Holocaust question and the CODOH

I just finished reading a biographical book titled "Karski" (John Wiley, 1994) written by E. T. Wood (a reporter for the Tennessean in Nashville) and S. M.Jankowski (a historian and leading authority on Polish underground during WW2 ). Jan Karski, his true name Jan Kozielewski, was born in 1914 in Lodz, Poland. After studying law and diplomacy, and internship at a few Polish consulates, Jan Kozielewski was on his way to become a successful career diplomat. His life and dreams were shattered in 1939 when the Nazi Germany attacked Poland. The Blitz Krieg finds Jan fighting as an Artillery Lieutenant. After the occupation of Poland Jan joins the Polish underground movement under the name Karski. His task was to carry information, crossing borders and serving as liaison between the Polish resistance and the Polish Government-in-exile located in London. His dangerous activities as a secret messenger brought him to France, Great Britain and the US, and enabled him to meet a few of the top officials of that time. In 1943 he secretly traveled to Washington where he met President Roosevelt. In London he briefed the British foreign secretary Anthony Eden. After the war Karski immigrated to the US. In 1953 he earned a Ph.D. In political science and joined Georgetown University faculty where he taught till his retirement in 1984.

This book belongs to the kind of works that reinforces our belief in humanity. Karski, a devout Catholic, was the main messenger that brought to the attention of the top Allied officials theplight of the Jews under Nazi domination. One of the paragraphs in this book, that I found relevant in the context of the "open debate" called by CODOH advertisement, details the material Karski carried. In 1942, he is trusted with a roll of microfilmed documents to be delivered in London to General W. Sikorski the leader of the Polish government-in-exile. One of the documents was an eloquent protest from the Front of Rebirth of Poland, one of the many underground organizations. Here is a section of this document presented on page 131 of the book:

"At the ramps, boxcars are waiting. The hangmen push up 150 of the condemned [Jews deported from the Warsaw Ghetto] into each one. A thick layer of lime and chlorine is spread on the floors, with water poured over it. The boxcar's doors are sealed. Some times the train leaves as soon as is loaded; sometimes it sits on the track - perhaps for a couple of days - but it doesn't matter to anyone anymore. Of the people packed so tightly that the dead cannot fall and continue to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the living, of the people slowly dying in the fumes of lime and chlorine, deprived of air or even a drop of water, none will live. Wherever, whenever the death trains arrive, they will contain nothing but corpses . . . .

We do not want to be like Pilate. We have no means of actively opposing the German murderers; we cannot overcome them or save anybody. But we protest, from the bottom of our hearts, which are filled with compassion, loathing, and horror. The protest is demanded of us by God - God, who has forbidden us to kill. It is demanded by the Christian conscience. Every creature calling itself a man has the right to the love of his neighbor. The blood of the helpless calls to the heavens for vengeance. Whoever among us does not support his protest is not a Catholic."

I am aware that some of my young friends in our campus were not so lucky to have a grandfather, or a granduncle that fought in WW2, and to learn from them history lessons that can not be forgotten.

I am also aware that I have chosen to present a document that describes a degree of sadism and savagery that may offend some readers. However, the lies and the poison of CODOH must be fought and uncovered in the most direct way possible. I consider the activity of CODOH sacrilegious, an insult to the memory of hundred of thousands of American solders that have sacrificed their lives, their youth and their health on the fields of Europe and on the islands of the Pacific, it is an insult against the memory of innocents murdered in the Armenian Holocaust (1915 - 1918), WW2 holocaust, Stalin's era, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and the last decade events in the Balkans and Rwanda. I urge the WPI community not to ignore the CODOH, but to stand for what we believe it is right and to let the world know that hate and bigotry have no place in our hearts, that ours is a united campus in its goal to bring light and to make this world a better place.