Story of a Secret State: My Report to the World

This is a fascinating insight into the workings of the Polish underground during the second world war. The reader discovers that the underground was more than a resistance organization. It was a secret state with all of the organs of government. Karski claims,"In Poland alone of all the occupied countries, there never appeared anything remotely resembling a legal or pseudo-legal body composed of Poles collaborating with the Germans."Instead there was a clandestine body operating in secrecy.The book is also a story of adventure and bravery. One brave jump from a train altered the course of the war for Karski. The description of his arrest and torture will keep the pages turning.The writing style is very fine. Here's an example,"But what shocked me most at Radom were not merely the living conditions and brutality of our captors, but the apparently unmotivated character of both. These seemed to be occasioned not by any desire to inculcate discipline or obedience or to forestall attempts at escape. Nor were they designed merely to humiliate, degrade, and weaken us, though this was, in some degree, what was accomplished. It seemed rather all to be part of some unheard of, brutal code to which the guards and officials adhered with casual conformity for its own sake."It's difficult to believe that Karski wrote this in English himself. Perhaps he's another Conrad.And of course, Karski was a witness to history. His visit to the Warsaw ghetto is haunting,"No, for these bodies were still moving, were indeed often violently agitated. These were still living people, if you could call them such. For apart from their skin, eyes, and voice, there was nothing human left in these palpitating figures. Everywhere there was hunger, misery, the atrocious stench of decomposing bodies, the pitiful moans of dying children, the desperate cries and gasps of a people struggling for life against impossible odds."Finally, the footnotes to the book are packed with historical detail. They provide extensive information on the characters mentioned in the book and the historical background.Highly recommended.

When I first knew Jan Karski, some 35 years ago, I was a rather callow student in one of his classes, with little understanding that I was in the presence of a great man, a mensch. One day, he related his experience at the Belzec death camp and I never saw such anguish (nor have I since). I then read Story of a Secret State, but not with much connection. It was during this time period that he received a decoration as a Righteous Gentile, but of course he never told us. Years later I visited Warsaw, Krakow and, of course, the death camps at Auschwitz, noting along the way that there was a Karski statue outside the Museum of Jewish Life in Poland as well as in the Kazimiersz in Krakow. Having just finished a re-read of Karski's Report to the World, as well as an extended stay in Poland, whatever ill will I harbored against the Poles I must declare to be misplaced. Prof. Karski describes a land and a people who yielded not one iota to the murderous invaders and who did everything humanly possible to save people, including Jews. Towards the end, the leader of the Jewish Underground, a man who knew he was going to be murdered by the Nazis, begs the outside world not to place blame upon the Poles. Given what I knew of Karski, I believe Karski's statement. If a Jew who fought the Nazi's with death facing him asks this of us, who are we to reject him? I cannot. I beg everyone to read this book; only then will people begin to gain an understanding of the courage of Poland and of what it means to oppose evil.

I am currently reading this book that presents a first hand record of the Polish Resistance movement and the mass murder of Poland's 3 million Jews, as well as another 2.5 to 3 million Polish Christians. The forward by Madeleine Albright is also worth reading as is the prologue by Professor Snyder.These days neo-Nazis and, sadly some members of the Jewish Community falsely make claims about Polish concentration camps as opposed to the Nazi German concentration camps that have been well documented and verified by the Nuremberg Trial, and the Israeli Trial of Eichmann. Even President Obama unwittingly put his foot in his mouth when he accidentally described these death camps as Polish. He gave licence to a Ukrainian Minister engaging in disgusting historical revisionism by accusing Poland of orchestrating the Jewish Holocaust, while conveniently overlooking that fact that the death camps involved Ukrainian guards. There are other historical revisionist in the media both in the USA and the UK whose primary objective is to discredit the Polish nation. However, truth always wins out in the end no matter how wilfully ignorant some people wish to be.Those who seek the truth about the horrors of what the German's imposed on the Polish nation should read Jan Karski's 1944 Report to the world. Perhaps someone might make a movie about this relatively unknown war hero and scholar. His voice should have been listened to instead of ignored or dismissed. Perhaps then lives, particularly of many European Jews could have been saved.

No-one had told me about Karski's book, and I am surprised it isn't better known. For one thing, it sheds some light on the circumstances in which news of the atrocities perpetrated against European Jews was conveyed from wartime Poland to unbelievers in London and Washington. For another, although it was dictated in Polish and translated into English at great speed in a Manhattan hotel room, it is well-constructed and beautifully written - as good in its own way as such 1930s and 1940s classics as Orwell's Homage to Catalonia and Koestler's Scum of the Earth, Primo Levi's If this is a man. Karski was an officer in the Polish Army in 1939, and he entered the underground where, whatever he tells you about his own prudence, he proved to be stubbornly and ridiculously courageous He took charge of propaganda - at his instigation Poles got to read uncensored news compiled in cellars from radio reports and printed on hand-cranked presses. Karski is a literalist, a patriot and a consummate observer. He was told by his underground superiors to be objective, and so he proved to be.What could seem detached or even cold in other, easier contexts is the way he is able to make sense of ultimate atrocity. He dresses as a Ukrainian guard to observe the killing of trainloads of Jews in quicklime, and he notes not his own distress but the prostration as a consequence of nausea that he experienced.(His dispatch describing this event was read out on the BBC by the writer Arthur Koestler; Karski was the first person to witness the genocide and speak about it.) He doesn't tell you what he felt in Washington but those interested should look at Claude Lanzmann's filmed interview The Karski Report in which he describes how the Supreme Court judge Felix Frankfurter told him that he didn't think Karski was lying but nonetheless couldn't believe him. There are books that you are told you must read because they are great literature. Karski's is among those which one must read not merely because they told the truth, but because they remind the reader that it is possible to do so, and that, maybe not in the way that one might have hoped or expected, telling the truth does make a difference.

This book was written in 1944.Now /I did not know that when I bought it, its not on the cover or the inside cover. Karskidid amazing things and its a great story, but its a book written in the 1940s not the 21st century. Obviously books written pre 1950 have huge value, but its not the style/read I expected. Hope you know what I mean..

I have heard stories of the deprivations and depravities incurred on the Jews in Poland during WW2, but rarely as such moving first-hand testimony. Indeed my own father-in-law was escaping on a train crossing the Polish - German border on the very night that Karski was conscripted. Karski's remarkable account must be read in the knowledge that the war was still underway when published. For this understandable reason, there are important facts and events missing, some of which are helpfully appended to this edition. I was deeply moved by his account, not least his ability to report with evident feeling and passion, yet remain absolutely objective when faced with sights so appalling. His description of the loading of death-camp cattle trucks with 140 souls in each and the subsequent carnage is something that I will never forget. He clearly understood that objective personal testimony, not raw emotion, was vital in ensuring his credibility.Karski's account finishes rather abruptly with the delivery of his message to the Allies. Being the consummate diplomat, he plays down, or simply does not report, the pitiful responses from the Western leaders to the plight of the Polish people and the Jews in particular. For example, during his 1943 interview in Washington with Justice of the US Supreme Court Frankfurter, himself Jewish, he was told "Mr. Karski, I want to be totally frank. I am unable to believe you. I did not say [you are] lying. I am just unable to believe what [you] told me."Jan Karski was honoured as a "Righteous among the Nations" at Yad Vashem on 2nd June 1982.This book sold 400,000 copies in the US alone when published there in 1944. It is remarkable that it has not been published in the UK until now.A remarkable story, told by a remarkable man.

A story of a pole that experienced the war. The book, his report, is to the world, to you if you want to know the war and how ugly it is.

Jan Karski appears to deserve all the awards of praise that he received during his exciting and often tragic life. This book is quite remarkable and is written with a degree of objectivity that probably could only come from a great journalist or a diplomat. Yet the book reads like a thriller while simultaneously being highly instructive and appearing to impart the atmosphere of a martyrized country under Nazi domination. The only aspect somewhat odd to the modern eye is the way that he quotes dialogue and conversations as if they were recorded. I suspect that Mr Karski had a most excellent memory, but was it really photographic? Despite this I would highly recommend this book.