The Secret State Series #4
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Albright, a biographical essay by Yale historian Timothy Snyder, an afterword by Zbigniew Brzezinski, previously unpublished photos, notes, further reading, and a glossary—is an apt legacy for this hero of conscience during the most fraught and fragile moment in modern history.
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.
Jan Karski was born in ód , Poland, in 1914.
He received a degree in Law and Diplomatic Science in 1935 and served as a liaison officer of the Polish Underground during World War II. He carried the first eyewitness report of the Holocaust to a mostly unbelieving West, meeting with President Roosevelt in 1943 to plead for Allied intervention. Story of a Secret State was originally published in 1944, becoming a bestseller and Book of the Month Club selection. After the war, Karski earned his PhD at Georgetown University, where he served as a distinguished professor in the School of Foreign Service for forty years. He died in Washington, DC, in 2000. Karski has been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem. In 2012, he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by our President.
"His wartime saga as officer, as Soviet prisoner, as escapee, in the hands of the Gestapo, and as a Polish Underground activist and courier, is beyond remarkable. In a world today where words such as 'courage' and 'heroism' have been so overused—applied freely from sports to entertainment to politics as to be rendered practically meaningless—Jan Karski was the rare human being who embodied both."
He received a degree in Law and Diplomatic Science in 1935 and served as a liaison officer of the Polish Underground during World War II. He carried the first eyewitness report of the Holocaust to a mostly unbelieving West, meeting with President Roosevelt in 1943 to plead for Allied intervention. Story of a Secret State was originally published in 1944, becoming a bestseller and Book of the Month Club selection. After the war, Karski earned his PhD at Georgetown University, where he served as a distinguished professor in the School of Foreign Service for forty years. He died in Washington, DC, in 2000. Karski has been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem. In 2012, he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by our President.
"His wartime saga as officer, as Soviet prisoner, as escapee, in the hands of the Gestapo, and as a Polish Underground activist and courier, is beyond remarkable. In a world today where words such as 'courage' and 'heroism' have been so overused—applied freely from sports to entertainment to politics as to be rendered practically meaningless—Jan Karski was the rare human being who embodied both."
"In the words of James Russell Lowell's rousing hymn:
'Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide, in the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side.' Perhaps more than most of us, Jan Karski faced such a choice in the starkest of possible terms, and made his decision as courageously as one could. . . . Jan Karski was a patriot and a truth teller; may his words always be read and his legacy never forgotten.
"Secret State is an indispensable and compelling historical document of World War II and the Holocaust, written by a supremely courageous humanitarian."
"Secret State is an indispensable and compelling historical document of World War II and the Holocaust, written by a supremely courageous humanitarian."
The Secret State Series #4:
The Secret State #4 “A New Regime”
by Jan Karski: Highlights and excerpts by PL Sturgis:
by Jan Karski: Highlights and excerpts by PL Sturgis:
The Secret state Series 1: “The Underground” by Jan Karski:
Introduction: During my four and a half months absence while captured by the Russians and the the Germans, Conditions in Poland had changed considerably. The first few conversations made me conscious of the fact that the consolidation of the underground had practically been achieved. The movement had crystallized into the major organization: The coalition of the four largest political parties;
1) The Peasants
2) The Socialist
3) The Christian Labor
4) The Nationalist.
This was the official military organization which had been recognized by the government as a military unit enjoying equal rights with the Polish Army in France. The most important need for that third party was to unite and agree on a chief delegate. The government was not interested in the personality of the candidate, nor his political affiliation, nor was he to become involved in party representation. The government would confirm the appointment of any individual who possessed authority and had the confidence of the population.
(hmmmm? 1940 sounds familiar in 2017)
The Polish underground State to which Karski belonged was under the authority of the Polish government in London. He admitted that besides this organization there were other organizations carrying on their activities under the direct influence of Moscow. Being the first active member of the Polish Underground and in the fortunate position to publish some aspect of its story, he hoped that it would encourage others to relate their experiences and that out of such narratives the free people all over the world would be able to form an objective opinion as to how the Polish people reacted during the years of German conquest.
Daily Bites of The Secret State Series #4:
“A New Regime”
Bites #1-5,Hour of Decision:
#2) The Socialists and Nationalists:
#3) The Polish Peasant Party:
#4) The Christian Labor Party:
#5) Creating a Special Underground Center:
by Jan Karski :
In the west England and France are fighting Germany. The new Polish Army is fighting shoulder to shoulder with our Allies but we must understand the destiny of Poland will not be decided by the Maginot or Siegfried lines. The hour of decision will arrive for Poland when the Polish people themselves grapple with the invaders. With stubborn patience we must wait for that hour to come. Our political wisdom must be sharpened for that hour. Our fighters must be armed and ready. In the new Poland the power must rest in the people. The New Poland must be in spirit and substance, the motherland of freedom, justice, and democracy. Laws passed by the power of the people must be passed to establish a new regime. The new Poland must repair mistakes of the past. Freedom of speech, liberty, and conscience must be ordained. Schools must be opened only for the children of the people. The ordeals of the Jewish people of which we are daily witnessing must teach us how to live in harmony with those who suffer the persecution of the common enemy. Having established in a free Poland a government of the people it will be our duty to build up a new Poland of justice, freedom, and prosperity. In this period of dire oppression without precedent in the history of Poland and the world at large, we come to arouse your spirit of combat and perseverance. On this First Day of May, 1940, let the old revolutionary slogan resound through Poland--- “Make Poland a Power of the People with Justice and Righteousness!”
#2) The Socialists and the Nationalists:
I had distributed one hundred copies of the Polish Doctrine, keeping one copy for myself. Of the Four Movements, (Socialists. Nationalists, Peasants, and Christian Labor) which had made the deepest impression on the consciousness of Poland, the Socialists had perhaps the richest and most unbroken traditions in the fight for independence. In 1905 they had open fired on the Tsarists dignitaries and had been mercilessly slaughtered by the Tsarists police. The Polish underground press inherited the tradition of the “Worker” (the Socialist newspaper which before the First world war eluded the Tsarists police and aroused the Polish Nation to resist its oppressors. The Socialist Movement was based on Marxist ideology at the time of its inception in the nineteenth century and has not deviated from its point of view. It believes that the means of production should be under government control. It advocates a completely planned and organized national economy, the division of land among the peasants, and politically a parliamentary democracy. The National Movement likewise had deep roots in the life of the people. Its basic idea of “All for the Nation” performed an invaluable function in the struggle for Poland, for biological self preservation to outlast all its innumerable tragedies and defeats. This politically strong party gathered recruits from all classes and sections of the nation. It was based on Catholicism, believed in the principle of individualism, and in many of the tenets of liberal economy. It stressed individual rights and the necessity for their maintenance.#3) The Polish Peasant Party:
During the years Poland was under foreign domination the National Party opened schools, supported them and maintained the idea of a Polish State to reunite the peasants with the land of their forefathers and to rebuild the economic structure of Poland. Historically the Polish Peasant Party was the youngest of the four parties. (Socialist, National, Peasant, and Christian Labor) One of the Polish Peasant Party’s main achievements was the organization into political expression of the villages which included more than 60% of the population. Through centuries the Polish Peasants had remained politically passive, unenlightened, living a primitive life, and wholly without influence on national affairs. The Peasant Movement endeavored to bring them to a full consciousness of their rights and the role they were called upon to play. Through the activity of this movement hundreds of schools were created. Like the Socialists and Nationalists, the Peasant Party is firm in its beliefs of parliamentary democracy. Through it the peasants have come to realize that only by democratic and parliamentary institutions can they find their rightful positions in a unified national life. This movement also demands the division of the land for the peasants. Another of its fundamental aims is to mitigate the over congestion of the villages by industrialization and by bringing a portion of the peasantry into city life. One of their leaders was murdered by the Germans in 1940.
#4) The Christian Labor Party:
The Fourth movement, the Christian Labor Party, is likewise democratic in consequences of its ideological line. It is based chiefly on the Catholic Church. The realization of the doctrines set forth in papal encyclicals, national assigns, and the catholic faith in general, is the chief aim and major determinant of the content of its programs. these parties had no place in the government that ruled Poland in the years proceeding this present war. (1944) Interior political conditions did not permit them to take any action or to enter the elections. Those in power at the time held it to be a necessity that the structure of Poland politics be in conformity with the strong regimes of their powerful Eastern and western neighbors. They held that there was no place in Poland for parliamentary and democratic movements and kept them out of the government. These, in turn, reacted by refusing to participate in the electoral system. Paradoxically, while the underground was a continuation of the Polish Nation at the same time it broke away from this power tradition and returned to the still older traditions of Polish Parliamentary democracy. The political parties in the underground had more power and freedom and were able to increase their activity beyond anything that was possible in prewar Poland. These four political parties (Socialists, Nationalists, Peasantry, and Christian Labor) represented the vast majority of the Polish Nation in the underground state. Of course, there were other organizations from the extreme right to the extreme left, including communism. The majority of these organizations had been non existent before they took root and flourished in the rich political freedom of the underground. A great number of them were purely local in chapter. Nearly all of them made their presence felt by printing in one or more secret newspapers.
#5) Creating a Special Underground Center:
When I arrived in Warsaw I was impressed by the same facts I had noticed in Cracow. The consolidation of the underground was proceeding rapidly and the inhabitants of the capital, including those in the highest positions, believed in the invulnerability of France and England. In my conversations I found nearly everyone firmly believed that the French Army had purposely allowed the penetration of its soil by the Wehrmacht to give themselves the chance of encircling and destroying it. When I informed them that while I was in France no one had ever suggested that the French Army had any other intention but that of holding its position in the Maginot line, I was called an alarmist. I remained in Warsaw for about two weeks and then returned to Cracow for additional conference before departing once more for France. My chief work was concerned with the creation of a special center in the underground. The office of the plenipotentiary of the government. The creation of this office was contingent upon the acception of two basic principles: 1) No matter what course the war might take the Polish people would never agree in any way to collaborate. Quislings (betraying Poland) would be eliminated at all costs. 2) The Polish State would perpetuated (protected forever) by the underground administration which was to be combined with the government in exile. The so called “stiff attitude” toward the German occupants simplified the problem of containing the consent of the people to the authority of the underground state. The German occupation was never recognized by the Polish people and there could be no doubt about it because in Poland alone, of all the occupied countries, there never appeared anything remotely of a legal body composed of Polish people collaborating with Germans. Indeed, in all of Poland not a single political office in the German controlled administration was ever held by a Polish citizen. Not a single head of any Province was Polish.
(to be continued) ....
(To be continued )
Daily Bites of The Secret State Series #4
“A New Regime”
#7) My Most Honorable Appointment:
#8) Returning to France:
#9) An Uneasy Feeling:
#10) Debating the Cause:
by Jan Karski 1944 :
“From The Secret State”
The Secret State: Series 4:
#11) Through the woods, the Rain, and the Mud:
#12) Risking our Lives for One Night’s Rest:
#13) Caught by the Gestapo:
#14) Cast into a Dingy Cell:
#15) Tortured and Interrogated:
#16) Do or Die:
#17) Underground: Under Fire:
#18) Faithful in the spotlight:
#19) My Second Interrogation:
#20) Inspector Pick:
#21) Severe Brutality:
#22) Sticking to my Story:
#23) Beaten to unconsciousness:
#24) Their Psychological Approach:
#25) Skillful Deception:
#26) In the Office of the Nazi Leader:
#27) The New Order:
#28) The clear Purpose of my interview.
#29) Getting Down to Business:
#30) Two Reasons I could not Accept:.
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