Karski

FDR in "Karski and the lords of humanity" 

by Slawomir Grunberg

This documentary is about a Polish WWII hero, Jan Karski, who after being sneaked into a ghetto and a concentration camp, personally informed Franklin Delano Roosevelt about Holocaust. On the screen, when talking to Karski, FDR is presented as a pompous, grandiose figure, who with the exception of a few empty words, didn’t do much to stop the catastrophe in Europe.

The idleness of FDR, and inertia of the allies, who did not want to bomb Germany specifically to stop or at least to lessen Holocaust haunted Karski to the end of his days. He was tormented by the self imposed guilt that somehow he failed to convince the Wester powers, the Lords of Humanity. Seeing Karski trying to deal with this burden is heartbreaking. It is so because he did more than his share in opposing evil, yet those informed by him didn’t act on this knowledge.

The film ends with Karski urging everybody not to be idle when witnessing or being told about bad things, no matter how small they are.