Story of a secret state : my report to the world / Jan Karski ; foreword by Madeleine Albright.
Material type:
TextPublication details: Washington, DC : Georgetown University Press, c2013.Description: xxxi, 414 p. : ill., ports. ; 24 cmISBN: - 1589019830 (hbk. : alk. paper)
- 9781589019836 (hbk. : alk. paper)
| Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book
|
Main Library | NonFiction | 940.5343 K18 | Available | 33111007108612 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
Jan Karski's Story of a Secret State stands as one of the most poignant and inspiring memoirs of World War II and the Holocaust. With elements of a spy thriller, documenting his experiences in the Polish Underground, and as one of the first accounts of the systematic slaughter of the Jews by the German Nazis, this volume is a remarkable testimony of one man's courage and a nation's struggle for resistance against overwhelming oppression.
Karski was a brilliant young diplomat when war broke out in 1939 with Hitler's invasion of Poland. Taken prisoner by the Soviet Red Army, which had simultaneously invaded from the East, Karski narrowly escaped the subsequent Katyn Forest Massacre. He became a member of the Polish Underground, the most significant resistance movement in occupied Europe, acting as a liaison and courier between the Underground and the Polish government-in-exile. He was twice smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto, and entered the Nazi's Izbica transit camp disguised as a guard, witnessing first-hand the horrors of the Holocaust.
Karski's courage and testimony, conveyed in a breathtaking manner in Story of a Secret State , offer the narrative of one of the world's greatest eyewitnesses and an inspiration for all of humanity, emboldening each of us to rise to the challenge of standing up against evil and for human rights. This definitive edition--which includes a foreword by Madeleine Albright, a biographical essay by Yale historian Timothy Snyder, an afterword by Zbigniew Brzezinski, previously unpublished photos, notes, further reading, and a glossary--is an apt legacy for this hero of conscience during the most fraught and fragile moment in modern history.
"Follows the text of the original 1944 US edition ... supplemented with translations of additional material provided by the author in 1999 for the Polish edition"--p. xi.
Originally published: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company, 1944.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 397-400) and index.
Biographical essay of Jan Karski / by Timothy Snyder -- Defeat -- Prisoner in Russia -- Exchange and escape -- Devastated Poland -- The beginning -- Transformation -- Initiation -- Borecki -- Contact between cells -- Mission to France -- The underground state -- Caught by the Gestapo -- Torture -- The SS hospital -- Rescue -- The "gardener" -- Propaganda from the country -- Execution of a traitor -- The four branches of the underground -- The Laskowa apartment -- Assignment in Lublin -- Retribution -- The secret press -- My "conspiratorial apparatus" -- The liaison women -- Marriage per procuram -- School-- underground -- Parliament in Poland -- The ghetto -- "To die in agony-- " -- Unter den Linden revisited -- Journey through France and Spain -- My report to the world.