AJFF: Remember This

Remember This is a remarkable film with only one actor, a virtuoso solo performance by David Strathairn as the Polish patriot and Holocaust witness, Jan Karski.

With only the aid of a small wooden table and two wooden chairs, Strathairn recreates the world and life of Jan Karski, a member of the Polish resistance during World War II. Karski, who was a junior diplomat prior to the war, was enlisted by the Jewish underground to personally convey the horrors of the Warsaw ghetto and the death camps to world leaders.

In a minimalist style and only a few basic props Strathairn’s mesmerizing role recreates Karski’s tortured journey from the killing fields of Poland to the highest seats of powers. But his urgent calls to save the Jews of Europe are downplayed by the British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and President Franklin Roosevelt. Even the eminent Jewish Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter remains unmoved by his emotional pleas for help.

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Although Karski failed in his effort to impress those who led the fight against Nazi Germany during World War II, he left a powerful legacy. This film is a recreation of a stage play by Clark Young and Derek Goldman that was first performed in 2019 at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. where Karski earned a PhD and taught for 40 years.

Despite having his initial pleas in England and America fall on deaf ears, Karski’s 1944 book, “Story of A Secret State,” sold 400,000 copies and was a Book of the Month Club selection. Based on his success he lectured extensively about the Holocaust in the United States and Canada and helped to form a public understanding of the Nazi atrocities of the war years. In 1982, he was proclaimed a Righteous Gentile Among The Nations and his was posthumously awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama in 2012.