by Jan Karski
contributions by Jan Karski, Jan Karski, Jan Karski, Jan Karski, Jan Karski, Jan Karski, Jan Karski, Jan Karski, Jan Karski, Jan Karski, Jan Karski, Jan Karski, Jan Karski, Jan Karski, Jan Karski, Jan Karski, Jan Karski, Jan Karski, Jan Karski, Jan Karski, Jan Karski, Jan Karski, Jan Karski, Jan Karski, Jan Karski, Jan Karski, Jan Karski, Jan Karski, Jan Karski, Jan Karski, Jan Karski, Timothy Snyder, Barbara H. Kalabinski, Piotr Wróbel, Jan Karski and Jan Karski
foreword by Madeleine Albright and Madeleine Albright
afterword by Zbigniew Brzeziński
Georgetown University Press, 2013
Paper: 978-1-62616-031-6 | eISBN: 978-1-58901-984-3 | Cloth: 978-1-58901-983-6
Library of Congress Classification D802.P6K3 2013
Dewey Decimal Classification 940.53438092

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | EXCERPT
ABOUT THIS BOOK

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Albright, a biographical essay by Yale historian Timothy Snyder, an afterword by Zbigniew Brzezinski, previously unpublished photos, notes, further reading, and a glossary—is an apt legacy for this hero of conscience during the most fraught and fragile moment in modern history.