Story of a Secret State: My Report to the World (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781589019836)

In 1939, Jan Karski, a brilliant young Polish student, enjoyed a life of parties and pleasure. But when war broke out his familiar world was destroyed. Karski became a liaison officer of the Polish underground and POW of the Red Army who eventually infiltrated both the Warsaw Ghetto and a German resettlement camp, carrying the first eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust to a mostly disbelieving West. He met with President Roosevelt in 1943 and pleaded for Allied intervention; Roosevelt then established the War Refugee Board, a federal agency that helped settle surviving Jews. Soon after this Karski wrote of his experiences in Story of a Secret State, which was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1944 and became a Book on the Month Club selection. Near the end of the war Karski, a devout Catholic, remained Washington and earned a PhD at Georgetown in the School of Foreign Service and later taught at Georgetown for forty years; he died in 2000. In 2012 Karski received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. According to Alan Furst, Story of a Secret State "stands in the absolute first rank of books about the resistance in World War II."

Author: Jan Karski
ISBN-10: 1589019830
ISBN-13: 9781589019836
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
Language: English
Published: 03/15/2012
Pages: 464
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.92lbs
Size: 9.28h x 6.39w x 1.41d

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 01/07/2013 pg. 51
Kirkus Reviews 01/15/2013