Italian comic honours Holocaust whistleblower Jan Karski
PR dla Zagranicy
Nick Hodge
15.01.2014 13:35
An Italian comic has been published telling the story of Jan Karski, the Polish WWII underground courier who informed the West about the horrors of the Holocaust.
Image. Rizzoli Lizard Publishers
Created by journalist Marco Rizzo and artist Lelio Bonaccorso, L'uomo che l' scopri Olocausto (The Man Who Discovered the Holocaust) depicts Karski's frustration that his revelations were not treated with urgency.
Speaking at a conference dedicated to Karski at the European Parliament in Brussels, Professor Luca Bernardini said that “his message is now of the utmost importance for the younger generation.”
Karski, who was a member of the principal Polish underground force the Home Army (AK), was selected in 1942 for a mission to leave Nazi-occupied Poland and journey to London with information about the ongoing extermination of the Jews by the Germans.
In London, he met the leaders of the Polish-government-in-exile, and Britain's Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, among others.
He then went on to the United States and had a meeting with President F.D. Roosevelt.
However, the allies were sceptical of the scale of the exterminations.
After the war, Karski settled in the US, where he became a professor at Georgetown University. He died in 2000.
The Polish parliament has declared 2014 as a 'Year of Jan Karski,' marking the centenary of his birth, and a report about the courier can be listened to here. (nh)
Source: IAR