During the next meeting of the Bolesławiec City Council, councillors will decide on names for new streets in the city. The justifications for the draft resolutions state:
The proposal to name the newly created street is related to the expansion of a residential estate and the need to assign street numbers to newly constructed properties.
What names will the new streets in Bolesławiec bear?
- Żurawia
- Skowronkowa
- Kormoranów
- Bażantowa
- Jana Karskiego.
What do you think of these names? We invite you to join the discussion.
Profile of Jan Karski
Jan Karski, whose real name was Jan Romuald Kozielewski, pseudonym “Witold” (born June 24, 1914, in Łódź; died July 13, 2000, in Washington).
He graduated in law and diplomacy from Jan Kazimierz University in Lviv (1935) and was the top student at the Cavalry Artillery Officer Cadet School in Volodymyr-Volynskyi. After completing his diplomatic traineeship, he was employed at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in January 1939. As an officer of the 5th Horse Artillery Squadron, he took part in the defensive war of 1939. After the Soviet attack on Poland, he was taken prisoner by the Soviets on September 24, 1939. In December 1939, after escaping from a transport, he reached Warsaw and began underground activities. From January 1940, acting on behalf of the underground authorities, he carried out courier missions to the Polish government-in-exile. He actively worked to inform world public opinion about the dramatic situation of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto and extermination camps. He entered the Warsaw Ghetto twice and then, disguised as a Ukrainian guard from an auxiliary SS formation, entered the camp in Izbica, from which the Germans transported Jews to their deaths. He conveyed his shocking eyewitness account to many American and British politicians, journalists and artists. Among others, he met Anthony Eden, the British foreign secretary, as well as US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the famous writer Herbert Wells. However, his dramatic appeals for help for the Jewish people produced no results—most of those he spoke to either did not believe his reports or ignored them.
After the war, Jan Karski decided to remain in exile in the United States. He studied political science and earned a doctorate at Georgetown University in Washington, where he taught international relations and the theory of communism for the next forty years.
Jan Karski also authored books, the most famous of which, “Tajne państwo” (“Story of a Secret State”), was published in the United States in 1944 and became a bestseller translated into many languages. The situation changed after Yalta—the book’s criticism of the USSR and Stalin became inconvenient. An atmosphere of hostility toward Karski’s book began to grow, and editors started withdrawing from contracts. “Tajne państwo” nevertheless remained for many years one of the few credible works available in the West describing the realities of occupied Poland. The book was first published in Poland in 1999, 55 years after its American first edition.
For his activities, he received the highest state distinctions—the Polish Order of the White Eagle and the American Medal of Freedom. He was honored by Yad Vashem as a Righteous Among the Nations and was made an honorary citizen of the State of Israel. Jan Karski died in Washington on July 13, 2000. In 2016, he was posthumously promoted to the rank of brigadier general.
(Source: justification for the draft resolution “on naming a street Jan Karski”).