1. Jan Karski did not speak publicly about his wartime missions until 1981 when he was invited as a speaker to a conference on the liberation of the camps.
17 Facts About Jan Karski
1. 2.
Jan Karski completed his diplomatic apprenticeship between 1935 and 1938 at various posts in Romania, Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, and joined the diplomatic service.
3.
In November 1939 Jan Karski was among POWs on a train bound for a POW camp in the General Government zone, a part of Poland that had not been fully incorporated into The Third Reich.
4.
In January 1940 Karski began to organize courier missions to transport dispatches from the Polish underground to the Polish government-in-exile, then based in Paris.
5.
In 1944, Jan Karski published Courier from Poland: The Story of a Secret State.
6.
In 1954, Jan Karski became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
7.
Jan Karski did not speak publicly about his wartime mission until 1981 when he was invited by activist Elie Wiesel to serve as keynote speaker at the International Liberators Conference in Washington, DC.
8.
In 2010, French author Yannick Haenel published a novel Jan Karski, drawn from the courier's World War II activities and memoir.
9.
Jan Karski had been arrested by the Germans in Warsaw in 1940 and was among Catholic Poles who survived being imprisoned as political prisoners at Auschwitz concentration camp.
10.
Jan Karski struggled as a refugee, holding low-level jobs after settling in Washington, DC, in 1960 near his brother Jan Marian Kozielewski committed suicide there in 1964 and is buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery.
11.
In 1965, Jan Karski married Pola Nirenska, a 54-year-old Polish Jew who was a dancer and choreographer.
12.
Jan Karski died of unspecified heart and kidney disease in Washington, DC, in 2000.
13.
In 1991, Jan Karski was awarded the Wallenberg Medal of the University of Michigan.
14.
Statues honoring Karski have been placed in New York City at the corner of 37th Street and Madison Avenue and on the grounds of Georgetown University in Washington, DC.
15.
In 1994, Jan Karski was made an honorary citizen of Israel in honor of his efforts on behalf of Polish Jews during the Holocaust.
16.
On 23 April 2012, US President Barack Obama announced that Jan Karski would receive the country's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
17.
On 24 June 2014, the "Jan Karski Mission Accomplished" Conference took place in Lublin under the patronage of Professor Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Aleksander Kwasniewski, President of Poland, Moshe Kantor, President of the European Jewish Congress, and Michael Schudrich, Chief Rabbi of Poland.