Ambassador Wilczek laid a wreath at the grave of Jan Karski in Washington DC

Also present was Kaya Mirecka-Ploss, a prominent Polish-American and friend of Karski.

“Humanity’s Hero” was born in 1914 in Łódź. Having served in Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, after the outbreak of World War II Karski was an underground courier for the Polish government-in-exile, carrying information between Poland’s underground resistance and Polish officials in the West. Karski attempted to draw the Western Allies’ attention to the atrocities of the Holocaust. Having been smuggled in and out of the Warsaw Ghetto and a German Nazi transit camp in Izbica in occupied Poland, Karski delivered eyewitness accounts to the West about Germany’s extermination of Jews. As part of these efforts, he met with American President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Washington in July of 1943. Following the war Karski worked as a professor at Georgetown University, where you can see the “Karski bench,” one of several in the world. In 1982 Yad Vashem recognized Jan Karski as “Righteous Among the Nations.”

On the National Day of Remembrance of Poles Rescuing Jews under German Occupation we honor in a special way figures such as Jan Karski, as well as Witold Pilecki, Irena Sendler and the thousands of Poles recognized as Righteous Among the Nations. We also remember the countless brave Polish men and women who risked everything to save Jews during the Holocaust but who have gone largely unnoticed, and perhaps will never be publically acknowledged. We pay tribute to their heroism and their sacrifice.

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