R.I.P. Jan Karski at 86; Warned West About Holocaust. Begged by Warsaw Jews to take news of their plight to the west as he prepared for a secret mission from the Polish Resistance’s government-in-exile to London and Washington, Karski, who was a Polish Catholic, went into the Warsaw Ghetto to witness firsthand. The Polish Underground actually arranged to infiltrate him into a concentration camp in the uniform of a Ukrainian guard. He remained embittered for the rest of his life by the reluctance he felt from the Allied governments to act on the news he conveyed.

There were five points that the two men in the Ghetto

asked Mr. Karski to pass on to the Allied leaders:

Preventing the extermination of the Jews should be

declared an official goal of the Allies fighting Hitler.

Allied propaganda should be used to inform the German

people of the war crimes taking place and to publicize

the names of German officials taking part.

The Allies should appeal to the German people to bring

pressure on Hitler’s regime to stop the slaughter.

The Allies should declare that if the genocide

continued and the German masses did not rise to stop

it, the German people would be held collectively

responsible.

Finally, if nothing else worked, the Allies should carry

out reprisals by bombing German cultural sites and

executing Germans in Allied hands who still professed

loyalty to Hitler.

Mr. Karski later said that the Jews’ proposals were “bitter

and unrealistic,” as if they knew such a program could not

and would not be carried out, and that he had told them

their five points went beyond international law.

For the rest of his life he remembered the response of the

man accompanying Mr. Feiner: “We don’t know what is

realistic, or not realistic. We are dying here! Say it!”

Unless I’m sadly mistaken, the heroism of this man, of whom I had known nothing until I read this obituary, needs to be better known. New York Times