Ex-TA mayor: Israel owes debt to righteous nations

March 17, 2005

The government of Israel owes a great debt to the righteous among the nations, former Tel Aviv mayor Shlomo Lahat said Thursday.

He was speaking at a memorial evening at the Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem in tribute to Jan Karski, a Polish lawyer who tried to stop the Holocaust by traveling from Poland to England to report to the Polish government in exile in London, as well as to civic and religious leaders in Britain and the US, on the German plan to exterminate the Jews.

Karski, who lived in the US after the war and taught for more than 40 years at Georgetown University, where he was a professor of government, was also an honorary citizen of Israel.

During the war he was in the Warsaw ghetto and in concentration camps. He returned to Poland at the behest of the Polish government in exile to gather additional information.

Lahat said that the way the righteous among the nations and their descendents had been treated by a succession of Israeli governments was shameful and that the present government was obligated to make amends.

SOURCE: Jerusalem Post