Remembering International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, 2024

"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.