Impersonal Adventure

STORY OF A SECRET STATE--Jan Karski --Houghton Mifflin ($3).

If the Poles, caught and crushed between the devastating German and Russian juggernauts in 1939, had yielded up their national ghost, few could have blamed them. In no other conquered country were the prospects of a successful resistance movement more dangerous and disheartening. But an underground was organized. And unlike most underground soldiers, Jan Karski has lived to tell the tale. His book is, in part, one of the most vivid adventure stories of the war. But more, it is a powerful document in the case for Polish independence.

Between Life & Death. In the middle of November 1939, Jan Karski, then a 25-year-old Polish lieutenant, made his way into Warsaw. A student before the war, cheerful, optimistic, he had escaped from a train bound for a German work camp. A weird, funereal light lay over the city and suburbs. The mind of Poland had been shaken by disaster, and in a twilight of reason, people moved half automatically, midway between life & death. They stalked along the roads sightlessly, as if hypnotized; they held themselves stiffly, as if all their will power was needed to keep them from collapse. They prayed and scattered flowers on the mass graves like the one that had been dug near the Central Railroad Station in Warsaw.

Karski stood by this grave in silence. Then, he went to his sister's house. Before entering, he automatically tried to straighten his tie. As he did so, he suddenly realized how he looked--a matted beard, ragged clothes that a peasant had given him, the accumulated dirt of battle, retreat, prison. He burst into hysterical laughter. He went into the house to find that while his sister knew him, he scarcely knew her. Her husband had been arrested, tortured, shot.

Violinist-Executioner. Karski went out in the rainy, cheerless afternoon to the apartment, six blocks away, of an old friend from his days at Lwow University. There Karski had belonged to an association that lectured to the peasants on literature, history, hygiene. The peasants were mildly interested in Karski's lectures. But they loved the intense, gifted, frail young high-school student who went with him and played the violin after his talk. This was Dziepatowski. He was now an executioner for the underground.

Dziepatowski was 21 or 22. Through other members of the underground he got Karski false papers. Karski was now Kucharski, born in Luki, in poor health, a primary-school teacher. He was sent to a photographer in a poor district, given a photograph that was enough like him to be claimed as his, but vague enough to be disowned if necessary. For two weeks Karski waited, memorizing the new story of his life.

Underground Coalition. He was sent to Lwow. Four Polish parties--the Christian Labor Party, the Socialist Party, the National Party, the Peasant Party--had formed a coalition in the days when Warsaw was besieged. Karski was ordered to help bring about a similar understanding in Lwow. He went first to Borecki, a prominent 60-year-old politician who still lived in his own apartment and carried poison in his signet ring. The old man said: the underground is the official continuation of the Polish Government. It has three tasks: to protect the people, to record German crimes, to keep an administrative framework functioning in preparation for independence. Within the underground there is complete political freedom for each party to advocate its program. But the underground army is under supreme military command.

Karski was sent to France. With a Polish prince, a young lieutenant and a guide, he went to the Tatra Mountains in the Carpathian range. They posed as a skiing party, never speaking to passersby, sleeping in mountain caves until they reached the Hungarian border. Karski met an underground agent in a border town, was motored to Budapest, hidden in a hospital, given papers to prove he had been in Budapest since the beginning of the war. He took the Simplon-Orient Express to France, six weeks of freedom, and talks with General Sikorski.

A State Must Be Created. Sikorski was cordial, sensible, farsighted. He said that the underground must be an actual state: "All the apparatus of a state must be created and maintained at all costs, no matter how crude it is."

Karski went back to Poland the way he had come, carrying 40 lbs. of Polish banknotes. He remained in Warsaw two weeks, then set out for Paris again. This time he was to carry the points of view of the different Polish parties to the Government-in-Exile. He was also to give the Government their agreements about the division of administrative posts in the underground Government. Each of the four parties gave Karski its confidential plans and programs to memorize, so he could give them to each party's representative in Paris. He swore he would not divulge any party's secrets to another, or use his knowledge politically, or to advance his career.

He left Cracow walking, carrying on a roll of microfilm 38 pages of plans and suggestions from the underground. His guide was worried, gloomy, reluctant. They slogged through the mud for three days. Karski could not go on, though the border of Hungary was only 15 miles away. They spent the night in a village. Karski was awakened by a gun butt mashed against his skull. He dropped his undeveloped microfilm into a barrel of water.

Torture & Rescue. Gestapo officials, fat, perfumed, homosexual, questioned him cleverly, relentlessly. Their underlings slugged him behind the ear, whipped him, knocked his teeth out. After three days, in a moment of rest, Karski found a safety razor blade in the lavatory. He slashed his wrists, missed the veins, tried again. The blood streamed like a fountain. Then it stopped.

He awakened in a Slovakian hospital, still under puppet Nazi rule. He was being given a blood transfusion. Slovakian doctors and nurses, at first against his will, kept him alive. He was a hero. The Polish underground movement voted him a decoration. The military division of the Polish Socialist Party was ordered to rescue him at any cost, or shoot him if they failed. They bribed a Gestapo guard and picked up Karski after he had jumped from a hospital window.

Danger and Purpose. Karski tells his story impersonally; and it differs from classic adventure stories because the organization rather than the individual is the central figure in it. The fates of the underground soldiers were dwarfed by the depthless misery and heroism of the people they served. When Story of a Secret State is not an adventure story, it is often hackneyed. When it tells of flight, pursuit, escape, triumph, it carries conviction in every incident. Its killings are coldblooded, its sorrows without tears. Dziepatowski, Karski's violinist friend, was caught and executed after he had killed a German agent in a Warsaw washroom. Borecki was caught, could not get the poison from his signet ring in time. He too was killed.

But the underground lived and grew. It was a functioning government. It passed laws, issued decrees, floated a bond issue inside Poland. It sentenced men to death, and carried out the sentences. It paid salaries--Karski got 450 zloty a month. Its soldiers got veterans' rights and pensions. Its schools trained children who were being systematically debauched by the Germans.

If capture for a member of the underground meant torture and death, life in the underground meant work, hope, and purpose in living. The purpose was freedom.

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