One Moorestown woman’s journey to Washington, D.C.
For one local woman, a trip to Washington D.C., recent, capped an end to a small, but important role in helping a former officer in the Polish Underground, Jan Karski, posthumously receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom award from President Obama.
Frances Staniszewski, 86, of the Moorestown Estates, was commissioned to help translate Polish documents into English by the Jan Karski U.S. Centennial Campaign, which is headed by Wanda Urbanska.
For her hard work, she was invited and attended a reception to honor Karski at the home of Polish Ambassador Robert Kupiecki in the nation’s capital.
Karski, who died in 2000, was honored posthumously with a Presidential Medal of Freedom on Tuesday, May 29, and was among the first to provide eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust to the world.
The Medal of Freedom is the nation’s highest civilian honor, presented to individuals who have made noteworthy contributions to security or national interests of the United States, to world peace or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors, according to a White House press release.
Karksi worked as a courier, entering the Warsaw ghetto and the Nazi Izbica transit camp, where he saw first-hand the atrocities occurring under Nazi occupation, according to the White House. Karski later traveled to London to meet with the Polish government-in-exile and with British government officials, and then traveled to America to meet with President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Staniszewski, a second-generation American whose grandparents lived in Poland, offered her fluency in Polish to the campaign to see Karski honored by the president.
She learned to speak the language fluently by attending a Polish elementary school during her youth.
“I’m proud of my heritage. I’m second generation. My mother and father were born here in America,” she said. “Being a Pole, and Karski being a Pole, I wanted to do this. When I read about him, I got the chills running through me.”
While she did not translate any of Karski’s personal documents detailing his eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust, she did translate the remarks of several key figures in history who viewed Karski as an international hero.
One of the documents she helped translate was a long piece written by President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who long extolled the virtues of Karski and his impact on the world.
Brezezinski was in attendance at the ambassado’rs home curing the medal ceremony at the White House.
Despite the hard work, it was a great experience, Staniszewski said, and it was fantastic to share it with her daughter, Frances Herr, and her son-in-law, Eric Herr. All three went down to the event, as well as their cousin, Stuart Simon.
“It was challenging, but I enjoyed it. When it was all over, I said, ‘Oh great, I succeeded.’ It was a fun experience,” she said. “Also, it was the first time I had been on a train trip since 1946, when I went and saw my brother graduate from boot camp. It was nice.”
