Unheeded Message of the Holocaust Jan Karski

 

 The Unheeded Message of the Holocaust

  An interview with Polish underground courier, Jan Karski.

Audio

 

Jan Karski, Polish underground worker, Catholic – he wrote a book called “Story of a Secret State” (Houghton Mifflin, 1944) after the war - describes his experiences - visit Warsaw Ghetto - invited by the Jews - and to a concentration camp to see for himself - an eyewitness - not a Jew but a Catholic - to take back word of the Holocaust to Britain and America. Claude Lanzman’s ground-breaking film Shoah, explores Polish communities' passive participation and complicity in the Jewish holocaust. Jan Karski appeared and initially refused to be interviewed by Lanzman and stalked out of the room. The filmmaker finally  persuaded Karski to return and sit for his first interview following the war.

 

I'd seen Shoah in three long sittings over three days in New York. About a month later I was returning on the train from an assignment in Washington DC. I was reading the Washington Post Letters section and read a headline: "The Holocaust. The Allies Knew", signed by Professor Jan Karski, Washington Universtiy. I was shocked to learn this man who'd witnessed the Holocaust first hand, was living in Washington D.C. I had to interview him. A first-hand eye witness to history - I wanted to interview him. 
 
When I got home that night I looked up his number in the phone book, called and to my surprise and jubilation, and thickly accented baritone voice answered. He asked me to send my proposal and credentials and I shot off a telex to Australian Broadcasting with a program proposal - an extended one-on-one interview with Karski - I would integrate some subtle sound effects and music to dramatize the piece to create a radio feature program.

Professor Karski agreed to meet and be interviewed in his home on the outskirts of Washington D.C. Some weeks later we met in the basement of his Washington home where he lives with his Jewish wife, a dancer who teaches dance in the studio down stairs – a woman who Karski told me, never talks about the Holocaust - we conducted  the interview and we’re going to hear that now – you’re listening to Soundscapes: Explorations in Radio, Sound and Music – this is WBAI. We’re at 99.5 FM – listener supported community radio.

Riding the Waves at Pacifica

 I was invited to write this piece for Project Censored by its director Mickey Huff. At the time I was interim general manager at KPFA, Pacifica Radio in Berkeley CA (2011-2013). Project Censored is a media research, education and advocacy initiative that champions the importance of free press. The project's mission is to expose and oppose news censorship and promote independent investigative journalism, media literacy and critical thinking. Back to note books...

 

Riding the Waves at Pacific 

By Andrew Leslie Phillips

The Pacifica foundation was founded in 1946 by poet and journalist Lewis Hill and a small group of pacifists, intellectuals and experienced radio people They did not have the same political or economic philosophy but shared a vision which supported a peaceful world, social justice and creativity. At 3pm, April 15, 1949, Lew hill sat behind the microphone and announced: "This is KPFA, listener sponsored radio in Berkeley, the first such radio station in the world”. At the time, less than nine-percent of the Bay area radio audience owned new FM receivers and Pacifica gave them a special KPFA radio with 94.1 on the FM dial, to get people tuned in. FM was a new, technology and Pacifica was backing the future and inventing an entirely new funding mechanism - the theory of listener sponsorship. It was daring, audacious and brilliant. And it caught on. Today there are Pacifica radio stations in five of the ten top radio markets.