Courage

Jan Karski was an agent of the Polish underground during the Second World War. He infiltrated the Warsaw Ghetto to document conditions, disguised himself as a guard to investigate a concentration camp, was captured and tortured by the Gestapo. He escaped and, not once but three times, travelled across occupied Europe to France and Britain with details of Nazi atrocities in Poland. The detailed reports he carried to the Allies were dismissed. No one could believe the scale of the Nazi death machine.

      Touching his statue’s arm, rubbed shiny by countless hands, I wondered: would I have had such courage?

Inspired by Dance with Me, and death-defying courage. Photo of the statue of Jan Karski in Kazimierz, the old Jewish district of Krakow, by Ron Thompson.