During the February meeting of the Bolesławiec City Council, councillors made decisions on naming new streets in the city. The justifications for the draft resolutions stated:
The proposal to name the newly created street is connected with the expansion of the residential estate and the need to assign building numbers to newly constructed properties.
The councillors adopted all the resolutions unanimously.
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 and whose pseudonym was “Witold” (born 24 June 1914 in Łódź, died 13 July 2000 in Washington).
He graduated in law and diplomacy from the 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 internship, 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 1939 defensive war. After the Soviet attack on Poland, he was taken prisoner by the Soviets on 24 September 1939. In December 1939, after escaping from a transport, he reached Warsaw and began underground activities. From January 1940, he carried out courier missions to the Polish government-in-exile on behalf of the underground authorities. 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 of 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 British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the famous writer H. G. Wells. However, his dramatic appeals for aid to 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 was also the author of 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 began to grow around Karski’s book, and publishers began withdrawing from their 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 first American publication.
For his activities, he received the highest state honours—the Polish Order of the White Eagle and the American Medal of Freedom. He was honoured by Yad Vashem with the title Righteous Among the Nations and was made an honorary citizen of the State of Israel. Jan Karski died on 13 July 2000 in Washington. In 2016, he was posthumously appointed to the rank of brigadier general.
(Source: justification for the draft resolution “on naming Jana Karskiego Street”).