Author Thomas Wood with Steering Committee member Alex Storozynski
Two Jan Karski Centennial Campaign Steering Committee members attended the The Tocqueville Forum at Georgetown University to hear from Karski's biographer, E. Thomas Wood, co-author of "Karski: How One Man Tried to Stop the Holocaust." Wood showed a short film about Karski and spoke about his experience interviewing Karski in preparation for the book. He also toured German cities with Karski for the German edition. Steering Committee members Andrzej Rojek and Alex Storozynski, along with website designer Jane Robbins and Witold Dzielski from the Polish Embassy joined a large group of former Karski students and friends at the event.
One memorable quote that Wood mentioned was that Karski often ended their meetings with the phrase "I am a Polish cavalier and can walk on my own," as he was getting older and less steady on his feet. He said that Karski suffered near constant pain from arthritis in his later years, but remarkably was able to quit smoking after 60 years.
He also stated that Mariusz Handzlik, the young Polish diplomat with whom Karski was playing chess at the time of his death in July 2000, subsequently perished in the April 2010 plane crash at Smolensk that also killed Poland's President Lech Kaczynski.
The Tocqueville Forum was founded by Georgetown Professor Patrick Deneen to cultivate civic knowledge and promote inquiry. An audio tape of the event will be posted on www.tocquevilleforum.org at a future date.
