<\/p>\n
![\"Screen](\"http:\/\/ellisoncenter.washington.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Screen-Shot-2015-03-06-at-10.45.25-AM-300x287.png\")
<\/p>\nKarski meets with General Colin Powell at the opening of the US Holocaust Museum<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Take, for example, Jan Karski, the subject of the latest exhibit on the ground floor of the Allen Library. Karski was the Polish resistance fighter and intelligence courier who brought the first eye-witness reports out of the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto and the transit depot outside of the Be\u0142\u017cec death camp. Karski\u2019s biography reads like a spy-novel and his heroic legacy speaks powerfully to the virtues of courage, tolerance, and compassion.\u00a0Karski is remembered and valorized among the Polish and Jewish communities disseminated around the world, as a true hero of WWII and the 20th Century as a whole. However, many remain woefully ignorant of his efforts.<\/p>\n
As early as 1943, Karski was travelling to speak with Allied leaders and thinkers, meeting with and giving a warning to FDR himself about the atrocities against the Jews he had witnessed. He wrote a report in 1944, Courrier From Poland: The Story of a Secret State<\/i>, in which he continued to lay out the evidence he had gathered and to warn the world of the Nazi undertaking. Karski\u2019s warnings went largely unheeded when first delivered and in many ways demonstrate the difficulties of preventing atrocity. It is as though the very crimes\u00a0that seem the most unbelievable are the ones that are most easily accomplished.<\/p>\n
Karski\u2019s commit![\"Screen](\"http:\/\/ellisoncenter.washington.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Screen-Shot-2015-03-06-at-10.46.08-AM-224x300.png\")
ment continued after the war, as a lifelong ally of the Jews. Having fled from the Red Army\u2019s \u201cliberation\u201d of Poland, Karski settled in the United States and worked as a professor at Georgetown University until his death in 2000. He received the title of “Righteous Among the Nations” from Yad Vashem in Israel.<\/p>\n
These stories of bravery, compassion, evil and indifference contain the crucial lessons of history. In all their horrific and riveting detail they problematize our perception of the simplicity of right and wrong action. They expose what Hannah Arendt termed, \u201cthe banality of evil\u201d and the complex webs of complicity that bind each and every one of us to all other human beings. They are necessary \u201cmyths for the modern person.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
With this in mind, take the opportunity to stop and look through the exhibit, which has been running on the ground floor of the Allen Library North at the University of Washington since February 15th. The exhibit, which has been touring the country for the last year, was organized at the UW by the \u00a0Polish Studies Endowment Committee and co-sponsored by the Consulate of Poland, the UW Libraries, and the UW Stroum Center for Jewish Studies. It ends on March 15th and should not be missed.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Michael is a first-year graduate student at the Ellison Center for Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Jan Karski, the subject of the latest exhibit on the ground floor of the Allen Library. Karski was the Polish resistance fighter and intelligence courier who brought the first eye-witness reports out of the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto and the transit depot outside of the Be\u0142\u017cec death camp. Karski\u2019s biography reads like a spy-novel and his heroic legacy speaks powerfully to the virtues of courage, tolerance, and compassion. Karski is remembered and valorized among the Polish and Jewish communities disseminated around the world, as a true hero of WWII and the 20th Century as a whole. However, many remain woefully ignorant of his efforts.<\/p>\nThe Ellison Center staff is pleased to present the work of contributors on the Ellison Center blog. Their work is their own and does not necessarily represent the views or positions of the Ellison Center.<\/em><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"