Unanimously approved by New York’s City Council
and happily assented to by Mayor Michael
Bloomberg, the renaming honors for all time
Jan Karski the
Polish diplomat who infiltrated a Nazi
concentration camp and was the first to bring to
the West word of the Holocaust's horrors. His
pleadings to the British and Americans went
unheeded. For his bravery and selflessness,
Karski is listed in the temple in Jerusalem as
one of the “Righteous Among the Nations” which
honors the humanitarian efforts of Polish men
and women who have been recognized by Yad Vashem
for saving Jews from certain death during
the Holocaust.
Quite a number of Polish, Jewish and American
dignitaries
were on hand including
The Honorable Ewa Junczyk
– Ziomecka, Secretary of State at the
Chancellery of the
President of the Republic of Poland; The
Honorable
Edward Koch, former New York City Mayor; His
Excellency
Maciej Kozlowski
of the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs in Warsaw; former Ambassador of Poland to Israel ;
John De Gioia, the President of Georgetown
University;
Robert Gallucci, the Dean of Walsh School of
Foreign
Service at Georgetown; and Robert Billingsley,
the chair
of Georgetown University John Carroll Weekend.
They were welcomed by Poland’s Consul General
Krzysztof Kasprzyk, a driving force behind
the Karski recognition, who stated “Jan
Karski
was a legendary Polish underground courier in
World War II, the first person to tell the
Allies about the Holocaust when there might have
been time to stop it. He is a real hero of the
Polish and Jewish people."
Ed Koch who was for years a close friend and
chess playing partner of Karski’s was like many
of the guests tremendously moved by the respect
and honor to a man of extreme courage.
Minutes before the new street sign was unveiled,
in the shadow of the
Polish Consulate,
the former Mayor extolled Karski for his bravery
and compassion.
"We are here to
honor a hero, a saint," Koch said. Koch also
As minister Ewa
Junczyk-Ziomecka said, “Remembering the
Righteous among Nations is not only important
because of
the thousands of people who were saved but also because
they saved us all from utter disgrace.”
Following the ceremony there as a panel
discussion that
included other Karski’s former Georgetown
colleagues,
Righteous Among the Nations as well as a number
of
Holocaust survivors. Masha Leon, Cultural
Editor of The Forward, New York’s first Jewish
newspaper, knew Karski
as a young girl and was also grateful to The
Righteous who
hid her and her mother and saved her from certain death in
the camps. She wonders to this day who it was.
Sitting in the audience renowned filmmaker
Albert Maysles nodded sadly.