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.

 

 

 

KARSKI: There were four ghettos. Initially in the Warsaw Ghetto there were 450,000 Jews. But in June, July, August, 1942 great deportations started. As we learned later, by that time, final solution was already decided and they were to be shipped from the ghetto, to the east, to the concentration camps – Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobebor (sp) and other camps. Now at the time I entered the ghetto, there were no more than 45, 50,000 Jews left.

ALP: In May, 1942 Polish underground diplomatic courier, Jan Karski met secretly with two Jewish underground leaders. They offered to take him to the Jewish ghettos. They were desperate. Already Jews were being transported to death camps in their tens of thousands every day. The Jews of Europe were being exterminated.

The three men met in German occupied Poland in a Warsaw suburb, a desolate ruin of a house at twilight with just a single candle burning. The Jews demanded their story be exposed to the world. Jan Karski would be their messenger.

KARKSI: They didn’t give me their names, only their functions.

ALP: The Jewish underground leaders represented two distinct factions within the Jewish political community – the Zionists and the Bundists who were socialists.

KARSKI: …a little jokingly said “Witold, both of us, we don’t see each other eye to eye but we now decided to meet you together. This is a Jewish problem”. He volunteered to take me to the ghetto and then he told me – “Witold” – this was my pseudonym “I know the English. When you will tell them what is happening to the Jews, they may not believe you. Witold, would you like to see it. There is no such great danger and to give you sense of security that we would not endanger you for nothing, I will be your guide – will you go”. I said: “ I will go” and then he was my guide, I visited twice the ghetto.

MUSIC

The house I entered into one of those four ghettos, the outside front of the house faced a regular street. Only the back of the house, through the basement, you entered one of those four Ghettos. Of course I heard about it but what I was seeing,  it was horrible – Oh my God – children, women, old men, everybody having something to sell – an onion, a piece of bread a piece of cloth – begging – “I am hungry, please, please”. Also some Jewish men – well I remember him standing – immovable – so I said to my guide, “He is standing is he dead? He says: “Oh no, no, no Witold he is dying. He’s not dead yet”.

In the streets naked bodies dead. So again I whispered to him “What is this?” He said, “Well you see, when a Jew dies the Jews have to pay tax to have him buried but they have no money for taxes so they put man, woman and child in the street but then it doesn’t work Witold – the people who pass - if he has shoes, if he has any clothes – so they take it out – a dead man does not need any clothes.” So I saw completely naked – some skeletons laying in the street – stench – horrible – inhumane - and he just guides me “follow me, follow me”. Only from time to time I remember he was whispering: “remember, remember, remember”.

ALP: Two days later Jan Karski made a second visit to the ghetto to memorize more vividly the impressions he’s take to the outside world.

KARSKI: This time I was prepared emotionally you understand, to this completely different reality – it was not the world – the man says: “You will see something; now you will see something” and then Jews were leaving the street. And I didn’t understand what is happening. “Follow me”. He enters the first house – bumps (knocks) at the door: “We are Jews, we are Jews open the door,” and somebody opens the door – a woman it was - I remember her. We go to the window and we observe and then I see a horrible thing. 

Two boys, Hitler Jugen, nice boys, clean they were walking and joking just walking they walk empty street. And then one of them – they whispered something to each other – then one of them out of the blue, pulls out a handgun and he shot. And then silence and then Ahhhhh – the glass broke – he just hit somebody and just killed him and put the gun back and they walked off – nothing. I couldn’t take it.

That woman I remember – I think that she suspected because I didn’t look a Jew you know – because she approached me and says: ”Go, go. It doesn’t do you any good – go. And we left (repeats in Polish). It was a horrible world.

MUSIC

ALP: As well as the ghetto, Jan Karski witnessed a Nazi concentration camp at Belzec in eastern Poland. Five weeks later he’d set out to give his report to the Allies.

In November 1942, guided by the Polish underground, he crossed Nazi dominated Europe. He traveled overland disguised as a French worker, first by train to Paris and then south, trekking across the Pyrenees into Spain, to Madrid, then Gibraltar to London.

KARSKI: My trip from Warsaw to London – I remember it very well because it was a sort of a record – it was my fourth mission – lasted twenty-one days. Now I had a problem. I spoke French fluently but of course everybody can recognize that I am not a Frenchman, my accent is even worse than English accent. So we solved that situation and a dentist made an injection into my mouth so my mouth became swollen for several days so I couldn’t speak distinctly  (mumbles in French) and I traveled to Paris with Frenchmen and they couldn’t gather that I was not a Frenchman. I was very well treated.

I reached Paris and it was just at the beginning of November 1942. Now in Paris the situation is different. No Frenchman likes it when I tell them. Life was normal – night clubs – I know Paris very well. Before the war I went to Paris many times. All night clubs were open. Everybody absolutely engaged in black market, which struck me because then when I reached London, nobody in London,  no man would deal in black market. It was not – LAUGHS – he’s an Englishman.

So firstly with the British. Individuals to whom I remember specifically I passed the information. Four members of the British War Cabinet. Churchill of course as Prime Minister was chairman. So I reported to Eden, representative of the conservative party, Lord Cranbourne. Representative of the Labor Party – two – one Greenwood and one Dalton who was secretary Chamber of Commerce which he had in his hands all economic matters, all trade work, weapons etc., a powerful man. So I reported to those four men.

Then I reported to Lord Salbourne who was supervisor of all European underground movements and then rather a more minor figures, Mrs. Wilkinson MP and others and other people. So this was England.

ALP: Jan Karski was neither the first nor last courier to arrive from Warsaw with the news. But he was the most important. He witnessed both the ghettos and the camps, was smuggled into the Belzec concentration camp to see thousands die.

KARSKI: Witold, we can organize another trip. It will be more dangerous but we would not expose you to a danger unless we were not sure we can do it. We can smuggle you for short time to Belzec, will you to.? “Sure I will go”.

 

 

 

ALP: Belzec was a small rural town hidden away in Eastern Poland. Karski was disguised as an Estonian guard.

 

KARSKI: Next – in the other room he pointed, there was a sort of a uniform. I remember it – kind of yellow, brown black trousers, long boots and cap. This is what you will wear. You will be an Estonian (foreign language). This I knew at the time that in those concentration camps, the Germans did not want to use the Poles because of secrecy. That would use Ukrainians, Belu Russians, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians etc., they didn’t speak Polish so then they had no contact with the population. So I wore the uniform, followed him.

 We approached the gate. He gets some documents. Two German guards and not a word and I have Estonia. We enter the camp. And now: we couldn’t go inside very much because there were several thousand Jews in an open area. Again, horrible smell which I remember now – stench, horrible stench, unusual. Now the train here, some sort of a platform and then men shouting “Raus, raus”, shooting and whipping the Jews and the Jews from the camp directed to the train. To go against the Jewish wave and to go behind them was physically impossible or dangerous so I just stood by the wall. I saw individuals – men, women, children – some looking with those pasas, some looking normally – I saw them – no, no – I was with them.  Belzec, as I learned after the war, was the final station of death. They would burn the Jews in Belzec.

I lost again my nerves. I was strong when I was young but it was horrible. I saw the floor of some empty steel cars, like a white power and I didn’t know what is it. During the trial in Poland after the war, the stationmaster revealed, in most of those trains the floors were covered by lime and many Jews already were dead. He described, by the way, that it must have been horrible to the Jews because when you urinate on lime it burns. You know if it reaches your skin.

I couldn’t leave Belzec the same day because I was sick so I spent the night and the next day he came and took me back to Warsaw again. Of course he was in the Jewish underground. So then I asked him what I saw – what is it?

“Listen, they take them in those trains to a faraway field and they leave those trains two or three days and all Jews die and they empty the trains and bury them in some holes and go again and send the trains again.

ALP: All this the Polish courier told the prominent and powerful in Great Britain. Then the Polish prime minister, General Sakorsky (sp) called Jan Karski with the order to go to America.

KARSKI: It must have been more or less June. General Sikorski (?), prime minister and commander in chief calls me. And he says – “Listen, American ambassador with whom I am very friendly, Anthony Drexel Biddle told me that he informed the president about your report but he also told me President Roosevelt does not read the reports. President Roosevelt is a kind of man who wants to see them and to touch him, to look at him, he’s this kind of man. Biddle knows because they were roommates in Harvard. They are personal friends.

“Biddle advised me to send you secretly to Washington. The president will learn about it. Biddle, though he will not guarantee anything, hopes that the president will loose his nerve and knowing that you are in Washington, will invite you to the White House to look at him. You go to the United States.”

ALP: A few weeks later, Jan Karski was watching the Statue of Liberty emerge from the mist in New York harbor. Then to Washington.

KARSKI: I arrived to Washington. The ambassador, he knew by radio about me, and I will stay on the premises of the ambassador. I cannot go to any hotel as long as I stay in Washington.

Now, those people I met in Washington. Archbishop Spelman, Archbishop Strich, Archbishop Mooney – all of them cardinals just after the war. Apostolic delegate Cardinal Jicanarnie (sp). President Roosevelt, Cordell Hull, Secretary of State; Henry Stimson Secretary of War; Francis Biddle, Attorney General; then Jewish leaders: Justice Frankfurter, Nahum Goldman, President of the American Jewish Congress, Rabbi Wise, president of the World Jewish Congress, tremendous amount of people

Then journalists, Walter Lippmann he was very prominent, he was like a pope at that time, George Sokolski, McCormick, Mrs. Ogden Reid owner of the Herald Tribune. Every day I had contact. To everyone I spoke about the Jewish problem.

You must understand that Jewish problem was a part of my mission. I had many messages to many people and then I had like a separate chart – Jewish problem.

Next point. I met during the war, except Churchill, all most powerful men in the Allied camp. I never knew how long will he keep me. I never knew if after five minutes if he will say “thank you very much” as some did - after ten minutes – “thank you very much – invaluable information – I congratulate you, you are a hero – goodbye, good luck young man.”

I divided my report in a most precise way. The total report could not be longer than half an hour. Jewish part – no more than three, four, five minutes. Jewish I learned after experience, shifted on the top because if it will be in the second part of my report the man may leave, you know, and I will have no opportunity. So I shifted. Everybody was friendly, everybody was sympathetic to the Jews. Everybody wanted to help the Jews. Everybody understood what was happening.

Only for a variety of reasons they did not do anything. Such was the situation. Nobody would say I am not interested in the problem. Everybody was respectful and I was treated like a hero – genuine – because everybody knew – I was arrested by Gestapo, I tried to cut my veins, torture etc – so everybody was respectful and friendly to my report

“Now Sir I have a Jewish report. I was twice in the Ghetto. I was once in Belzec and I have Jewish demands directed to Allied leaders, Polish government included. What is happening to the Jews is unprecedented – is unique - the Jewish masses do not realize it. The leaders know it. All Jews will be murdered in this war. Hitler decided to murder all Jews regardless of the outcome of the war”

Next point: Extermination of the Jews is not prompted by the war strategy. It is a separate problem. Purely ideological problem. Hitler wants to liquid all the Jews in Europe. As a result of it, the Allied leaders must treat the Jewish problem as a separate problem as well, otherwise they will win the war but there will be no Jews. And the Jews cannot accept it as a necessity. They must use unprecedented ways. What are they?

First, let them flood Germany with millions of leaflets and describe concentration camps, Nazi officials, spelling names, spelling statistics, spelling the methods, so the German population will learn. Perhaps they don’t know what is happening. And what is equally important is that they will be unable to say in the future that they were not informed. They can do it. They are dropping bombs on Germany every night. They can drop millions of leaflets.

Next: the Allied governments must publicly appeal to the German people to impress upon their own government that they must change the policy towards the Jews. They must show the Allies evidence that they did exercise such pressure. If they were unsuccessful or if there is no evidence that such a pressure was exercised, the Allied government must make a public declaration – the German nation will be responsible for the crimes against the Jews. Perhaps this will help.

Next. Certain objects in Germans not of military nature must…..(SIDE ONE OF AIRCHECK ENDS – (NOTE: Due to cassette turn-over, some of the program is missing. There is an original copy of all material).

 

…by the way you know, war prisoners – well I am not a stupid man at that time. I realized and immediately reacted (to the Jews) – Gentlemen, this nonsense. The Allies, the English will never do it – the Germans have British war prisoners. If they execute or punish some German prisoners, Hitler will do it publicly with British war prisoner or American war prisoner. Their answer is: “We know it is impossible. We still demand it as an act of despair. Do you understand this is an act of despair. What do you want us to do. We are dying, dying, dying.

“Witold, you are smart. This is not your first mission. You are clever. Swear that you will use all your powers and you will reach as many people as possible and tell them what is happening to us.”  And I remember I swear my God, that I will tell everybody.

MUSIC.

When I arrived in Washington I had no certainty that I will be received by Roosevelt. At a certain point my ambassador, Yan Chevonosky sp told me “Well I set an appointment for you. The man’s name is Justice Felix Frankfurter. We are personal friends. He is justice of the supreme court. He is extremely important man. He is a personal friend of the President. Everybody knows it and he’s a Jew himself. To him you can  be sure – tell him everything. It may be important.

Now Frankfurter: “Do you know who I am?” I said “yes sir. Your name is Felix Frankfurter. You are justice of the Supreme Court.”

“Correct. Do you know that I am Jew?”

“Yes sir. Mr. Ambassador told me”

And for at least one hour – at the time it was fresh and I was excited and I knew this is a powerful man etc., - everything – ghetto, Jewish demands, Belzec – you know – what I saw and then I came to the end. Silence.

I look at the ambassador and silence. Then Frankfurter gets up and starts to walk the room without a word. So he went to the left and turn his back to us, Ambassador made this sign to me – don’t say anything – so I keep quite.   

It took him three minutes – four minutes then Frankfurter sits down and looking straight in my face says – I remember every word, every gesture of this conversation after forty years.

“Mr. Karski a man like me talking to man like you must be totally frank so I say I am unable to believe you.”

Chevonosky breaks in; “Felix you don’t mean it. You cannot tell him to his face that he is a liar. Felix it is his fourth mission. He was checked and rechecked ten times. Felix, you don’t mean it!”

Frankfurter: “Mr. Ambassador, I did not say that this young man is lying I said that I am unable to believe him. There is a difference!”

MUSIC STAB

ALP: Apparently the interview has some affect on President Roosevelt because it was not long before Polish Ambassador Chevonosky came to Karski with good news.

Chevonosky tells me in joy “Johnny, the President wants to see you in the White House. My suspicion is that Frankfurter told the President. He suggested to the President – let him see this young man he has an important story.” And so I was invited to the President.

In 1943, Roosevelt was considered by hundreds of millions of people as the savior, the master of the world. Great leader etc. So I was appalled and I had all the time this feeling facing master of humanity  - imperial.  He projected tremendous power. I remember he smoked cigarettes in a long cigarette holder – his gestures.

He started the conversation that he knows about me and he would like me to tell him what I think he should know….and then I come to the Jewish problem – yes he allowed me to speak to the Jewish demands and then he asked me some questions – not very important – and then started to ask questions concerning communist underground movement. He did not say anything of significance concerning the Jews but he listened to everything.

And then his secretary broke in twice – “Mr. President, people are waiting this lasts too long.”

“Alright. Alright”. He gives a sign that the interview is finished and then I got inspired. I get up and I said “Mr. President, I go back to Poland. Every Pole will know I saw President Roosevelt. President Roosevelt is the last hope of Europe. Everybody will ask me what the President told you – what will happen to us.

 I remember again every gesture. “You will tell your leaders that we shall win this war. The guilty ones will be punished for their crimes. Justice, freedom shall prevail. You will tell your nation that they have a friend in this house. This is what you will tell them”.

----------

 

ALP: The Unheeded Message of the Holocaust. A radio documentary feature produced, written and narrated by Andrew Phillips. Etc…..

Special thanks to Professor Jan Karski. In Jerusalem a tree bearing his name has been planted in the allay of the Righteous Gentiles among Nations

KARSKI: I never spoke about my war experiences. I didn’t want to go back for thirty years – I never spoke publically – I ran away from this. I wanted to be normal. My wife, who lost all her family in Poland in the ghettos, in the gas chambers, until today she is the same way.

I tell my students and they believe me but they listen and then we have discussion with individual students. They take it as a sort of ancient myth – not real – like stories from Iliad, Odyssey, Homer. It is impossible for people who did not see it actually, to understand it, to have a feeling. They may be informed. They cannot conceive it.

ALP: I acknowledge Claude Lanzman’s masterful documentary “Shoah”, where I first learned of Jan Karski’s story. Jan Karski’s book “Story of a Secret State”, published by Houghton Mifflin in 1944.

Jan Karski

1914-2000.

CONGRESSIONAL RECORD.

On December 15, 1981, in the U.S. House of Representatives, the Hon. Stephen Solarz read Dr Jan Karski in the Congressional Record regarding a “significant and deeply moving conference held at the State Department organized by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, chaired by Ellie Wiesel. The International Liberators Conference, October 26-28, 1981. Representative Solarz made particular mention of Jan Karski and quoted extensively from Dr. Karski’s unheeded message of the Holocaust and noted “…one thing comes through very clearly: by 1943 free world leaders had been informed of the Holocaust. They knew.”

Representative Solarz asked that Dr. Karski’s address at the Liberator’s Conference be included in that days Congressional Record. At the conclusion of his long and detailed address, Karski says: “ I am a Christian Jew. I am a practicing Catholic. And, although not a heretic still my faith tells me: the Second Original Sin had been committed by humanity - through commission or omission, or self-imposed ignorance, or insensitivity, or self-interest, or hypocrisy, or heartless rationalization.

 

This sin will haunt humanity to the end of time. It does haunt me. And I want it to be so.”

Ends radio documentary

Produced for Australian Broadcasting Corporation - This is an incomplete transcription but contains most of the interview recorded in Jan Karski's home in Washington D.C in 1986. The original was recorded on reel-to-reel, Nagra mono tape recorder by Arlene Krebs.  From air check from "Soundscapes: Explorations in Radio Sound and Music", WBAI New York. Back to note books...

 

Biographical Sketch

Received from Dr. Jan Karski, 1986

Dr. Jan Karski, Professor of Government, Georgetown University

Dr. Jan Karski was born in Poland. He received a Master’s Degree (M.A.) in law and a Master’s Degree in Diplomatic Sciences at the Jan Kazimierz University at Lvov in 1935. Having completed his education in Germany, Switzerland and Great Britain in the years 1936-38, he entered the Polish diplomatic service.

Mobilized in August 1939, he was eventually taken prisoner by the Red Army and sent to a Russian camp.

He escaped in November 1939, returned to German-occupied Poland and joined the anti-Nazi Underground organization. Because of his knowledge of languages and foreign countries, he was used as a courier between the government-in-exile and the Underground authorities in Poland. In this capacity he made several secret trips between France, Great Britain, Poland during the war.

In June 1940, he was arrested by the Gestapo in Slovakia, was tortured and nearly died, but was rescued by the Polish Underground. After a few months of medical treatment, he resumed his activities as a courier.

In 1942, the Jewish Underground contacted Karski and arranged for him to visit the Warsaw ghettos and the Belzic death camp.

In 1942-43, he reported to the Polish, British and American government on the situation in Poland and on the extermination of the Jews. In August of 1943, he personally reported to President Roosevelt, Cordell Hull, Henry Stimson and other high government and civic leaders in the U.S.A.

He refused to return to Poland after the war and made the U.S. his home. In 1954 he became an American Citizen.

In 1952 he received his PhD at Georgetown University and taught Eastern European affairs, comparative government, and international affairs. In 1962-63, he taught at Columbia University as a visiting professor.

In 1956-57, and again in 1966-67, he was sent by the State Department on six-month lecture tours to sixteen countries in Asia and French-speaking Africa. On numerous occasions he was called upon, by various Congressional committees, to testify on Eastern European affairs. He lectured extensively at the Defense Intelligence School, Air University, Inter-American College, Industrial College and other government and civic organizations. His articles appeared in numerous magazines. He contributed to the New Catholic Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Americana and Collier’s Encyclopedia.

In 1974 he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to inspect Polish, British and French archives of his major work, The Great Powers and Poland, 1919-1945 (From Versailles to Yalta) – (University Press of America, 1984).

He related his war experiences in his book “Story of a Secret State” (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1944) which became a Book-of-the-Month-Club selection.

Dr Karski is a recipient of the highest Polish military decoration, Order Virtuti Militari. In Jerusalem a tree bearing his name was planted in the Alley of the Righteous Gentiles Among the Nations. Georgetown University awarded him a degree of Doctor of Humanae Letters honoris causa.

NOTES:

Who were the two Jews who asked Karski to visit the Ghetto and the camp?

When Karski met with the two Jews in Warsaw, he didn’t know their names. Walter Laqueur, in his book: “The Terrible Secret: Suppression of the Truth about Hitler’s Final Solution” (Little Brown and Company 1980) writes in Appendix 5. “The Missions of Jan Karski, Jan Norwak and Tadeusz Chciuk, that the men were Leon Feiner (Bundist) and probably either Menahem Kirschenbaum (Zionist) or Adolf Berman (Zionist).

From the Congressional Record, this is what the Jews demanded:

1.    A public announcement that prevention of the physical extermination of the Jews become a part of the over-all Allied war strategy.

2.    Informing the German nation through radio, air-dropped leaflets, and other means, about their government’s crimes committed against the Jews. All available data on the Jewish ghettos; concentration and extermination camps; names of the German officials directly involved in the crimes; statistics, facts; methods used should be spelled out.

3.     Public and formal demands for evidence that such a pressure had been exercised and Nazi practices directed against the Jews stopped.

4.    Placing responsibility of the German nation as a whole if they failed to respond and if the extermination continues.

5.    Public and formal announcement that in view of the unprecedented Nazi crimes against the Jews and in the hope that those crimes would stop, the Allied governments were to take unprecedented steps: Certain areas and objects in Germany would be bombed in retaliation.  German people would be informed before and after each action that the Nazi continued extermination of the Jews prompted the bombing.

Jewish leaders in London, particularly Szmul Zygelbojn (Bund) and Dr. Ignace Szwarebard (Zionist), are charged to make all efforts so as to make the Polish government formally forward these demands to the Allied councils. 

To the President of the Polish Republic, Wladyslaw Raczkiewitz:

6.    Many among those who directly or indirectly contribute to the Jewish tragedy profess their Catholic faith. The Polish and other European Jews sent to Poland feel entitled on, humanitarian and spiritual grounds, to expect protection of the Vatican. Religious sanctions, excommunication included, are within the Pope’s jurisdiction. Such sanctions publically proclaimed might have an impact on the German people. They might even make Hitler, a baptized Catholic, to reflect.

7. Because of the nature of this message and the source its came from as well as because of diplomatic protocol’s requirements, I was instructed to deliver the message to the President of the Republic only.  Let him use his conscience and wisdom in approaching the Pope. I was explicitly forbidden to discuss that subject with the Jewish leaders. Their possible maladroit intervention might be counterproductive.

To the Prime Minister and Commander in Chief, General Wladyslaw Sikorski, Minister of Interior, Stanislaw Mikolajczyk and Szwarchard.

8. Although the Polish people at large sympathize or try to help the Jews, many criminals blackmail, rob, denounce or murder the Jews in hiding. The Underground authorities must apply punitive sanctions against them, executions included. In the last case, the identity of the guilty ones and the nature of their crimes should be publicized in the Underground press.

Zygelogjm and Szwarcbard must use all their pressure, so that pertinent instructions would be issued.

In order to avoid any risk of anti-Polish propaganda, I was explicitly forbidden to discuss that subject with any non-Polish Jewish leaders. I was to inform Zygelbojm and Szwarchbard about that part of my instructions.

To the Allied individual government and civic leaders as well  as the international Jewish leaders.

9. There is a possibility to save some Jews if money were available. Gestapo is corrupted not only on the low level but also on the medium and even high levels. They would cooperate for gold or hard currency. The Jewish leaders are able to make appropriate contacts.

10. Some Jews would be allowed to leave Poland provided they have original foreign passports. Origins of these passports are unimportant. As large supply of passports as possible should be sent. They must be blank - forged names, identification data. etc., would be overlooked by the German authorities – for money of course. Provisions must be made that those Jews who do succeed in leaving Poland would be accepted in the Allied or neutral countries.

11. Some Jews of not Semitic appearance could leave the ghettos, obtain false German documents and live among other Poles under assumed names. Money to bribe the ghettos guards various officials is needed.

12. Money medicines, food, clothing are most urgently needed by the survivors in the ghettos. Subsidies obtained from the Delegate of the Polish government as well as other funds sent through various channels by the Jewish international organizations, are totally insufficient. More hard currency, sent without delay, is a question of life or death for thousands of Jews.

In addition to all messages I was to carry, both Jewish leaders solemnly committed me to do my upmost in arousing the public opinion in the free world on behalf of the Jews. I solemnly swore that should I arrive safely in London, I would not fail them.

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