The Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland is pleased to inform that the President of the Republic of Poland Bronisław Komorowski has assumed honorary patronage over the Academic Research Conference ‘Jan Karski – Witness, Emissary, Man’. The conference is organized by the Foundation in partnership with the Polish-Jewish Literature Studies Center at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin and the Union of Jewish Communities in Poland. It  will take place on November 6-8, 2013 in Zamość, Poland at the 'Synagogue' Center of the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland.

Project is co-financed by the Department of Public and Cultural Diplomacy of the Ministry of the Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland within the framework of the contest 'Cooperation in the field of public diplomacy 2013'.

During World War II, Jan Karski – an emissary of the Polish Secret State – was the first to inform the Allies about the tragedy of European Jewry. Karski entered the Warsaw Ghetto and a transit ghetto, where he witnessed Jews being sent to the death camp in Bełżec. He then traveled to London and Washington to tell world leaders about what he had seen. It is thanks to him that the world first learned about the Holocaust.

His book ’Story of a Secret State’, in which he described his mission, was published in the United States in 1944. After the war Karski could not return to Communist Poland and stayed in Washington where for many years he worked at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

The aim of the conference is to broaden, consolidate and promote knowledge about Karski’s life and work. We also hope that the conference will contribute to bringing together academic circles from all over the world and popularizing knowledge about Karski worldwide.

The conference will be held at the 'Synagogue' Center of the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland, located inside a Renaissance synagogue in Zamość, restored by the Foundation in 2009-2011 thanks to support from the EEA Financial Mechanism and the Norwegian Financial Mechanism.

The official languages of the conference will be Polish and English. Simultaneous translation will be provided. The conference will be transmitted on the organizers’ websites in both language versions.

Deadline for sending abstracts was August 31, 2013.

Photo: H. Szkutnik