"To sin by silence when we should protest makes cowards of [all]." - Ella Wheeler Wilcox
"It is not enough to allow dissent, we must demand it, for there is much to dissent from." -- Senator Robert Francis Kennedy, 1967
I have shared first edition copies of the late Jan Karski's 1944 book, book, "Story of a Secret State." He was a soldier, diplomat and one of my Georgetown University University Professors. I took his"Modern Foreign Governments" in January to May 1981. (We would call it 'Modern Foreign Governments I have Known.)'
As a WWII courier with the Polish Underground, Jan Karski warned the world about the Holocaust. The world did not give a fig. Governments promptly proceeded and prepared to ignore him. Informed about the Holocaust without taking action were Churchill, Roosevelt, Anthony Eden, Felix Frankfurter -- the list goes on. Justice Frankfurter, a Jewish Supreme Court Justice, responded to Karski, "I can't believe you, young man. .I'm not saying you're lying, but I can't believe you." Anti-Semitism was prevalent in the world's government offices and military in the midst of a world war. America and our Allies knew where the crematoria were, and they were labelled on dozens of photo maps, at least one of which is in the Holocaust Museum when Brian and I toured after the museum first opened. America did not even bomb a single Nazi railhead to try to halt or slow the Holocaust.
"History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes." (Sometimes attributed to. Mark Twain)
When I was sixteen, in 1973, my mom and I attended a daily public U.S. State Department foreign policy briefing in Washington, D.C. (I was attending my applicant interview with Georgetown University, from which I finally graduated in 1983, with a B.S.F.S. from the School of Foreign Service.) Our State Department briefer, was from the Yugoslavia desk, and he had worked with for us in Yugoslavia. I asked our briefer his view of what would happen when Yugoslav dictator Marshall Broz Tito died. His one word answer: "Bloodbath." A bloodbath is exactly what happened when Tito died. Some 106,000 people died in ethnic warfare. Our maladroit State Department Policy Planning officials had 25 years to be prepared.
On Holocaust Memorial Day, we remember.
Never forget.
Always stand up to oppression.
Never give up.
Ignore the perfectly ordinary people who will always tell you "You'll Never." They don't know and they don't care.
"Yul Nivver,"r never solved a problem or fought injustice.
On December 8, 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor, my dad volunteered for military service, signing up with the 82nd Airborne Division. My father, Edward Adelbert Slavin, Sr., was a Proud Polish-American from Philadelphia born in 1913, Much younger soldiers called him "the old man." The South Jersey Chapter of the 82nd ABN DIVN ASSN is named for him, the "CPL Edward A. Slavin Chapter.'" Dad was a machine-gunner who jumped out of C-47s to machine-gun Nazis. Dad three combat paratrooper jumps in North Africa, Sicily and Normandy. Dad taught me (just as JFK's dad taught him) that you have to stand up to people with power, or they walk all over you. That's what Prof. Karski taught, educating students for decades. Never forget.
Here's how to buy a copy of Jan Karski's best-selling 1944 book, "Story of A Secret State: My Report to the World"
Prof Karski was featured in PBS documentaries, including Shoah and Messenger From Poland.
Here's the award winning actor, David Strathairn, portraying Prof. Jan Karsk in a one- man play, Remember This, with a remarkable ear for Prof. Karsk's voice and humanity:
Here's a statue of Prof. Karski, copies of which are at our alma mater Georgetown U., in NYC, Israel and in Poland: he's sitting on a park bench with a chess set, as if waiting to play chess.
He is honored as one of the righteous in Yad Vashim, and with this statue in Tel Aviv.
Here's Jan Karsk's 1942 report on the Holocaust for our Polish Government in Exile.
Remember this.
5 comments:
Far right mad man Donald Trump already promising to begin fascist purges in government and public service if he is reflected. Will his supporters be given legal immunity from physically attacking enemies of the fascist regime? Will Republicans continue to give great consideration to religious fundamentalist whacko as they write legislation? Will they continue to sabotage and obstruct government to benefit their rich cronies? All these are questions people need to consider as they head to the polls. How long will people continue to allow the GOP to be derelict in their duties and then turn around and blame everyone else for their chicanery and greed.
Karski was teaching at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service while I was there 1961-1965, but his World War II background was never known to me, nor to anyone else I knew.
Also take time out to remember to holocaust that was the Trump Virus during the Trump administration. The chaos, the bigotry, the terrorism, the disorder, the regression, the shame, the lying and abominable grifting.
He referred to killings, but did not discuss his work with the Polish Underground in our class in 1981. It was about that time when he spoke to filmmakers for SHOAH and Messenger From Poland. I happened across his 1944 book in a Salvation Army thrift store on Capitol Hill, then located next to GU Law Center.
You know what else they don't really teach much about down south I noticed? Economic and political systems that differ from our own. They might mention definitions, but they don't get too much into the nuances between capitalism, communism, social democracy, social market economy, third way economics etc. When they teach economics, they only teach capitalist economics and don't even mention that fact. So that kind of thing, along with lack of teaching about race, and of course the religious fundamentalist grift, is why many people down here are so succesptable to right wing politics and the lies and propaganda that right wing politicians push. And the conservative Republicans will claim that it's everyone else trying to "indoctrinate" when things aren't being taught to people and haven't been for quite some time. They have benefitted politically from all the ignorance and irrational ideology.
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