Karski's Mission

Book excerpt: Karski's Mission: To Stop the Holocaust is a comic book based on the true story of Jan Karski (1914-2000), a Polish Catholic and member of the Polish Underground during World War II, who risked his life to carry his eyewitness account to Allied leaders of the ongoing slaughter of the Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland. Karski was born in a multicultural city of Lodz, Poland, and was educated to be a diplomat, but WWII brought his ambitions to a halt. He became a courier of the Polish Underground and during one of his perilous missions, he was captured by Gestapo and tortured. Afraid that he might give away the secrets, he tried to take his life, but was revived and then rescued by the Polish Underground. He continued his work and, in 1941, Karski went on what would become his most famous mission to witness the atrocities against the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. In disguise, he twice infiltrated Warsaw's Jewish Ghetto and visited a transit camp to witness the horrors. Drawing on his photographic memory, he delivered his eyewitness account to western leaders, including British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden and President Franklin Roosevelt. After the war, Karski could not return to communist Poland. He earned his Ph.D. and became professor at Georgetown University, where he served as a distinguished professor in the School of Foreign Service for forty years. A citizen of three nations - a Pole by birth, a naturalized American and an honorary citizen of Israel - Jan Karski never wavered from his commitment to speak out on behalf of oppressed people everywhere to prevent the horrors he had witnessed from repeating themselves. The comic book was written with historic precision by Dr. Rafael Medoff, founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies and the author of 15 books about the Holocaust and Jewish history, and illustrated with bold expression by Dean Motter, artist, writer and designer, best known for the comic book sensation, Mister X. Published by Jan Karski Educational Foundation.