Katharina Friedla

Research fellow and Taube Family Curator for European Collections at the Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford University. Her work focuses on twentieth-century Eastern European, Jewish, Cold War, and World War II history, including Poland and wartime archival collections.

Jan Karski Carried Holocaust Evidence to Allies Who Would Not Believe It

Hoover Institution research fellow Katharina Friedla argues that Jan Karski’s wartime importance lay in both witnessing Nazi persecution firsthand and trying, unsuccessfully at first, to persuade Allied leaders of its scale. After entering the Warsaw Ghetto and a transit ghetto near Belzec in 1942, Karski carried reports of deportations and extermination to London and Washington, where some officials struggled to believe him. After the war, Friedla says, he helped preserve the documentary record of occupied Poland for the Hoover Library and Archives.

Hoover InstitutionAug 6, 20264 min read