Jan Karski's Visit to Belzec: a Reassessment

[Reviso]

Instead of "my mean thesis", please read "my main thesis". Sorry.
R.

[Reviso]

About my sooo absurd conjecture that a courier different from Karski could be present in London at the same time as Karski, read this opinion of historian Wojtek Rappak :

Much has been said and written about Jan Karski, especially in 2014, his centennial year. The Karski story tells us about a hero of the Polish wartime resistance who risked his life to bring the terrible news about the Holocaust to Western leaders who remained indifferent. An essential part of the Karski story is an account of the ‘report’ which he brought to the West, the ‘Karski report’. However, when we examine archival evidence and follow a chain of events in November 1942, we see that the report is a two-page summary in English which the Polish Government issued on November 24 when it made an official announcement about the Warsaw ghetto deportations. Over the years, historians began to refer to this as the ‘Karski report’, but on the day it was issued, Karski had not yet arrived in London. The materials which Karski took with him from Warsaw were passed to a Polish agent in Paris on October 4th who then placed them on a separate route to London where we think they arrived just before November 14th. We know which documents the ‘Karski report’ was based on so if these were among the materials which arrived by November 14th and if that was the ‘post’ which Karski delivered to Paris, then it would be correct to say that these documents were carried through occupied Europe by Karski. But there is no reliable list of the contents of this ‘post’ and since there were a number of couriers carrying materials which were duplicated in order to increase their chances of reaching London, it is possible that the documents on which the ‘Karski report’ was based were brought to London by a courier other than Karski.

See here :
http://www.ceeol.com/aspx/issuedetails. ... d08546cfdb

R.

[Reviso]

If not Karski, who is the gentile that claimed to have visited Belzec mentioned in Schwarzbart's Dec 5, 1942 telegram in your hypothesis? Especially considering the numerous British War and Foreign Office documents cited by Janssen that prove a Polish diplomat named Jan Karski arrived in Britain in late November 1942 bearing extremely valuable and urgent information awaited by the Polish government.

Walter Laqueur writes in The Terrible Secret that Karski was neither the first nor the last courier to arrive in the West from Warsaw with news of the Holocaust.

And which one is a viable alternative to Karksi, for being the gentile who visited Belzec and spoke to Schwarzbart on Dec 4, 1942?

Try not to dodge the question this time.

As I already said, the important fact for me is that Karski lied : for example, if the reason why he spoke falsely of an Estonian guard was a security reason, why did he continue to speak of an Estonian guard in the interview with Lanzmann ? The hypothesis that he based his story on another account (I didn't know that Michael Mills http://www.fpp.co.uk/Letters/History/Mills310700.html already made this conjecture) is secondary.
But there is perhaps "a viable alternative to Karksi, for being the gentile who visited Belzec and spoke to Schwarzbart on Dec 4, 1942".
Karski had a friend, Jerzy Lerski, who was with him in London in December 1942. Wood and Jankowski (2014, p. 141) say that Lerski was "soon to become a courier himself", but according to the Polish Wikipedia, he was already a courier in 1941 : https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerzy_Lerski

Wood and Jankowski (2014, p. 142) say that Karski "recommanded that Lerski be sent to the homeland" and that Lerski parachuted into Poland in February 1943. Perhaps Lord Selborne thought it was a pity that the witness was no more in blood and flesh in the West and that Karski could play his role ? Perhaps Lerski agreed and the silent complicity of Schwarzbart and Zygielbojm was secured ? Now, if you ask me a proof that Lerski met with Schwarzbart in the first days of December 1942, I have none. (Note : if there was really a courier - Lerski or another - who told the story to Schwarzbat in the first days of December 1942, I don't say that this courier was not a liar himself.)
R.

[Reviso]

There are really strange stories. Wood and Jankowski, 2014, p. 276 :
"British and Polish archives both include reports by and about an envoy fom the underground named Kwaśniewski, who arrived in England at the same time, met all the same people and left the same general impression on the British as Karski. There can be no doubt that "Karski" and "Kwaśniewski" are the same person. In an interview (May 1, 1993), Karski said that while he did not specifically remember the name Kwaśniewski, he did recall occasionally using a name other than Karski while in London. An August 25, 1943 telegram from Witold Babiński of the Polish Foreign Ministry to the Polish embassy in Washington appears conclusive on the issue : it refers to the envoy then in Washington as "Karski/Kwaśniewski" (Telegram file, HIA/MSZ)."

Is this telegram so conclusive ? If they first promised Kwaśniewski and thereafter substituted Karski for him, it was very natural to say that both were the same.
R.

[Reviso]

An important question in this discussion is : When did Karski begin to speak of his visit to a camp and did he say from the start that it was the Bełżec camp ? In his book "Auschwitz, the Allies and Censorship of the Holocaust", Michael Fleming, discussing the attitude of British intelligence toward Karski, writes :
"British officials generally accepted the information about the Warsaw ghetto but were less convinced by the material about Bełżec. Frank Savery wrote to Frank Roberts on 3 December and stated that 'the evidence as evidence does not seem to me quite convincing'." (P. 153.) Page 349, note 111, Fleming gives the following reference : NA.FO 371/31097 (191) (National Archives, Foreign Office), Savery to Roberts, 3 December 1942.
Fleming doesn't say explicitly that Savery spoke of Karski's testimony, but the context suggests it strongly. If it is the case, I should give up my argument that there are reasons to think that Karski didn't speak from the start of his visit to a camp. But I would like to be sure that Savery spoke of Karski.
I could probably not get access to the document, but may I suggest that Friedrich Jansson checks it ? It could provide him with a proof that Karski spoke already of Bełżec (and not of another camp) in the first days of his stay in England.
R.

[TheBlackRabbitofInlé]

I have a copy of the cited letter. Savery was sending to Roberts a copy of his translation of a Polish government report about the extermination of Jews in Poland. Fleming neglected to clearly tell his readers that Savery was sceptical about the report's claim that Jews were being electrocuted at Belzec.

This report in question was published in the Polish Fortnightly Review, December 1, 1942.
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/nazioccupation/polishforthnigtreview.html

There is no evidence Savery was personally aware the Karski had been held by the British at the RPS between 26-28 Nov—the report on his single interrogation wasn't even typed up until 12 Dec 1942. Nor is there any evidence Karski told the British about Belzec or any other camp. The interrogation report mentions the population of the Warsaw ghetto had fallen from 450,000 to 100,000 between Oct 1941 and Oct 1942 and that the decrease was due to them dying or being killed, but it doesn't state anything about deportations from the ghetto.

As Fleming states [p.151f], Karski refused to cooperate with his interrogators at first, and only eventually gave them some details once representatives of the Polish government were permitted to be present. The papers on Karski at the NA show that Karski told the British he was in possession of very important information and that the Polish gov. officials were telling the Foreign Office the same thing, whilst pulling out the stops to get him released and then later complaining about the fact he was ever detained at all.

[Reviso]

Many thanks. I note your remark : "Nor is there any evidence Karski told the British about Belzec or any other camp. " I can't help thinking that Karski didn't speak of his visit to a camp in the first period of his stay in England.
R.

[TheBlackRabbitofInlé]

I note your remark : "Nor is there any evidence Karski told the British about Belzec or any other camp. "

As I explained, Karski was very tight-lipped when he spoke to the British. "When KARSKI was first seen he refused to answer questions" says a 12 December 1942 letter by the MI5's Major K C Younger.

I can't help thinking that Karski didn't speak of his visit to a camp in the first period of his stay in England.

Well, there's evidence that he did: Ignacy Schwarzbart's 5 December 1942 telegram to the American Jewish Congress.

[Reviso]

I can't help thinking that Karski didn't speak of his visit to a camp in the first period of his stay in England.

Well, there's evidence that he did: Ignacy Schwarzbart's 5 December 1942 telegram to the American Jewish Congress.

OK, that's your position : the unnamed emissary is Karski. For me, it is an unnamed emissary. In the present thread, I indicated some facts suggesting that Karski did not meet Schwarzbart in the first days of December 1942. Every interested person can reread the thread.

I wonder if it is very clear who is who. There are telegrams from England to the Polish undeground signed "Karski" (by the way, aren't we told that the Polish underground knew him under the supposed name "Witold" ?) : when his biographers asked him for an explanation about the content of these telegrams, the man with a prodigious memory had forgotten.
There are contradictions in the chronology of Karski's journey from Poland to England. Noting such contradictions in the telegrams of the organizers of Karski's journey, M. Fleming conjectures that the organizers made confusions. Perhaps the confusion is made by historians who erroneously believe that persons with different supposed names (Witold, Karski, whatever) were the same person ? Michael Mills contemplated the hypothesis that Karski recycled a story already told by another courier. Wojtek Rappak, a mainstream historian, writes about the so-called ‘Karski report’ : " it is possible that the documents on which the ‘Karski report’ was based were brought to London by a courier other than Karski." But Karski pretended that the ‘Karski report’ was based on the "mail" he brought from Poland. If Rappak's hypothesis is correct, it happened that Karski usurped the role of another courier. In such conditions, I think it is difficult to say that the Schwarzbart telegram evidently refers to Karski.

After the war, Karski pretended that he had told of the extermination of the Jews, in December 1942 to Raczkiewicz and in February 1943 to Anthony Eden, but both Raczkiewicz and Anthony Eden took notes about these conversations (Raczkiewicz's notes were detailed, Eden wrote a report about Karski' statements) and they don't mention the extermination of Jews.

Wood and Jankowski, biographers of Karski, say that his experience in the camp became an ordinary feature of his testimony when he had a second round of meetings with personalities...

I would like to know the exact text of the telegrams of the organizers of Kaski's journey : what name does this telegram give to the courier, what name does this other telegram give him, do the contradictory telegrams speak of a courier with the same name, and so on.
R.

[TheBlackRabbitofInlé]

On the traditional view, Karski’s story is as follows: Jewish leaders, having learned of Karski’s impending mission to London, asked him to carry a message for the Jews as well as for the Poles. They smuggled him into the Warsaw ghetto and into the Belzec “death camp” so that he could act on their behalf as a direct eyewitness. He then “became one of the first eyewitnesses to present to the West the whole truth about the fate of the Jews in occupied Poland.”

There's no evidence that Karski mentioned Belzec to the British but his interrogation report mentions that he had told them about what was happening in the Warsaw Ghetto as recently as August 1942:

[Reviso]

On the traditional view, Karski’s story is as follows: Jewish leaders, having learned of Karski’s impending mission to London, asked him to carry a message for the Jews as well as for the Poles. They smuggled him into the Warsaw ghetto and into the Belzec “death camp” so that he could act on their behalf as a direct eyewitness. He then “became one of the first eyewitnesses to present to the West the whole truth about the fate of the Jews in occupied Poland.”

There's no evidence that Karski mentioned Belzec to the British but his interrogation report mentions that he had told them about what was happening in the Warsaw Ghetto as recently as August 1942:

OK, the "informant" of the British said he was in the ghetto in Augustus 1942 and the envoy mentioned in Schwarzbat's telegram said this also, So you can infer 1° that the informant of the British and the envoy mentioned by Schwartzbart are the same person; 2° that this person is Karski.
I'm not 100 % sure of 1° and 2°, but, as I said, the important question is : "Did Karski visit a camp ?" There were many occasions where he could speak of his visit to a camp and where he didn't (for example his interrogation by the British), so I doubt.
Do you have a copy of the whole report of Karski's audition ? If it is the case, could you say how he is referred to ? Are there some informations about his journey from Poland to England ? Or perhaps could you post these informations on your blog ? I think I'm not the one who wishes precise information about the pieces concerning Karski.
R.

[TheBlackRabbitofInlé]

- Do you have a copy of the whole report of Karski's audition ?
- interrogation; yes

- If it is the case, could you say how he is referred to ?
- "Jan Romoald [sic] Karski"

- Are there some informations about his journey from Poland to England ?
- not in this file. In another file it mentions that after leaving Poland he went to France, then Gibraltar, then to England. But it's clear this info came from M.Budny of the Polish Embassy and not Karski himself.

- Or perhaps could you post these informations on your blog ?
- I'm not going to post photos of the entire document, but I might get round to transcribing it one day. But most of the 3 page report is about things the British were interested in, e.g. how well received are the BBC radio broadcasts? What's the air raid protection like in Warsaw?

- I think I'm not the one who wishes precise information about the pieces concerning Karski.
- That's seems odd, considering all the wacky alternative theories you've thrown around on this thread. You can always go see the file yourself or contact Kew and ask them to send you a copy.

OK, the "informant" of the British said he was in the ghetto in Augustus 1942 and the envoy mentioned in Schwarzbat's telegram said this also, So you can infer 1° that the informant of the British and the envoy mentioned by Schwartzbart are the same person; 2° that this person is Karski.
I'm not 100 % sure of 1° and 2°, but, as I said, the important question is : "Did Karski visit a camp ?" There were many occasions where he could speak of his visit to a camp and where he didn't (for example his interrogation by the British), so I doubt.

Weds...25th — Karski arrives in England and is detained, the Polish Embassy contacts the FO to ask for his release
Thurs..26th — Karski is taken to the Royal Patriotic School in London [this must been when he refused to answer questions]
Fri........27th — Karski is interrogated in the presence of reps. of the Polish Ministry of the Interior and Security Services
Sat.......28th — Karski is released at 15:00hrs


Following is a Foreign Office file note by Frank Roberts dated Friday, 27 Nov 1942, which shows how peeved senior Polish ministers were over his detainment:

M.Budny of the Polish Embassy called this evening on the special instructions of the Ambassador, who had wished him to come himself [sic], about the case of M. Jan Karski, an emissary of the Polish Ministry of the Interior who had recently arrived in this country with information from Poland via France and Gibraltar. Although M. Budny had spoken to Mr. Allen about this case on Wednesday night [i.e. the 25th, the day Karski arrived in England]; he had still not been released from the Royal Patriotic Schools. This had somewhat incensed the Deputy Prime Minister, M. Mikolajczyk, for whom M. Karski was working. Count Raczynski particularly hoped that we would be able to fix matters up as it was most important to consider these valuable reports from Poland as rapidly as possible. I also gathered that it was important for Count Raczynski personally to be able to give some satisfaction to M. Mikolajczyk!

M. Budny then went on to discuss the general question of getting people through the Royal Patriotic Schools who were vouched for by their Governments. He drew attention to a circular W 789/371/64 of February 2nd. He pressed that if the Polish Embassy vouched for an individual and approached the Foreign Office on his behalf he should be released at once. I said that I thought this was expecting too much of any security authorities, whether British or Polish. I added that I was not very familiar with the note of February 2nd although at first sight it seemed to meet M. Budny's point so far as this can be done in general terms. I undertook, however, to look into the question and to let M. Budny have some further reply.

Mr. Allen has, I understand: since rung up Major Alley again with a view to securing M. Karshi's early release.

F K Roberts
27TH November, 1942.

- NA FO 371/32231

[Reviso]

(...)

Many thanks for these excellent informations.

I note the following sentences from Roberts's report :
"M. Jan Karski, an emissary of the Polish Ministry of the Interior who had recently arrived in this country with information from Poland (...) Count Raczynski particularly hoped that we would be able to fix matters up as it was most important to consider these valuable reports from Poland as rapidly as possible"

This seems to contradict the now official version : the microfilm brought by Karski from Poland was sent to England from France and arrived in England several days before Karski. Perhaps this now official version is used to explain how it is possible that the so-called "Karski report", which supposedly is based on the information brought by Karski, was already mentioned by the press before the arrival of Karski in England.
R.

[Werd]

Even the gas chamber mongers at axishistory forum have deduced from karski's writings that it could not be Izbica. More specifically, read the posts by little grey rabbit.
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=175505

Revisionists once tried the strategy that Karski was actually at Izbica and simply made a mistake. Theodore O Keefe was one of them. However, that is no longer tenable given Jansson's article. However, others have come out of the woodwork to claim that Karski changed his views about where he actually was near the end of his life.

Initially, theblackrabbit shows reasons why it would not be Izbica.
https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2016/09/25/treblinka-memorial-site-is-in-todays-news/
Although later on, Jeff and theblackrabbit apparently come across a claim that karski revised his claim in 1995 ON FILM about where he went; to Izbica and not Belec. Nobody has seen it though.

I struggle to believe that Murdock could recall the name of an obscure Polish town he’d heard once 15 years earlier. Nor do I think Karski even mentioned Izbica in front of Murdock, because in 1985 Karski definitely still believed he went to Belzec. So, Murdock’s full of it.

But this paper certainly backs up the Izbica theory:

“In his oral reports during the war, in his memoirs, published in 1944 (Jan Karski, Story of a Secret State, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1944) and in the statements to Lanzmann and, later, to Walter Laqueur (The Terrible Secret, New York: Henry Holt, 1998, p. 231), Karski says he visited the Belzec extermination camp. In Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe (New York: Harper, 1993), Raul Hilberg has shown that his testimony does not fit with Belzec (see also R. Hilberg, Sources of Holocaust Research: An Analysis, Lanham [Maryland]: Ivan R Dee, 2001). In 1990, David Engel postulated that Karski had not been to Belzec, but to the camp at Belzyce (‘The Western Allies and the Holocaust’ [note 2], 374). It may be, however, that Karski went to the Belzec secondary camp at Izbica Lubelska, see E. Thomas Wood and Stanislaw M. Jankowski, Karski: How One Man Tried to Stop the Holocaust (New York: Wiley, 1994), which draws on research by Polish historian Józef Marszalek. As Jean-Louis Panné points out, ‘When [Karski] was able to visit Poland in 1993, he visited both camps and formally identified Izbica, between Lublin and Belzec, not far from Zamosc: Jean-Louis Panné, Jan Karski, le roman et l’histoire (Paris: Pascal Galodé, 2010), 20. In an interview filmed in 1995, Karski explained that he had certainly been to Izbica and not – as he had long believed – to Belzec: Diane Glazer Show (Los Angeles: Jewish Television Network, 1995), video consultable in the Jan Karski Papers, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University, box 31, file 11. In the Polish version of his memoirs, published in 1999, Karski has had Belzec replaced by Izbica, as Céline Gervais-Francelle points out in the preface to Jan Karski, mon témoignage devant le monde, Histoire d’un état clandestin [the French translation of Karski’s Story of a Secret State] (Paris: Robert Laffont, 2010), xx and 389, note 4.”

Rémy Besson, The Karski Report: A Voice with the Ring of Truth
http://etudesphotographiques.revues.org/3467

Comment by The Black Rabbit of Inlé — October 7, 2016 @ 9:56 am

Here’s another reason why Murdock’s claim in 2000 that Karksi told him in 1985 that he went to Izbica is highly dubious:

In 1987 an interview with Karski by the Polish journalist Maciej Kozlowski was published in the July 1987 edition of Dissent magazine.
https://search.opinionarchives.com/Summ ... P326-1.htm

“M.K. How did you get into the Belzec camp?

J.K. A guide contacted me. He appeared to be a Jew, but of course I cannot say for sure. We did not introduce ourselves and we did not talk. We went together to Lublin, changed trains, and arrived in Belzec. It was the middle of October. The guide took me to a hardware shop. Several hours later a man arrived. He spoke perfect Polish and was very matter-of-fact. He had an Estonian guard’s uniform for me. I knew that the Germans never used Poles in the death camps. The extermination was to be kept secret. The man gave me precise instructions: “You will follow me. You must not speak to anyone. You speak neither Polish nor German. I will take you into the camp, but once inside you will be on your own. As far as I know, you want to see the camp. After a while, I will give you a sign, and we will leave together.”

We entered the camp without any trouble. My guide was well known there, and after showing some documents, we were allowed in. The camp was enclosed, partly with barbed wire, partly by the wall. On the right side I saw a railway sidetrack. I was standing close to the main gate through which the Jews were being taken out. For many years I could not understand it. I thought that Belzec was a transit camp. It was after the war that I learned that it was a death camp. During the trials of the German war criminals in the late 1940’s, some Polish railwaymen who co-operated with the underground were cross-examined as witnesses. They explained the scene I saw.

By German standards, Belzec was run very inefficiently. In fact at that time its commander, SS Captain Gottlieb Hering, was on trial before an SS court. The extermination in Belzec was done by exhaust gases from engines salvaged from Soviet tanks. It was a very ineffective way of killing. The engines over-heated, and, and the whole process of killing lasted for a long time. Sometimes one transport had not been completed by the time a new one arrived. In such cases the new transport was directed to Sobibor, where the death machine was running much better. I witnessed such a scene. The Jews were being transported from Belzec to Sobibor. I could not see the gas chambers; they were, as I learned later, deeper inside the camp, on the other side of the mass of people being directed into the cars.

I would like now to mention some events that were taking place at the same time but were fully revealed only after the war. In August 1942 a certain German officer, Kurt Gerstein, arrived in Belzec. He was to put things in order, that is, to instruct the inefficient commander as to the virtues of Cyklon B gas compared with exhaust gas. He fulfilled his duty, but he must have had some conscience still alive within him. Returning, he met a Swedish diplomat on the train and told him the whole story. He told about the exhaust gases, the collapsing tank engines, the whole story about the extermination of Jews in the Belzec camp. The Swede made a report and sent it to Stockholm. But the Swedish authorities, in an effort not to antagonize the still powerful Germans, kept this report secret. An entire year passed before the report reached London. It didn’t mention Gerstein, of course. The Polish government learned about the report and made an uproar. But by now it was 1944. The ‘Jewish question’ in occupied Poland was solved. After the war Gerstein was caught by the French. He made a detailed report, and committed suicide.

M.K. That means that the information you transmitted to the West was not complete, but even so it was horrible enough the people could not believe you?

J.K. I saw terrible things in Belzec. I wrote about them in my book, Story of a Secret State, (Boston, 1944). I broke down right there. My guide noticed that I was not behaving normally and he shouted over the Jewish crowd, ‘Folge mir, folge mir!’ We both left by the same route. I spent less than an hour in the camp. I was sick, vomiting blood. I saw terrible things. Unbelievable. You would not believe what I saw either! Even today, although over forty years have passed, I cannot forget the scenes I witnessed there. [pp.330-331]”

Sure, people can argue that Karski went to Izbica, but those wanting to claim that he ADMITTED he went to Izbica have no proof to support that assertion.

I’m sure people will cite his appearance on this Jewish TV channel in 1995, but why did Besson not quote what Karski said if he really conceded he went [or may have went] to Izbica and not Belzec?

Comment by The Black Rabbit of Inlé — October 8, 2016 @ 10:18 am

[Reviso]

Thus, during years, Karski spoke of Belzec and when it was noted that his story didn't fit Belzec, his admirers suggested to him that the camp was Izbica and that he would be left in peace if he replaced Belzec by Izbica, and so he did. And what if this story of extermination by quicklime was a simple propaganda lie ? What if he never was in a camp, neither Belzec nor Izbica ? His biographers Wood and Jankowski speak of a Polish antinazi leaflet from the summer 1942 that spoke of extermination by quicklime. The content of this text is so similar to Karski's story that Wood and Jankowski deduce that the leaflet has Karski's story as source. But why couldn't we think that Karski recycled the content of the leaflet ? Karski was a professional propagandist, during and after the war. It seems that he did not speak of his visit to a camp neither to Sikorski, to Władysław Raczkiewicz nor to Anthony Eden. Perhaps he used this story as an argument in order to incite Jews to ask for retaliation bombings on Germany.
R.