The images of what I saw in the death camp are, I am afraid, my permanent possessions. I would like nothing better than to purge my mind of these memories. For one thing, the recollection of these events invariably brings on a recurrence of the nausea. But more than that, I would like simply to be free of them, to obliterate the very thought that such things ever occurred.
*
Less than a month later, on 1 October, Karski begins his epic eight-week journey to Britain. But, before he leaves, at 5 a.m. with the dawn curfew barely over, he attends a secret Mass in Warsaw, in the rectory behind the Church of the Holy Cross, on Karkowskie Przedmiescie. Here, Father Edmund Krauze, chaplain to the Warsaw resistance, and a dozen of Karski’s closest friends gather to celebrate a final Mass together, which Jan finds intensely moving. At the end, there is another ceremony, which his friends have prepared for him:
Father Edmund asked me to approach the altar which had been improvised in his room and made me kneel down. He then bade me open my shirt and bare my chest. Surprised, and not at all aware of what was to follow, I obeyed his instructions. He took a pyxfn3 in both of his hands, smiled gently at my confusion, and spoke solemnly:
‘I have been authorised by those in whom the authority of the Church is vested, to present you, soldier of Poland, with Christ’s Body to carry with you on your journey. Wear it throughout your journey. If danger approaches, you will be able to swallow it. It will protect you from evil and harm.’
He hung the pyx about my neck. I bent my head and prayed. Father Edmund knelt beside me and prayed with me. There was a deep reverent silence in the room. All I could hear was the faint clicking of the beads in someone’s rosary.
His journey takes him first to Berlin by train, with a swollen jaw (helped by a friendly dentist) so that he can avoid speaking to anybody. He has no way of knowing as the train crosses the border to Germany, but he would not see Poland again for thirty-two years. In Berlin, Karski has some hours to wait before his train to Paris, and so he decides to visit Rudolph Strauch, an old friend from his months in Berlin as an intern at the Polish Embassy in 1935. Karski tells us that the Strauch family had always been ‘deeply liberal and democratic’ in their values, and so he has strong expectations that they would be opposed to Nazism. He finds their house, not far from the station, but Rudolph and his family have changed greatly. Jan is appalled by the effect the last seven years of fascism have had on Rudolph as this former liberal repeats, mantra-like, ‘The Führer knows what he is doing’ throughout their conversation about the war.
They go to a cheap beerhouse near Unter den Linden. Jan has to disguise his real feelings throughout the meal; the talk moves to the ‘problem’ of the Jews and Rudolph and his sister simply repeat the Nazi line. When Jan tries to argue with them, Rudolph says that although he’s fond of him, it’s clear that ‘all the Poles are the enemies of the Führer and the Reich’ so they will have to break off their friendship. Karski leaves the beerhouse anxiously, wondering if he’s perhaps being followed down Unter den Linden. At the end of the street (though Karski’s unaware of this), the lights in the windows of the Arms Ministry are still burning; Albert Speer and his aides are working late into the night again, planning how to double weapons production to support the assault on the Russian front. Karski walks back to the station, reflecting bitterly on the loss of his friendship, and how the corruption of an entire society in Germany has happened in a matter of a few years.
From Berlin he makes his way to Paris, then over the next weeks, Lyons, across the Pyrenees on foot, Barcelona, Madrid and Gibraltar – from where he is finally flown to London, arriving on the evening of 25 November 1942. Given the importance of his mission, he expects to be met at the RAF base by senior Polish diplomatic officials, but British intelligence tells him that he will be kept in quarantine until his case has been ‘resolved’. Karski is appalled by this further delay, and for two days he is held at the Royal Victoria Patriotic Schools building in the middle of Wandsworth Common, which is being used by MI5 during the war. All that is in his mind during these days is the critical need to transmit what he has seen, yet he is now imprisoned by MI5 in supposedly ‘free’ London.
Finally, on 28 November, following furious Polish diplomatic protests, Karski is transferred to Polish Interior Ministry official Paweł Siudak, who drives him to his flat, where he stays for the next two months. Karski is extremely agitated, and when the Polish interior minister, Stanisław Mikołajczyk, arrives that evening to debrief him, he cuts him off, saying that he has vital messages for several Polish figures in London, but more urgently still, there are issues of life and death concerning the Jews of Poland. It is imperative he speaks to the British government as soon as possible, ‘without their help the Jews will perish. I have to see Churchill! … Immediately! I have important information!’ Siudak and Mikołajczyk watch him pacing wildly up and down the room, describing the atrocities he’s witnessed with vivid animation. They decide that he needs rest for several days, and he will only be allowed to meet certain Poles, and all of these meetings will be strictly supervised.fn4
The one outside visit he is allowed to make during this time is to a Polish church on Devonia Road in Islington, Our Lady of Częstochowa and St Casimir. Here Monsignor Władysław Staniszewski hears Jan’s confession, and is shown the pyx given to him by the priest in Warsaw. Staniszewski removes the Eucharist and gives Karski Communion. Jan asks to keep the silver pyx as a memento, but the monsignor suggests it would be better if was hung on the church’s portrait of the Madonna of Częstochowa, as an offering for Karski’s safe passage. Jan agrees, and, apparently, to this day, in the little church, you can see the silver pyx hanging on the painting of the Madonna.
Within days Karski starts to meet high-ranking Polish officials, and arrangements are soon made to meet Jewish members of the Polish National Council. His eyewitness accounts of what he’s seen are electrifying, and word now begins to spread of the young Polish courier. Already his confirmation of the genocide of the Jews starts to ripple out, and by 1 December the World Jewish Congress in New York have been informed by telegram: ‘Have Read Today All Reports From Poland … Jews in Poland Almost Completely Annihilated … Believe The Unbelievable’. On 2 December Karski arrives at Stratton House, Piccadilly (just next to Green Park Underground station) to meet Szmul Zygielbojm, the socialist Bund representative on the Polish National Council.fn5 Karski’s role now is to use his photographic memory and celebrated powers of recall to give extraordinarily detailed accounts of what he’s witnessed. He later describes this period of his life as being little more than a ‘tape-recorder’. But what he was transmitting was explosive. And he recognises the impact his words have on all those he meets.
He details what he has witnessed in Poland – accounts of the Nazi occupation and the Polish underground resistance and what he has seen in the Warsaw Ghetto and at Izbica. He has personal meetings with many of the most senior politicians and agencies among the Allied powers, including General Sikorski, the Polish prime minister in exile in London, Sir Anthony Eden, British Foreign Secretary, the United Nations War Crimes Commission and many others. In early December 1942, largely based on Karski’s reports, the World Jewish Congress issued their statement ‘Annihilation of European Jewry: Hitler’s Policy of Total Destruction’. In late spring 1943 he travels to the United States and personally briefs President Roosevelt in the White House.