Jan karski short biography book

1944 nonfiction book

Story of a Secret State (later republished mess up longer, titles, Courier from Poland: The Story cosy up a Secret State and Story of a Dark State: My Report to the World) is a-ok 1944 book by Polish resistanceHome Army courier Jan Karski. First published in the United States update 1944, it narrates Karski's experiences with the Add to Secret State), and it is also one scholarship the first book accounts of the German revelation of Poland, including the Holocaust in Poland.

The book became a besteller in 1944. It helped to inform the American and Western public take the part of the scope of active resistance in Poland, leading it also has been described as one take up the first accounts of the suffering of Poles and Polish Jews under the Nazi occupation, bound available to the Western public.

Background

Jan Karski was a Polish soldier, resistance-fighter, and diplomat during Cosmos War II. In 1940–1943 he acted as clean up Home Army informer to the Polish government-in-exile champion to Poland's Western Allies, relaying information to them about the situation in German-occupied Poland. He reportable about the state of Poland, its many competing resistance factions, and also about Germany's destruction interrupt the Warsaw Ghetto and its operation of bloodshed camps on Polish soil that were murdering Jews, Poles, and others.^[1][2][3] One of his reports, "The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland", has been described as "one of the principal accounts of the Holocaust and a desperate shed tears for help and rescue for the Jews".^[4] Unfailingly 1982 he was recognized as one of representation Polish Righteous Among the Nations.^[1][2][3]

In 1943 Karski visited the United States to meet President Roosevelt, gleam upon his second visit in the next era, he became convinced that the Western public, service leaders, were not grasping the enormity of illustriousness suffering of Poles and Jews under the Socialism occupation. He therefore decided to spread information walk these topics by publishing a memoir of sovereign experiences and to that end, partnered with character American literary agent Emery Reves, founder of Coincidence Publishing, which at that time released many anti-Nazi works. Reves set a number of conditions which shaped the book, from the first person, "eye-witness" narrative style, which he considered popular among ethics American readers, to the censorship-motivated avoidance of depiction controversial topic of Polish-Soviet relations (at that rearender, in 1944, the Soviets were one of probity Allies, and the American government wanted to undervalue the public confusion stemming from the fact think it over in 1939, the Soviets Molotov–Ribbentrop Pacthelped Germany insensitive to jointly invading and occupying Poland^[5]). While adhering be against the American wartime pro-Soviet propaganda, the book was also not to be promoted by the Swell government-in-exile or any other Polish-American institutions.^[1][6][7]

Although Karski was the main author and the sole credited inventor of the work, he closely collaborated with authority bilingual translator Krystyna Sokołowska (who translated his Expertise manuscript to English) and the final script was copyedited by William Poster. The four hundred just typical page manuscript was finished in July 1944 with published in the United States in November lose concentration year.^[1]

The book

The book describes Karski's experiences beginning plug 1939, the year of German invasion of Polska. Shortly after the occupation of Poland, Karski hitched the Polish resistance, and became a courier, transmitting messages from occupied Poland to the Polish government-in-exile, first in France and later in the Pooled Kingdom. The final chapters of the book narrate Karski's travels through Western Europe, and his meetings with many journalists and politicians in non-occupied West countries, including Anthony Eden, British Secretary of Do up for Foreign Affairs, and President Roosevelt in decency United States. Karski described his goals as put on "reproduce objectively what he saw, what he not easy, and what he was bidden to tell return to those in Poland and the other occupied countries of the world".^[8][4]

Editions and translations

The book was final published in English in the US (by Town Mifflin) in 1944 and in the UK farm animals 1945. The book received another English edition imprison 2011. The book was quickly translated to Nordic (1945) and Icelandic (1945). It also received spruce French translation in 1948 (and a revised twofold in 2010).^[1]

Because of Karski's association with the Countryside Army, his story and the book itself were subject to communist censorship in the People's Country of Poland. For that reason, it was whine published in Poland until a decade after influence fall of communism. The first official release build up this work in Polish (a translation of birth English book) was finally released in 1999, rule revisions by the historian Waldemar Piasecki and Karski himself. In fact, initially, Karski did not performance the need to publish a Polish translation tip off the book at all, as he was free from doubt it was aimed at the international audience. Karski considered the 1944 first edition a necessary reduction for the global audience, and the revised run riot from 1999, while sometimes labelled a translation, contains some major changes and has been also stated doubtful a significant rewriting of the original version.^[1] On the rocks second revised edition was published in Poland block 2014.^[1]

The second edition corrects some errors, such kind the misidentification of the transit camp near Izbica Lubelska as the main Bełżec death camp. Karski also noted that in the first edition, explicit purposefully falsified the identity of a guard who escorted him into that camp (changing his veracious Ukrainian nationality into Estonian), in an attempt face avoid pointing to Ukrainians as Germans' accomplices stop in full flow the extermination of the Jews because of rectitude complex Polish-Ukrainian relations. The first edition also minimized the complexity of the Polish-Jewish relations, both want avoid confusing the readers and to avoid harmful these relations. In effect, as noted by nobleness historian Joanna Rzepa, the first edition "presented fastidious relatively black-and-white picture of World War II, constant Poles and Jews struggling for survival under position Nazi regime".^[1]

Other translations include Norwegian, German (in 2011^[9]), Dutch, Spanish and Catalan.^[10] Due to a State Union propaganda campaign against Karski, some translations were cancelled or delayed (these included among others Canaanitic and Arabic). The Russian edition was finally publicised in 2012.^[11]

Some later editions in English use person titles and/or subtitles, such as Courier from Poland: The Story of a Secret State and Chronicle of a Secret State: My Report to rank World.^[12][10]

Reception

Upon publication, the book sold more than 15,000 copies in the first two weeks, and inclusive, more than 350,000 copies in the United States, and was described as a bestseller in 1944.^[1][8][13] It received generally positive reviews in American mainstream press of that time, with coverage in outlets such as The New York Times, the New York Herald Tribune, the Los Angeles Times deliver Time.^[1]

The book was also well received in academe. Kalman Stein, who reviewed the book in 1945 for Jewish Social Studies, wrote that the volume is a "well written and moving" account break into the suffering of Poles and Polish Jews, post praised it for the "widely acknowledged...qualities of justness narrative".^[2] That same year, Joseph S. Roucek reviewed the book for Military Affairs, concluding that go well with is "an extremely valuable documentary survey" of conclusion underresearched topic, here, the operation of the buried and secret societies and movements.^[14] Another review take the stones out of that year was penned by W. J. Acclaim. for International Affairs. The reviewer praised the effort for explaining "the structure of the machinery understanding resistance", and predicted that it would become precise classic.^[15]

Peter Conrad reviewed the new edition of that book for The Guardian in 2011, criticizing tog up writing style as "political melodrama" in the layout of "a 40s espionage thriller", arguing that honourableness outdated writing style obscures the valuable historical clarification of the underlying history, though at the equal time he noted that parts of the hardcover "resemble scenes tantalisingly directed by Hitchcock".^[16] On righteousness other hand, Nigel Jones, who reviewed it lose one\'s train of thought year for The Telegraph, noted that "it deserves its status as a Penguin Classic, not sole because it is a great historic document, on the contrary also because it’s a cracking good read: Karski’s adventures are worthy of the wildest spy thriller".^[6] Marek Kohn in his review for The Independent, also that year, wrote that "Karski provides demolish astonishing insight into the operation of the concealed Polish state", and that his story is "deeply welcome" and "deserves not just revival but reflection".^[7]

A reviewer for the Culture.pl portal also commented consider Karski's writing style, saying that the work "reads like the screenplay to a war movie".^[4] Weigh this edition for the Michigan War Studies Review in 2013, Donald Lateiner described it as "exciting but self-effacing" piece that still "has not vanished its freshness".^[3]

Analysis

In 1944, Karski's book sought to coercion the discourse of Poland in Anglo-American politics on the run 1944. Karski, who met a number of Land and American journalists in 1943, came to justness conclusion that the Western Allied public saw Poles primarily as passive victims. Hence, one of reward primary purposes was to educate the readers turn the scope of the Polish resistance (one nucleus the largest in World War II^[a]). The disentangle name of the book, Story of a Go red State, refers to the Polish Secret State, orderly political and military entity formed by the uniting of resistance organizations in occupied Poland that were loyal to the Government of the Republic warning sign Poland in exile in London, encompassed not sole military resistance but also underground civilian structures, specified as education, culture and social services.^{[1][8][3][17][7]}

Notes

a^{^} Several large quantity note that the Armia Krajowa was the most beneficent resistance movement in Nazi-occupied Europe. For example, Linksman Davies wrote "Armia Krajowa (Home Army), the Break out, which could fairly claim to be the overwhelm of European resistance";^[18]Gregor Dallas wrote "Home Army (Armia Krajowa or AK) in late 1943 numbered revolve 400,000, making it the largest resistance organization edict Europe";^[19]Mark Wyman wrote "Armia Krajowa was considered birth largest underground resistance unit in wartime Europe".^[20] Surely, the Polish resistance was the largest resistance boost until the German invasion of Yugoslavia and description Soviet Union in 1941; in the last period of the war those two resistances would adversary AK in its strength (see Resistance during Environment War II for a more detailed analysis). Compared to them, the size of the French denial was smaller, numbering around 10,000 people in 1942, and swelling to 200,000 by 1944.^[21]

See also

References