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4.36 AVERAGE
4.36 AVERAGE
This has put me in a state of awe, terror, disgust and yet an overwhelming feeling of pride in the resistance of those in the polish underground and the general polish population. What an incredible and unsettling account. I can’t believe I had not heard of Karski before and while I had been educated on the war in school, this was far more valuable to me. A crucial piece of history contained in 400 pages.
The strength of the polish population in the face of such horrors has amazed me and touched me deeply.
The strength of the polish population in the face of such horrors has amazed me and touched me deeply.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
adventurous
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
I’m embarrassed to have never heard of Jan Karski until now. His story truly reads like something out of a movie - tortured by the Gestapo, snuck into both the Warsaw Ghetto and a concentration camp, and finally escaping to tell his story in the West, I was utterly captivated by Karski’s exploits at every turn. Equal parts inspiring and heartbreaking, this is a book that’ll stick with me.
adventurous
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
Gripping and grisly first hand account of occupied Europe. I don’t know of anything quite like it. A fascinating time capsule as it was written before the war ended. So much tragedy and suffering was yet to be uncovered. Cannot recommend enough!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Genocide, Suicide, Torture
I picked up this book while doing a study of resistance to Hitler. This narrative of the Polish underground is phenomenal. I often had to remind myself that it is nonfiction. I was amazed at the amount of detail he was able to print in the midst of the war. Karski's account of the work he and others did to thwart the Nazi occupiers reads like a espionage novel complete with fake passports, double agents, bumbling villains and prison escapes. His writings about the Warsaw ghetto and his visit to a concentration camp were painfully disturbing and I can only imagine how shocking it would be to those in the West when he first published it. This is an amazing book by an amazing man!
fascinating story if a little repetitively told for my tastes (a lot of detail on the underground and lots of travelling or getting papers for travel)
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
informative
medium-paced
The release of Story of a Secret State by Jan Karski has been accompanied by a great deal of press both in the U.K. and in the rest of Europe. Having read a two-page article about this book on the Italian newspaper’s La Repubblica, I decided to request it from Amazon Vine.
Originally released in the 1940s, Story of a Secret State is an account of Jan K’s life as a member of the Polish Underground. I am fairly ignorant about the situation of Poland during the Nazi occupation; I was therefore very surprised to learn that, despite being apparently under German rule, Poland continued to exist as an ‘underground’ state, with some government officials based in France and some in the country itself, although in the latter case they were always working under assumed names. I learnt some interesting facts and it is hard to believe that the underground government at one point managed to issue its own bonds to finance the resistance operations: slips of papers were released as certificates, and the weight of potatoes and bread were ingeniously used to represent the actual figures that ordinary citizens would loan to the state.
I have to stress that this is one of those books that you need to read for its historical value rather than for the writing itself. The author’s voice, to the modern reader, may sound somewhat self-important and pompous. But getting past one’s initial reservations on style, the narration of Karski’s ascent within the ranks of the Polish Underground soon proves to be a compelling read, with the exception of one or two chapters detailing governmental hierarchy and reproducing state documents, which I admit to finding rather heavy going. By and large, though, Jarksi’s account is a page-turner. The expedients used by the resistance to circumvent Nazi oppression seem straight out of the movies (think Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds) and I had to sometimes stop and remind myself that it is history that inspired fiction and not the other way around.
The spy-story tone of some of the lighter chapters is however abruptly abandoned when the author describes his visit to a concentration camp; then, suddenly, we are reminded of the horrors of World War II, horrors that are so unspeakable and unbelievable that Karski himself feels the need to make a sort of disclaimer, pre-emptying the wall of disbelief that he will soon encounter on the part of the U.K. and U.S. authorities:
The history covered by Jan Karski in Story of a Secret State is the kind of history that we should all be taught at school; Karski’s first person account brings those terrible events to life in a format that is approachable and easy to follow. This book makes the cliché that ‘history is a dry subject’ totally redundant: there is no excuse to be ignorant about one of the darkest and yet most recent periods of Western civilisation. It is hard to believe, from our media-savvy 21st century perspective, that the British Government did not, for a long time, grasp the full extent of the horror that was unfolding in continental Europe, and it is absolutely tragic to think that Karski’s report was not taken seriously. The least that we, the younger generations, can do now, is to read this man’s story and make sure it is never forgotten.
Originally released in the 1940s, Story of a Secret State is an account of Jan K’s life as a member of the Polish Underground. I am fairly ignorant about the situation of Poland during the Nazi occupation; I was therefore very surprised to learn that, despite being apparently under German rule, Poland continued to exist as an ‘underground’ state, with some government officials based in France and some in the country itself, although in the latter case they were always working under assumed names. I learnt some interesting facts and it is hard to believe that the underground government at one point managed to issue its own bonds to finance the resistance operations: slips of papers were released as certificates, and the weight of potatoes and bread were ingeniously used to represent the actual figures that ordinary citizens would loan to the state.
I have to stress that this is one of those books that you need to read for its historical value rather than for the writing itself. The author’s voice, to the modern reader, may sound somewhat self-important and pompous. But getting past one’s initial reservations on style, the narration of Karski’s ascent within the ranks of the Polish Underground soon proves to be a compelling read, with the exception of one or two chapters detailing governmental hierarchy and reproducing state documents, which I admit to finding rather heavy going. By and large, though, Jarksi’s account is a page-turner. The expedients used by the resistance to circumvent Nazi oppression seem straight out of the movies (think Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds) and I had to sometimes stop and remind myself that it is history that inspired fiction and not the other way around.
The spy-story tone of some of the lighter chapters is however abruptly abandoned when the author describes his visit to a concentration camp; then, suddenly, we are reminded of the horrors of World War II, horrors that are so unspeakable and unbelievable that Karski himself feels the need to make a sort of disclaimer, pre-emptying the wall of disbelief that he will soon encounter on the part of the U.K. and U.S. authorities:
I know that many people will not believe me, will not be able to believe me, will think I exaggerate or invent. But I saw it and it is not exaggerated or invented. I have no other proofs, no photographs. All I can say is that I saw it and that it is the truth.
The history covered by Jan Karski in Story of a Secret State is the kind of history that we should all be taught at school; Karski’s first person account brings those terrible events to life in a format that is approachable and easy to follow. This book makes the cliché that ‘history is a dry subject’ totally redundant: there is no excuse to be ignorant about one of the darkest and yet most recent periods of Western civilisation. It is hard to believe, from our media-savvy 21st century perspective, that the British Government did not, for a long time, grasp the full extent of the horror that was unfolding in continental Europe, and it is absolutely tragic to think that Karski’s report was not taken seriously. The least that we, the younger generations, can do now, is to read this man’s story and make sure it is never forgotten.