Jan Karski

Biography

Jan Karski risked his life as a resistance courier, slipping through occupied Europe to bring eyewitness testimony of Nazi atrocities to Allied leaders and to plead for intervention on behalf of the Jewish people. He later recounted those missions in countless talks, books, and lectures, always mindful that truth-telling could be both painful and necessary.

After the war he continued to serve by teaching, especially at Georgetown University, urging students to bear witness and to act in defense of human dignity. His gravesite at Mount Olivet Cemetery is a place where gratitude is offered for a man whose courage asked the world to see what it might otherwise prefer to ignore.