Talk:Jan Karski
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Was there a reason for placing an article on Jan Karski under the name Jan Karsky? Halibutt 22:13, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I was under the impression that's how he spelled it during the 50 years he lived in the US. But I see that Google doesn't support me on that. Adam 23:45, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)
- He might've been spelled that way since Americans are pretty good at americanizing foreign names. However, I doubt he ever used the name himself and in the polish versions of his books the photos clearly show that the original, polish name was used in his British documents.Halibutt 10:10, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I recommend keeping the "Karsky" referral page, in case the subject arises again. Numerous books have misspelled the name that way over the years, and so there may be people who use it as a search term. E.ThomasWood
E.ThomasWood - You refer to 'numerous books' misspelling karski's name. Would it be possible to provide a small list to what those books may be, as i am doing a research piece on him. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Nakul L.
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[edit] "Sorting-Camp"
If Jan Karski thought, he was in the massdestruction-camp Belzec but actually was in a sorting/transit camp how can he whitness singular industrial human massdestruction there? <confused> The United Nations really should send Scott Ritter to eastern Poland to "sort things out".
- I recommend you read his account directly as I did last December. I've since passed the book on to a friend and cannot quote directly; however, I recall the scene rather vividly. He was brought in dressed as a guard, and witnessed the extreme misery the inhabitants. He did not, to my recollection, witness exterminations directly, but was horrified by the conditions he encountered there. If you read the description, and his other narratives, you'll get a sense for the very confusing circumstances of his visit. I recently met an archivist at the Hoovers Institute (where Karski's papers are housed) who knew him personally, who could perhaps provide greater clarity if need be.Mikewelch7 21:05, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
- The anonymous poster of the first comment above will find in my biography of Karski a detailed discussion of what camp he visited and what he saw there. The book is based on dozens of interviews with Karski, years of archival research spanning seven countries, and my visits to many relevant locations including the sites of camps at Belzec, Belzyce and Izbica Lubelska. I concluded, on the basis of all available evidence, that he visited Izbica. --Tom Wood 19:55, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Misspellings and misinformation
Nakul L. asked for examples of books that misspelled Karski's name. I remember encountering quite a number as I wrote his bio, but for the moment I can only find on my hard drive the ones mentioned below.
What follows is a passage from my book proposal sent to publishers in 1992 as I was trying to get a contract the book. (For what it's worth, 22 of them turned me down, and I sometimes think the book would have been better off if John Wiley & Sons had been the 23rd, given how ineptly they marketed it.) I'm pasting this part in because it's possible that some of the mistakes mentioned here would be worth noting in the wiki article itself, but I'm agnostic on whether to include any of them:
Some of the mistakes that have appeared in writings about Karski are fairly minor: A biography of Rabbi Stephen Wise refers to Karski as "Korski"; a recent book on the Holocaust jumbles his biographical data. Others are more egregious:
• In Courier from Warsaw (Wayne State University Press, 1982), former underground member Jan Nowak mentions a meeting between Karski and Churchill that never took place.
• In Soldiers (Grove Press, 1968), German playwright Rolf Hochhuth portrays Karski as not only holding tempestuous discussions with Churchill, but also having an affair with the British leader's secretary.
• In Defeat in Victory (Doubleday, 1948), former Polish Ambassador Jan Ciechanowski writes that "Karski... gave the President [Roosevelt] a nerve-shattering description of his own visit-- disguised as a policeman-- to the two murder camps, Treblinka and Belzec, where Jews were gassed in railway trucks." Karski never visited Treblinka and did not mention his own camp experience to FDR, probably on the orders of Ambassador Ciechanowski. He did tell the President about other extermination camps and about specific atrocities against Jews.
• In The Silence of Pius XII (Little, Brown, 1970), Carlo Falconi states that Karski "was in Rome, and was received in audience by Pius XII-- and he left with the Pope the same memorandum [about the murder of Jews] that he had already delivered in London and Washington."
• In Koestler: A Biography (Macmillan, 1982), Iain Hamilton not only alleges that Karski had served as an executioner at a death camp, but also concludes his discussion of Arthur Koestler's collaboration with Karski with these words: "Karsky [sic], driven to despair by his inability to arouse world opinion, had by this time committed suicide.". --Tom Wood 19:55, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Date of birth
A footnote currently mentions the issue of when in 1914 Karski was born. It is true that his legal docs in the U.S. give June 24 and that his wartime docs gave April 24. But it's worth noting that Karski himself had no idea which date was correct. His mother told him when he was a child that his father and the priest had gotten drunk at the baptism ceremony and put down the wrong date on the baptism certificate. I could find no trace of any public records in Poland that would settle the question. Karski himself professed not to care in the least, and in my experience he always refused to let people make a fuss over his birthday. --Tom Wood 19:55, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Could Tom clarify the accusation made in the article that Karski knew he had not in fact been to Belzec when he wrote that he had been there? These seems to be a serious accusation to make without referencing. Adam 00:43, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
- Just briefly, because I'm strapped for time but don't know that I'll have a chance to revisit this subject anytime soon... Karski lays out the details about what the emissary claimed and when he claimed it. Without time to refer back to the book, I can say that my research found references from soon after Karski reached England in 1942 indicating that he had talked of being "near Belzec" or some specific distance from Belzec. I noted, as I recall, that there is no evidence he told any of the people he met secretly in 1942-43, in the UK and US, that he had been inside a death camp at Belzec.
- And the book describes in detail the process of creating his memoir, published as Story of a Secret State in November 1944. A writer named William Poster, who was apparently very good at ghosting such projects, took Karski's dictation and created the book for Houghton-Mifflin. While working on the project, Karski told political superiors in London and Washington about his arguments with Poster over the latter's tendency to sensationaliize and over how best to obfuscate many details for security reasons.
- The documentation I collected on this subject and for the rest of the book has been deposited at, and is available to the public at, the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. --Tom Wood 05:04, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
That suggests that you are agreeing (a) that Karski knew he had not been to Belzec (b) that his ghost-written book said that he had been to Belzec (c) that Karski didn't stop this or correct it when it came out. Is that so? I'm not saying this was not necesarily a defensible thing to do in wartime, but if he did do that, the article should explain what he did and why. Adam 08:17, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Georgetown University Doctorate
The article states that he received a Ph.D from Georgetown University in 1952. Does anyone know what subject it was for? --Hydraton31 11:22, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Nobel Peace Prize nomination
- In 1998 he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Being nominated for the Peace Prize is an honor, but it is not official or even prestigious. Any national legislator or about a third of the university professors in the world can make a nomination, and there have been as many as 140 some years. Nominators are requested to keep their nominations secret, so it's only those wishing publicity who make announcements, and more often it is impossible to verify. I see no reason to keep it. No offense to the subject, this is a general Nobel Peace Prize "nominees" issue. -Will Beback · † · 08:18, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
