natzweiler; Survivors;