Word: karski
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DIED. JAN KARSKI, 86, former Polish diplomat who provided to the West early eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust in World War II, and whose reports on the Warsaw ghetto and a Nazi death camp led to the Allies' statement in 1942 condemning German crimes against the Jews; in Washington...
Torture & Rescue. Gestapo officials, fat, perfumed, homosexual, questioned him cleverly, relentlessly. Their underlings slugged him behind the ear, whipped him, knocked his teeth out. After three days, in a moment of rest, Karski found a safety razor blade in the lavatory. He slashed his wrists, missed the veins, tried again. The blood streamed like a fountain. Then it stopped...
...first against his will, kept him alive. He was a hero. The Polish underground movement voted him a decoration. The military division of the Polish Socialist Party was ordered to rescue him at any cost, or shoot him if they failed. They bribed a Gestapo guard and picked up Karski after he had jumped from a hospital window...
Danger and Purpose. Karski tells his story impersonally; and it differs from classic adventure stories because the organization rather than the individual is the central figure in it. The fates of the underground soldiers were dwarfed by the depthless misery and heroism of the people they served. When Story of a Secret State is not an adventure story, it is often hackneyed. When it tells of flight, pursuit, escape, triumph, it carries conviction in every incident. Its killings are coldblooded, its sorrows without tears. Dziepatowski, Karski's violinist friend, was caught and executed after he had killed a German...
...underground lived and grew. It was a functioning government. It passed laws, issued decrees, floated a bond issue inside Poland. It sentenced men to death, and carried out the sentences. It paid salaries-Karski got 450 zloty a month. Its soldiers got veterans' rights and pensions. Its schools trained children who were being systematically debauched by the Germans...