An earlier report than Jan Karski of a visit to Belzec?

[michael mills]

There seems to be a contradiction between the report Karski made to the Polish Government in London and the Szwarcbart telegram.

According to the information given by wm, Karski's official report merely states that Jews were sent to a distribution camp from which they were sent to the East, and which he had seen himself (perhaps from the outside only).

However, Szwarcbart's telegram states that the "Gentile officer" with whom he spoke for three hours had twice visited the Warsaw Ghetto in August and September, and also the Belzec camp, where he witnessed the extermination of a convoy of 6000 Jews.

It seems to me that there are two possibilities for the contradiction:

1. Karski told a different story to Szwarcbart from the one he gave in his official report to the Polish Government, perhaps because he wanted to boast of his exploits to a credulous Jew.

2. The "Gentile officer" was someone other than Karski.

Whatever the case was, a much expanded version of the information given in the Szwarcbart telegram was included in a report sent by Szwarcbart and Zygielbojm (the two Jewish representatives on the Polish Government-in-Exile) to New York early in 1943; it was published in the 1943 book "The Black Book of Polish Jewry", edited by Apenszlak. The account in that book describes the deportation of Jews from Warsaw, and states incorrectly that they were sent to Belzec (in fact they were sent to Treblinka).

I have always thought that Karski's account of his visit to Belzec in "Secret State" was based on the Szwarcbart-Zygielbojm report published in "the Black Book of Polish Jewry", and thus far I have seen nothing that leads me to change that view, although further information on how "Secret State" was put together might change that view.

If Karski did indeed see a distribution camp, it was most probably the one at Malkinia, the junction where the line to Siedlce, on which Treblinka railway station is located, branches off from the Warsaw-Bialystok main line. The transports carrying Jews from Warsaw to Treblinka all passed through Malkinia.

Both the Polish and Jewish Undergrounds knew very well that the Jews being deported from Warsaw were being taken via Malkinia to Treblinka, not to Belzec, since their agents had followed the trains. Thus, Karski's Jewish contacts would have had no reason whatever to take him either to Treblinka or to Izbica Lubelska, since no Jews deported from Warsaw were going to either of those places, whereas they would have had a reason to take him to Malkinia, which was much closer to Warsaw anyway..

Accordingly, the giant gas chambers referred to by Karski in his official report may actually have been at Treblinka, which did have the biggest gas chambers, and Karski simply confused it with Belzec.

It would appear that there is general agreement that Karski's account in "Secret State" of having been smuggled into an extermination camp disguised as an Estonian guard was fictionalised, although the fictionalisation may not have been his own initiative.

It also seems that in later life Karski came to believe that fictionalised account himself, or at least pretended to believe in it, possibly because it rescued him from the obscurity into which he had fallen since the end of his career as an anti-Communist agitator for the US Government, and allowed him to bask in the glory of being "the man who tried to stop the Holocaust".

[wm]

Why did Karski say to Nowak (if Nowak is right) that he spoke in detail about the extermination of Jews with Eden ? Karski doesn't seem very credible.

Thus British responses to atrocity stories in general, and to news of the slaughter of Jews in particular, were aligned with efforts to narrate the war as a British fight against tyranny in order to sustain the British people's morale and commitment to the war effort.
Focus on the Jewish tragedy, it was thought, could undermine British unity and increase anti-Semitism in Britain. There was also the conscious desire to avoid the excesses of First World War propaganda, in part because it was felt that some information would be believed neither at home, leading to mistrust in information propagated by the state, nor abroad, thereby alienating allies and potential allies in enemy countries. It is therefore likely that the British reluctance to respond to, or even note, many of the reports about atrocities against Jews affected how the Poles engaged with their erstwhile ally.

For example, the Polish courier Jan Karold met British foreign minister Anthony Eden on 4 February t943. Karski provided an account of the fate of the Jews in Poland, which resulted in Eden reporting to the War Cabinet only that 'The entire population of Warsaw, including the remnants of the Jews, is united in their hatred for, and resistance to, the Germans'.
Everything else Karski had said, according to his colleague Jan Nowak-Jezioranski, was expunged from the record. Nowak-Jezioranski argued in 2001 that:

the UK and US officialdom for a long time preferred to pretend that they were not aware of the scale of the Holocaust. That is why in all the internal reports based on the testimony of Jan Karski, and a year later based on my account, the information provided by us on the genocide of the Jews was removed.

The example set at the top of the Foreign Office was mimicked by the Foreign Office's staff. Since Jews were the prime victims of Nazi atrocities, the policy to downplay them disproportionately impacted on how Nazi policy against Jews was presented and understood.
from: Auschwitz, the Allies and Censorship of the Holocaust by Michael Fleming

[wm]

If so, why did Karski tell that he spoke of the Jews to Władysław Raczkiewicz and that it was the origin of Raczkiewicz's letter to the Pope ?

It's the classical she said, he said. She remembers this, he remembers that. One person thinks he was the prime mover, but in fact maybe he only reinforced the determination of the other to do something.
That conflicting stories of the same event, especially about such trifles, exist is not something unusual, it's the norm.
And Raczkiewicz wasn't an important person, or at least he wasn't the boss. So meeting with him was relatively easy, they could have talked to each other informally many times in the The Rubens Hotel.

[wm]

However, Szwarcbart's telegram states that the "Gentile officer" with whom he spoke for three hours had twice visited the Warsaw Ghetto in August and September, and also the Belzec camp, where he witnessed the extermination of a convoy of 6000 Jews.

The answer to this is in the good, old whom does it profit?

Karski didn't because he was a hero already, on a scale 1 to 10 it was 10. The real or imagined (and not very heroic) visits didn't change anything, you can't go ever the 10.
To lie he would have to assume all his contacts in Warsaw, those people who knew the truth would not survive the war. That would be stupid and unreasonable. And actually one of the key witnesses - Leon Feiner, survived.

Additionally there was no need to "improve" the story. The Polish Government, the recipient of his information was a firm believer, they knew the truth already.

[wm]

Both the Polish and Jewish Undergrounds knew very well that the Jews being deported from Warsaw were being taken via Malkinia to Treblinka, not to Belzec, since their agents had followed the trains. Thus, Karski's Jewish contacts would have had no reason whatever to take him either to Treblinka or to Izbica Lubelska, since no Jews deported from Warsaw were going to either of those places, whereas they would have had a reason to take him to Malkinia, which was much closer to Warsaw anyway..

They didn't know it very well, it was just one of many information/rumours received or floating around. That a single man saw something once didn't make it a correct information about the entire Gross-Aktion Warsaw.
Karki unambiguously describes a place where Jews were detained and from time to time loaded on the trains. The trains didn't merely passed through the place.
And most likely his visit happened after the Gross-Aktion Warsaw had ended, so he couldn't see any transports from Warsaw. And because of that there was no reason to visit any place connected with the Aktion.

[Karski]

To lie he would have to assume all his contacts in Warsaw, those people who knew the truth would not survive the war. That would be stupid and unreasonable.

Why did he lie so much in his 1944 book, then ?
K.

[Karski]

It seems to me that there are two possibilities for the contradiction:

1. (...)

2. The "Gentile officer" [mentioned by Schwarzbart] was someone other than Karski.

In his 1944 book, Karski says that he met with Zygielbojm, but he doesn't say that he met with Schwarzbart.
In an interview with Claude Lanzmann, he says explicitly that he saw Schwarzbart this day, but that he didn' meet with him.
K.

[Karski]

Here are the three first paragraphs of the "report" of the "eyewitness" :

KROTKIE NOTATKI NAOCZNEGO SWIADKA

Londyn, w grudniu 1942.r.

W Oświęcimiu jest obóz koncentracyjny dla Polaków przedewszystkim, a w szczególności dla inteligencji polskiej. Przez obóz ten przeszło około 100 do 120 tysięcy osób, z tego 85 do 105 tysięcy zmarło, lub zostało rozstrzelanych bądź w obozie, bądź też zmarli w krótki czas po zwolnieniu z obozu. Codziennie wymiera z wyczerpania po kilkadziesiąt osób. Przy codziennych rannych apelach - trupy (apelachtrupy ?) muszą także brać udział, układa się je więc w szeregu. Znęcanie się nad więźniami - szatańskie. Starcy pchają po kilkanaście razy dziennie, na przestrzeni kilkuset metrów, napełnione kamieniami taczki, o ciężarze 130 do 180 kg. "Niedbałych" uczy się w ten sposób pracować, że każe się im pchać te taczki po nieubitej jeszcze szosie boso. Za ubranie płaszcza w zimie w izbie, kazano winnemu rozebrać się do naga, wypędzono go na plac i trzech dozorców oblewało go tak sługo wodą z wężów, aż znieruchomiał - skonał ( znieruchomiałskonał ?) i zamienił się w sopel lodu.

Normalną karą jest z.zw. "slupek". Polega on na tym, że wiąże się winnemu ręce na plecach i uwiesza się za te ręce na słupie tak, by dotykał ziemi tylko końcami palców u nóg. Kara taka trwa 1 do 3 godzin. Po godzinie wszystkie stawy u rąk są powykręcane.

Mojemu znajomemu, który był w Oświęcimiu w przystępie dobrego humoru, kazali się dwaj dozorcy rozebrać, stanać pod płotem - i ćwiczyli na jego brzuchu ciosy bokserskie.

Google translates the third paragraph as follows :
"My friend, who was in Auschwitz in good humor, ordered two caretakers to dismantle, to stand under the fence - and exercise his boxing punches on his stomach."

The translation doesn't seem very good, but I understand that the author of the "report" had a friend who was in Auschwitz. Is this assumed to be said by Karski ? If it is, who was this friend of Karski who was in Auschwitz ? Did Karski speak of him elsewhere ?
K.

[wm]

Some people were released from Auschwitz after they had completed their sentences, especially in the first years of its existence. Many of them were "redeemed" thanks to large bribes. The occupied territories were a large kleptocracy, everything was on sale there.
There were many such people in Warsaw, one of them was his friend Władysław Bartoszewski.

[Karski]

Some people were released from Auschwitz after they had completed their sentences, especially in the first years of its existence. Many of them were "redeemed" thanks to large bribes. The occupied territories were a large kleptocracy, everything was on sale there.
There were many such people in Warsaw, one of them was his friend Władysław Bartoszewski.

Thanks for this answer.
K.

[wm]

In his 1944 book, Karski says that he met with Zygielbojm, but he doesn't say that he met with Schwarzbart.
In an interview with Claude Lanzmann, he says explicitly that he saw Schwarzbart this day, but that he didn' meet with him.
K.

The book wasn't a history piece with a forest of citations at the end. It was a Hollywoodization of events, as demanded by his publisher, for the American reader. They even wanted him to include an erotic story to make it more appealing.
The Americans didn't care about Zygielbojm or Schwarzbart. They wanted a nice, easy to read book.
Karski expressly wrote he didn't want it to be published outside the US ever.

[Sergey Romanov]

All the hypothesizing about additional persons does violence to the Occam's razor principle. We know that Karski was changing his story according to the circumstances and we know that accuracy was not his primary aim. So additional changes in the story don't prove additional claimants. The most parsimonious explanation is that Karski, a somewhat unreliable narrator, was tweaking his story from time to time.

To consider additional narrators one has to show the probability, not mere possibility. That means providing some concrete evidence of the original narrators. One also has to explain the whole logistics of the narrative "transfer" - i.e. the reason it happened and what happened to the original narrators. So far Karski being a single unreliable narrator satisfactorily explains the evidence at hand. Let's not multiply entities without need.

[Sergey Romanov]

Most of this can be gathered by consulting the link I gave and doing some mouse-clicking

Try to be a bit more helpful. I selected the link you gave, and it pulled up a page called "Political Conditions in Poland". The photocopied page in Polish did not appear to have anything to do with the deportation of Jews, From what I could make out, it appeared to be about the execution of a Polish mayor.

The least you could do is to post a link that leads directly to the document which you are referring to.

Actually the link led to the relevant page. The archival data is also available in the immediate vicinity. I understand if you have a problem with the language, but just because of that you should not assume that I posted some irrelevant BS.

[Sergey Romanov]

The Polish Government was acting on the information they had already.
The Mass Extermination of Jews in German-occupied Poland: Note Addressed to Governments of the United Nations was published shortly after he had arrived.
So what Karski said to whom and when is of no importance, and wasn't really even worth noting down by his interlocutors.

Notably this publication has Karski's quicklime train info from his Dec. report.

[Sergey Romanov]

The report is of course by Karski since it tells Karski's story.

Let us rather say that Karski told the same story as the "report". He can have recycled it.

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/too ... ossibility

But let us admit that the "report" is by Karski. Clearly, it is not a report of Karski to his superiors, it is rather a propaganda piece. I have shown that Karski doesn't seem to have spoken of his visit to a camp neither to his Polish superiors nor to the British officials. Thus the story of extermination by quicklime could very well be a false testimony, first used in Poland in August or September 1942 (the same story was told in a pamphlet of the Polish underground that was published in September 1942 or even on 10 August 1942) and re-used by Karski during his tour in England and US in order to incite Jews to ask for retaliation bombings.
K.

It is entirely possible that the alleged event is a figment of imagination. It is also possible it happened, even if not in the sense of extermination. The use of chemicals in trains was testified to by many witnesses (and also makes sense as disinfection), some reported irritation/tears (see e.g. a witness quoted in the intro to Reder's Belzec). If Karski saw some chemical used in railroad cars he could have made assumptions based on the behavior of those affected by the chemicals (and influenced by rumors about death trains).

Whatever the truth behind the "death train" story, I don't see, at this time, why I should assume any other author than Karski for it, whether it is true or not. It's his language and it's his manner of expression. Indeed, even hearkening back to his 1940 Belzec report, as some have noted.

If some source *demonstrably* independent of Karski is shown to repeat this particular story earlier, this opinion will have to change, but until then I will hold it to be most parsimonious.