"In the words of James Russell Lowell’s rousing hymn: 'Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide, in the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side.' Perhaps more than most of us, Jan Karski faced such a choice in the starkest of possible terms, and made his decision as courageously as one could. In a world today where words such as ‘courage’ and ‘heroism’ have been so overused-applied freely from sports to entertainment to politics as to be rendered practically meaningless-Jan Karski was the rare human being who embodied both."- David Harris, Huffington Post, reviewing a previous edition or volume "His wartime saga as officer, as Soviet prisoner, as escapee, in the hands of the Gestapo, and as a Polish Underground activist and courier, is beyond remarkable. If you wish to read about a man more courageous and honourable than Jan Karski, I would have no idea who to recommend."- Alan Furst, author of The Polish Officer, reviewing a previous edition or volume "Stands in the absolute first rank of books about the resistance in World War II. This definitive edition-which includes a foreword by Madeleine Albright, a biographical essay by Yale historian Timothy Snyder, an afterword by Zbigniew Brzezinski, previously unpublished photos, notes, further reading, and a glossary-is an apt legacy for this hero of conscience during the most fraught and fragile moment in modern history. Karski’s courage and testimony, conveyed in a breathtaking manner in Story of a Secret State, offer the narrative of one of the world’s greatest eyewitnesses and an inspiration for all of humanity, emboldening each of us to rise to the challenge of standing up against evil and for human rights. He was twice smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto, and entered the Nazi’s Izbica transit camp disguised as a guard, witnessing first-hand the horrors of the Holocaust. He became a member of the Polish Underground, the most significant resistance movement in occupied Europe, acting as a liaison and courier between the Underground and the Polish government-in-exile. Taken prisoner by the Soviet Red Army, which had simultaneously invaded from the East, Karski narrowly escaped the subsequent Katyn Forest Massacre. Karski was a brilliant young diplomat when war broke out in 1939 with Hitler’s invasion of Poland. With elements of a spy thriller, documenting his experiences in the Polish Underground, and as one of the first accounts of the systematic slaughter of the Jews by the German Nazis, this volume is a remarkable testimony of one man’s courage and a nation’s struggle for resistance against overwhelming oppression. O’Neill originally began looking into the Hollywood connections, retreading a story that, even at that point, had been told countless times.Jan Karski’s Story of a Secret State stands as one of the most poignant and inspiring memoirs of World War II and the Holocaust. It started as a story for the now-long-defunct Premiere magazine as a way to cover the infamous murders’ 30th anniversary in 1999. Of course, imagine being the journalist writing it, and you find yourself in an even more uncomfortable position that’s exactly why it took O’Neill two decades to finally get it published. It’s hard to explain Tom O’Neill’s new book Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixtieswithout sounding like a conspiracy theorist down a rabbit hole - you try telling your friends that a reporter spent two decades researching the links between one of America’s most notorious criminals and the government’s super-secretive mind-control program MKULTRA without getting a few snickers.
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