THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
20 Friday, October 15, 1982
British Guilt in 'Courier from Warsaw'
Gary R Miller &
Associates
By ALLEN A. WARSEN
(Editor's note: The
Highly-acclaimed "Cou-
rier from Warsaw"
volume on Poland pub-
lished by Wayne State
University Pres con-
tains important data re-
lating to the Holocaust.
This review by Allen
Warsen deals especially
with these . aspects of an
important volume.)
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method used, unprece-
dented in history, seemed
matters of the highest im-
portance.
"Everybody had listened
with interest mixed with
disbelief. Thirty-odd years
later, looking through the
reports of those inter-
locutors (in the British War
Archives) I found all the
references to the Jews omit-
ted."
Thus wrote Jan Nowak in
his World War II memoir,
"Courier from Warsaw,"
(Wayne State University
Press).
To the above statement
Nowak added this in-
credible account: "Jan
Karski, my predecessor
(as courier from the un-
derground) arrived in
London from Poland in
1942 with extensive
eyewitness information
about the fate of the
Jews. Before he left Po-
land, Karski, posing as an
Estonian policeman,
risked his life by getting
into the concentration
camp at Majdanek to see
with his own eyes what
was happening to the
Jews sent there.
"Karski met with An-
thony Eden and described at
length the systematic and
progressive extermination
of the Jewish population.
The undersecretary of state
considered the conversation
so important that a report
on it was circulated to all
members of the war cabinet.
I looked this up at the Public
Records Office and was as-
tonished to find everything
Karski had said about the
extermination of the Jews
omitted from the docu-
ment."
Nowak asks: "Why?"
The only exception
among the British bigwigs,
writes Nowak, was Lord
Robert Vansittart, who be-
fore the outbreak of the war
warned of Nazi expan-
sionist preparations. As a
result, he was eased out as
permanent undersecretary
of state in Neville Chamber-
lain's cabinet. Also during
the war he foresaw the
Soviets' control of East
Europe. At the same time he
was deeply concerned with
the fate of the Polish Jews.
This concern he de-
scribed in a lengthy arti-
cle, "The Nation in the
Dock" in the London
Daily Mail.
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Jan Nowak, whose given
and family names are Zdzis-
law Jezioranski, devoted in
his memoir considerable
space to the Jewish tragedy
in Poland. He recorded the
German atrocities towards
the Jews and related
numerous Nazi barbaric in-
cidents against Jewish
people that he himself wit-
nessed.
One day, he writes, while
serving as a witness in a dis-
trict court, he saw through a
window that faced the
ghetto "a crowd of Jews
being herded along the
middle of the street . . .
They were half-running,
jostling one another, har-
ried from both sides, by SS
with long whips. Their tor-
mentors . . . seemed like
drunken men with an ex-
pression of animal excite-
ment on their sweating
faces. Along the pavement
two old Jews with much toil
were pushing a handcart
full of sick people . . .
"Suddenly a well-dressed
woman with a baby in her
arms detached herself from
the throng and tried to
reach a Gestapo man on the
sidewalk, making signs to
him and waving a roll of
banknotes — a last desper-
ate attempt to save herself
and her child. I heard the
swish of the whip: the
woman staggered and drop-
ped the child that rolled
along the pavement. At that
moment an old Jewish
woman raised her hands
and eyes to heaven and
screamed at the top of her
voice like one possessed:
"Hitler, may grass grow on
the walls of your house!"
The author adds this
interesting remark: "The
old woman's curious
curse, 'May grass grow
on the walls of your
house,' came back to my
mind years later, in the
summer of 1952, when I
visited the ruins of Hit-
ler's villa at Berchtesga-
den, blown up by the
Americans. The bat-
hroom walls had been
faced with expensive
tiles, and the grass was
now growing luxuriously
between them."
A close friend of the
author was Henryk
Wolinski, whom Yad Vas-
hem in Jerusalem after the
war designated as one of
"The Righteous Among the
Nations." Known as Wac-
law, he was chief of the
Jewish section of the
Bureau of Information and
Propaganda of the Polish
underground.
"Short, dark-haired with
heavy 116m-rimmed glas-
ses," he knew personally
most of the organizers and
leaders of the Jewish Fight-
ing Organization who
perished during the War-
saw Ghetto Uprising. Wac-
law, writes Novak, "was to-
tally devoted to the task of
saving the Jews and im-
pressed me as a man de-
feated by his helplessness."
Significant is the author's
statement that soon after
the outbreak of the ghetto
uprising, an underground
"company of sappers under
the command of Captain
Josef Pszenny tried to blast
a hole in the wall surround-
ing the ghetto to let civi-
lians " escape." But the SS
murderers anticipated this
possibility and attacked the
Poles, who were forced to
withdraw after two of their
comrades were killed and
four wounded.
Regrettably,' the un-
derground's help to the
ghetto fighters was
miniscule. The A.K.
(Armja Krajowa — or
Home Army) should have
provided them with more
weapons prior and dur-
ing the uprising. And just
as it fought the informers
who served the Gestapo,
it should have fought the
extortionist and murder-
ous "shmaltsovniks"
(szmalcownicy) who
caused so much misery to
the Jews who were hid-
ing on the Aryan side.
Jan Nowak is currently a
national director of the
Polish 'American Congress
and a consultant to the U.S.
National Security Council.
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