| |||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Trade in Story of a Secret State: My Report to the World (Penguin Hardback Classics) for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Plus, get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
Jan Karski's Story of a Secret State stands in the absolute first rank of books about the resistance in World War II. If you wish to read about a man more courageous and honorable than Jan Karski I would have no idea who to recommend. Yes, it's that good. (Alan Furst )
It deserves its status as a Penguin Classic, not only because it is a great historic document, but also because it's a cracking good read: Karski's adventures are worthy of the wildest spy thriller (Nigel Jones Telegraph )
His account of his missions is an electrifying tale of false identities, near captures, spies and secret film capsules ... in human terms, Karski's account is invaluable (Frank Trentmann Daily Express )
Story of a Secret State is now viewed as a classic insider's account of the Resistance in occupied Europe...After all the harrowing descriptions of Holocaust horrors there have been over the years from survivors of Auschwitz, Belsen, and Ravensbruck, Karski's vivid account of what he saw back in 1942 is still deeply moving. We feel his shock and incredulity that this could really be happening in 20th century 'civilised' Europe. (Tony Rennell Daily Mail )
The bravery of the man who risked all to tell the world about the Holocaust is truly staggering ... an extraordinary testament to Man's inhumanity to Man, and the even more remarkable courage required to resist it (Ben McIntyre The Times )
Karski's exploration of the moral fog in which he and his colleagues operated ... made me recall thrillers like Man Hunt and Hangmen Also Die ... two episodes resemble scenes tantalisingly directed by Hitchcock ... Karski's account of the systematic brutality of the Nazi regime is literally chilling (Peter Conrad The Observer )
Reads like the screenplay to an incredibly exciting war movie - but it is all true (Andrew Roberts )
Seared with an urgency that pitches the reader into the heart of the horror (Ben Felsenburg Metro )
His story deserves not just revival but reflection ... Karski's electrifying words still speak only too eloquently for themselves (Marek Kohn Independent )
It deserves its status as a Penguin Classic, not only because it is a great historic document, but also because it's a cracking good read: Karski's adventures are worthy of the wildest spy thriller (Nigel Jones Telegraph )
His account of his missions is an electrifying tale of false identities, near captures, spies and secret film capsules ... in human terms, Karski's account is invaluable (Frank Trentmann Daily Express )
Story of a Secret State is now viewed as a classic insider's account of the Resistance in occupied Europe...After all the harrowing descriptions of Holocaust horrors there have been over the years from survivors of Auschwitz, Belsen, and Ravensbruck, Karski's vivid account of what he saw back in 1942 is still deeply moving. We feel his shock and incredulity that this could really be happening in 20th century 'civilised' Europe. (Tony Rennell Daily Mail )
The bravery of the man who risked all to tell the world about the Holocaust is truly staggering ... an extraordinary testament to Man's inhumanity to Man, and the even more remarkable courage required to resist it (Ben McIntyre The Times )
Karski's exploration of the moral fog in which he and his colleagues operated ... made me recall thrillers like Man Hunt and Hangmen Also Die ... two episodes resemble scenes tantalisingly directed by Hitchcock ... Karski's account of the systematic brutality of the Nazi regime is literally chilling (Peter Conrad The Observer )
Reads like the screenplay to an incredibly exciting war movie - but it is all true (Andrew Roberts )
Seared with an urgency that pitches the reader into the heart of the horror (Ben Felsenburg Metro )
His story deserves not just revival but reflection ... Karski's electrifying words still speak only too eloquently for themselves (Marek Kohn Independent )
Product Description
'I do not pretend to have given an exhaustive picture of the Polish Underground, its organization and its activities.Because of our methods, I believe that there is no one today who could give an all-embracing recital...This book is a purely personal story, my story.'
Jan Karski's 1944 war memoir is a heroic act of witness: the courageous testimony of a man who risked everything for his country. At times overwhelming in the details it reveals of the suffering of ordinary people, it is an unforgettable and deeply affecting record of brutality, courage, and survival under conditions of extreme bleakness. During the first four years of World War II, Karski worked as a messenger for the underground, risking his life in secret missions. He was captured, tortured, rescued, smuggled through a tunnel into the Warsaw ghetto and, finally, disguised himself as a guard to infiltrate a Nazi death camp. Then, travelling across occupied Europe to England, with his eye-witness report smuggled on microfilm in the handle of a razor, he became the first man to tell the Allies about the Holocaust - only to be ignored.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
21 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
When, in September 1939, Poland was invaded by Hitler from the West and Stalin from the East, Jan Karski was 25 years old. He was proficient in several languages, a diplomat by training and recent experience, and a reserve officer in the Polish army. He reported for duty one week ahead of the invasion, but Western Poland was quickly overwhelmed and Karski, with what remained of his regiment, trekked East - into Russian captivity. Posing as a private soldier (as an officer he would have been shot, probably at Katyn), he managed to achieve an exchange back into German-held territory, and escaped from a train carrying him to a labour camp. He joined the Polish Underground, which rapidly established itself to resist the invaders, maintain morale, and sustain contact with the Polish Government in Exile.
Karski served as a courier, slipping across the border to neutral territory and on to France. His first return trip was entirely successful, but on a subsequent foray he was picked-up by the Gestapo. He was lucky to escape with his life and fairly certainly would not have done so except that he was sprung by the Polish Underground - whose orders if the rescue failed were to shoot him.
His injuries and presumed notoriety with the Gestapo put him out of action as a courier, but he worked on information and propaganda, moving back to Warsaw and drawing close to top Underground officials. In the second half of 1942, it was agreed that he would make a new attempt to carry information to the Government in Exile, then located in London. He was anxious to take with him first hand information on the Nazi's systematic annihilation of Polish Jews. To that end he had himself smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto and into what he believed at the time to be the Belzec death camp. We now know that the camp he saw was not Belzec but a transit camp, possibly at Izbica, but what he witnessed was nevertheless deeply shocking, and was found impossible to believe by some of those in Britain and America to whom he gave the news. That he was thought to be exaggerating, or to have fallen victim to propaganda, is a tragedy in itself, but the world had no previous experience of atrocity on such a scale, and Karski's mistake about Belzec confirms that although several camps with gas chambers were then fully operational, details of the methods employed had not at the time leaked far, even in Poland.
Karski's accounts of his visits to the Ghetto and the camp are reminiscent of Dante's Inferno, The Divine Comedy: Inferno (Penguin Classics). With reference to the Ghetto, Karski actually writes of "the streets of this inferno". Dante's Inferno was, however, a work of the imagination.
Karski writes well and much of what he writes makes riveting reading. There is more detail of some of his journeys than might be found in a corresponding thriller, and some of the incidental encounters with individuals of whom we never hear any more would not appear in such a work. Situations that seem to have potential for romantic interest come to absolutely nothing, and the work suffers from having been written for publication before the war was over - before the overall picture became clear, and whilst some information still had to be withheld. But these can hardly be labelled faults, for they are inherent features of history written as it was made.
Karski served as a courier, slipping across the border to neutral territory and on to France. His first return trip was entirely successful, but on a subsequent foray he was picked-up by the Gestapo. He was lucky to escape with his life and fairly certainly would not have done so except that he was sprung by the Polish Underground - whose orders if the rescue failed were to shoot him.
His injuries and presumed notoriety with the Gestapo put him out of action as a courier, but he worked on information and propaganda, moving back to Warsaw and drawing close to top Underground officials. In the second half of 1942, it was agreed that he would make a new attempt to carry information to the Government in Exile, then located in London. He was anxious to take with him first hand information on the Nazi's systematic annihilation of Polish Jews. To that end he had himself smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto and into what he believed at the time to be the Belzec death camp. We now know that the camp he saw was not Belzec but a transit camp, possibly at Izbica, but what he witnessed was nevertheless deeply shocking, and was found impossible to believe by some of those in Britain and America to whom he gave the news. That he was thought to be exaggerating, or to have fallen victim to propaganda, is a tragedy in itself, but the world had no previous experience of atrocity on such a scale, and Karski's mistake about Belzec confirms that although several camps with gas chambers were then fully operational, details of the methods employed had not at the time leaked far, even in Poland.
Karski's accounts of his visits to the Ghetto and the camp are reminiscent of Dante's Inferno, The Divine Comedy: Inferno (Penguin Classics). With reference to the Ghetto, Karski actually writes of "the streets of this inferno". Dante's Inferno was, however, a work of the imagination.
Karski writes well and much of what he writes makes riveting reading. There is more detail of some of his journeys than might be found in a corresponding thriller, and some of the incidental encounters with individuals of whom we never hear any more would not appear in such a work. Situations that seem to have potential for romantic interest come to absolutely nothing, and the work suffers from having been written for publication before the war was over - before the overall picture became clear, and whilst some information still had to be withheld. But these can hardly be labelled faults, for they are inherent features of history written as it was made.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
First published in the US in 1944 (and published a year later in the UK by Hodder & Stoughton), Jan Karski's memoir of the Second World War has now been re-released. This is a review of the proof copy which only consists of the original 1944 text; the new Penguin edition also contains notes, photographs, and material added by Karski before his death in 2000.
Karski begins his account in 1939, a Polish doctoral student, he has just attended a gay and carefree party full of music and pretty women. That evening he receives his mobilization orders. The story that follows is riveting: Karski is captured by the Soviets, escapes, joins the Underground, is captured by the Gestapo, escapes, and so on. This narrative is supplemented with an account of the mechanism of the Polish Underground, from its disorganized beginning to an efficient and far-reaching organization, the 'secret state' of the title.
This is just one man's account of his war but it is absolutely fascinating. Karski's aim in writing is to bear witness to the kind of life experienced by the Polish people under occupation, their hardships, the strength of their resistance, and their acts of great courage and kindness.
The most harrowing part of the book is the two chapters in which Karski describes the fate of the Jews in Poland and a heartbreaking meeting he has with two Jewish resistance leaders, a meeting filled with indescribable anger, despair, and horror. Karski secretly infiltrates both the Warsaw ghetto and a German death camp in order to be able to make an accurate report to the outside world. His need to tell anyone he can about what he saw there and his desperation to be believed is incredibly moving.
This imperative to bear witness is still extremely powerful 70 years on, I can not imagine what a contemporary reader in 1944 must have felt.
Karski begins his account in 1939, a Polish doctoral student, he has just attended a gay and carefree party full of music and pretty women. That evening he receives his mobilization orders. The story that follows is riveting: Karski is captured by the Soviets, escapes, joins the Underground, is captured by the Gestapo, escapes, and so on. This narrative is supplemented with an account of the mechanism of the Polish Underground, from its disorganized beginning to an efficient and far-reaching organization, the 'secret state' of the title.
This is just one man's account of his war but it is absolutely fascinating. Karski's aim in writing is to bear witness to the kind of life experienced by the Polish people under occupation, their hardships, the strength of their resistance, and their acts of great courage and kindness.
The most harrowing part of the book is the two chapters in which Karski describes the fate of the Jews in Poland and a heartbreaking meeting he has with two Jewish resistance leaders, a meeting filled with indescribable anger, despair, and horror. Karski secretly infiltrates both the Warsaw ghetto and a German death camp in order to be able to make an accurate report to the outside world. His need to tell anyone he can about what he saw there and his desperation to be believed is incredibly moving.
This imperative to bear witness is still extremely powerful 70 years on, I can not imagine what a contemporary reader in 1944 must have felt.
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
The true story of incredible adventure, bravery and suffering written by someone who witnessed and endured more than enough for 10 lifetimes. A simple recitation of the facts would make it compelling but Karski is also a superb writer. Rather than trying to generate drama his style is cool and restrained which I think increases the impact. He never complains and writes plainly and elegantly, making him into a trusted companion on his journey.
It does build to a climax though - the last few chapters relate his visits to the Warsaw ghetto and to a concentration camp and then an extraordinary journey to London. They are absolutely unforgettable and this is a truly great book.
It left me with two thoughts. One was that things for Poland were actually much worse than the Underground dreamed. It would be fifty years from the cocktail party in the first chapter to the resurrection of Poland as a free nation. And the second - anyone who has denied the holocaust should be made to read it and then asked how they can continue to uphold their denial.
It does build to a climax though - the last few chapters relate his visits to the Warsaw ghetto and to a concentration camp and then an extraordinary journey to London. They are absolutely unforgettable and this is a truly great book.
It left me with two thoughts. One was that things for Poland were actually much worse than the Underground dreamed. It would be fifty years from the cocktail party in the first chapter to the resurrection of Poland as a free nation. And the second - anyone who has denied the holocaust should be made to read it and then asked how they can continue to uphold their denial.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
An astonishing but heart-rending wartime testimony: why only published...
This astonishing wartime memoir seems scarcely credible. There are moments where the narrative seems more at home in an airport spy thriller. Read more
Published 6 days ago by Mark Meynell
Necessary Reading
There is something either in the translation or the style of writing of the time that makes Jan Karski's account almost polite. Read more
Published 7 days ago by S. Thomas
"Truly Poland had no luck in this war."
In an age where nonentities write their autobiographies, and it seems that everyone is their own publicist, one becomes accustomed to taking all claims "with a pinch of salt". Read more
Published 1 month ago by Alexa
A well written book about an epic ordeal
Story of a Secret State is Jan Karski's memoir of the Second World War. Jan originally released this book in 1944 after he had finally escaped the atrocities of the ongoing war,... Read more
Published 2 months ago by R. W. Mackenzie
Sorts the dead from the living
The war in the East was fought with different perceptions than the war without hate, allegedly fought out in the West. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Dr. Delvis Memphistopheles
Thrilling and horrifying account of Polish resistance to the Nazis
Jan Karski's story of fighting for the Polish Underground during the Second World War, in fierce resistance to their Nazi oppressors, reads at first a bit like a thrilling... Read more
Published 3 months ago by J. Coulton
Historical fact that is as riveting as a thriller
Karski writes a fascinating account of life in the Polish underground resistance during World War II. Read more
Published 4 months ago by S. Diment
Compelling mix of history and derring-do
This story, on the assumption it is true, is a winding tale of extraordinary bravery from the Polish people during the Second World War. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Sam Moore
What a guy
So this guy was just an average chap, living a nice life in Poland, when - in the course of an evening - all the safety and comfort of life in peacetime is blown away; he's told... Read more
Published 4 months ago by L. Hennessy
Heavy on facts
This book is more historical and certainly not for the light reader.
Rather heavy wrote book, focusing heavily on details , taking pages to explain operations and technical... Read more
Rather heavy wrote book, focusing heavily on details , taking pages to explain operations and technical... Read more
Published 5 months ago by pepemia
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
