Remember This: The Story of Jan Karski

Missy and I traveled to New York City last week to meet friends and enjoy some of Broadway’s finest shows.

We were fortunate to see Hugh Jackman in “The Music Man,” Angela Ross in “Chicago” and Lea Michelle in “Funny Girl.”

Surprisingly, the one show that left me moved beyond explanation was David Strathairn’s mesmerizing performance of Jan Karski in “Remember This: The Lessons of Jan Karski.”

Strathairn is best known for his movie roles in “Where the Crawdads Sing,” “Good Night, and Good Luck” and “The Bourne Ultimatum.” However, the one-man performance as Jan Karski is his absolute best performance to date.

Jan Karski was a Polish soldier and diplomat during World War II. As the war quickly escalated across Europe, Karski was captured on Sept. 10, 1939, by the Soviet Union, which was in a non-aggression pact with Germany at the time.

Karski was held in Ukraine and successfully disguised his rank as a second lieutenant by acquiring a private’s uniform. He was transferred to the Germans as a POW and forced to serve in the Third Reich, avoiding the massacre of officers by the Soviets.

While being transported by train to a POW camp, he escaped and arrived in Warsaw. Once in Warsaw, he joined the Polish Underground. During a secret trip to Slovakia in 1940, he was captured and tortured by the German Gestapo, before being rescued from a hospital and smuggled back to safety.

After recovering, he continued his missions behind enemy lines, reporting back to the exiled Polish government. According to the Jan Karski Educational Foundation, “Karski twice infiltrated Warsaw’s Jewish Ghetto to witness its horrors, including – what Karski later described – ‘degradation, starvation and death.’”

On one mission, he witnessed the unthinkable: “An especially gruesome spectacle was watching young Nazi soldiers hunt down Jewish children for sport.”

Later, Karski posed as a Ukrainian guard, witnessing Jews being herded onto train cars to be sent to their deaths. Upon observing these inhumane atrocities, he began reporting what he saw to the exiled government.

Afterward, he reported to British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden. On July 5, 1943, Karski met with United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt to brief the president about the ongoing Holocaust. He also met with Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter.

The British and U.S. governments cannot deny knowing the extent of the Holocaust before the liberation of the camps in 1945.  Through Karski’s reports, they knew millions of Jews were being tortured and executed but consciously decided to remain quiet and carry on with their overall plans.

While U.S. officials may have thought winning the war was the best strategy to liberate the Jews from Hitler’s Final Solution, they never allowed more Jewish immigrants beyond the 1924 immigration quotas. The 1924 U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act allowed only 153,774 immigrants per year, of which almost 50% were designated for immigrants from Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

The most famous turning away of Jewish immigrants occurred in June 1939 off the coast of Miami, Florida, when the MS St. Louis arrived, carrying more than 900 Jewish passengers trying to disembark and immigrate to the U.S.

When Americans and Christians reflect upon our histories, we must do so with honesty and humility. Far too often, we create and perpetuate mythologies that convince us we are on the side of righteousness and goodwill. While much of our history is something to cherish and celebrate, there are moments we need to learn from so that we do not repeat the same mistakes.

Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel once wrote, “‘Never again’ becomes more than a slogan: It’s a prayer, a promise, a vow. There will never again be hatred, people say. Never again, jail and torture. Never again the suffering of innocent people, or the shooting of starving, frightened, terrified children. And never again the glorification of base, ugly, dark violence. It’s a prayer.”

While the slogan “Never Again” challenges humanity, we continue to forget and fail. Since the Holocaust of the Jews during World War II, numerous other genocides, such as in Rwanda, Darfur, Iraq and Syria, have occurred.

We must learn from people like Karski and Wiesel. We must strive to do better and to be better. We might only think we are one person fighting the good fight, but together we can make a difference.

Let me leave you with the words of Jan Karski himself: “I was an insignificant little man. My mission was important.”

We all might think ourselves insignificant, but our mission is too important to fail.