A series of campus events commemorating the life and work of Jan Karski began Tuesday, April 25 and will continue until Friday, May 3. Karski was a professor at Gerogetown for more than 30 years who helped raise awareness of the Holocaust.

Speakers to be featured during the week include H.E. Przemyslaw Grudzinski, ambassador of Poland to the United States, Zbigniew Brzenzinski, Former National Security Advisor to President Carter.

The weeklong program of events began Tuesday with a panel discussion on Polish-Jewish relations, followed by an evening program, “Remembering Jan Karski.”

The agenda will continue Monday with a memorial Mass and a panel discussion: “Jan Karski at Georgetown,” and “Poland in the 21st Century.”

The week will conclude with a lecture and photographic exhibition: “A World of Refugees-Between Anguish and Hope.”

An exhibition, “Beacons from Abroad: Remembering European Catholic Intellectuals” will be displayed in the ICC galleria from April 25 to May 3.

Events are geared both to preserving Karski’s legend and to carrying forward the causes he promoted.

“Our hope is to both honor Jan and make sure that new members of the Georgetown community have a chance to appreciate what he stood for,” said Dr. Harley Balzer, Director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies.

In an address at the Holocaust Museum in January, president Leo J. O’Donovan, S.J., said that by paying tribute to Jan Karski, “we celebrate an extraordinary man. a man of great dignity . of rare humanity. We celebrate a hero.”

O’Donovan emphasized the importance of continuing to draw lessons from Karski’s exemplary resolve and strength of character.

“Jan Karski, with his extraordinary courage, with his unshakable faith, teaches us even as we `go back’ with him to witness the horrors of another time that we can also go forward together in hope,” O’Donovan said.

Jan Karski was born in Poland in 1914. A member of the Polish Underground during World War II, Karski was an eye witness of Nazi atrocities. In 1942, he was sent to London to report on the Nazi atrocities that he had witnessed firsthand in the Warsaw Ghetto and in a transit camp. He later brought his message to the United States, where he was once again met with disbelief. He remained in the United States following the war, and earned his doctorate from Georgetown in 1952.

“Jan Karski was a role model and intellectual mentor for generations of Georgetown students. If these events provide an opportunity for current students to share in this heritage, it is something enormously important,” Balzer said.

“A tribute to Jan Karski at Georgetown makes it possible to emphasize one of the things Jan himself repeated many times: That his heroic activity during World War II was the beginning of his career, not his entire career,” he said.

Balzer emphasized Karski’s devotion to “promoting awareness of Polish history and to supporting the processes of democratization in Poland and the nation’s integration into the European Community and global affairs” during the last decade of his life.

Balzer emphasized that Karski’s contributions to the university were commendable. Karski taught at Georgetown for more than three decades. During this time, he was instrumental in expanding the European Studies program at Georgetown. At the time of his death on July 14, 2000, Karski was a Professor Emeritus in the School of Foreign Service.