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Apr 11
Remember This: The Legacy of Jan Karski Today

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Exhibition Held at the Sejm, the Polish Parliament

Speaker Ewa Kopacz and Museum Director Robert Kostro Speaker Ewa Kopacz and Museum Director Robert Kostro

On the 6th of March, the official opening of the “Jan Karski. The World Knew” exhibition opened in Warsaw.  It was organized by the Polish History Museum with cooperation with the Jan Karski Educational Foundation. Twenty-two panels representing Jan Karski’s life and work were displayed in the main hall of the Polish Parliament.

The Speaker of the lower chamber, Ms. Ewa Kopacz, introduced honored guests to the event, reminding everyone of Karski’s heroic mission and calling it “a moral milestone of the 20th century.”  Director of the Polish History Museum Robert Kostro followed with his speech on the values embodied by Jan Karski and their universality in the modern world.

Among other speakers was the US Ambassador to Poland, Steven D. Mull, who shared with the audience his personal experience of Karski being his professor at Georgetown University. Karski’s magnetic personality and outstanding knowledge made the lectures unforgettable. However, Ambassador Mull found out much later about his courageous mission since Karski - in his modesty - never mentioned it in class.

The director of the Centre for Dialogue and the author of the exhibition appealed publicly to Speaker Kopacz to establish 2014 as the year of Jan Karski to celebrate the centennial of his birth on April 24, 2014. This idea is very popular with many people in Poland. Deputy Speaker of the Sejm Mr. Grabarczyk and Rep. Sledzinska-Katarasinska expressed their strong support for the idea. The notion to declare 2014 the Jan Karski Year was originally submitted by Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski earlier this year.

The event attracted numerous visitors and drew attention from the media. Detailed reports were immediately published on their websites that commented on the news. It was the third time that the exhibition was shown to the public in Poland, and it is available to visitors in the cities of Warsaw and Wrocław. The exhibit in Wrocław is on display from March 1 -18, 2013, and will be back soon in Warsaw at the Warsaw University Library.

Photos below show Speaker Ewa Kopacz and Museum Director Robert Kostro at the event. (All photos courtesy of sejm.gov.pl and photographer Christopher Bialoskorski)