The story of Jan Karski is well known. A Polish courier to the French-based and later London-based Polish government-in-exile, Karski undertook dangerous missions from Poland to the west. On his final mission he became a messenger from the Jewish community of Warsaw, and was sent to a concentration camp he once described as Bełżec. He was, in short, an eyewitness to the inferno who requested immediate and urgent action on behalf of Poland's beleaguered Jews.

In London in 1942 he had meetings with British government officials from Anthony Eden on down—though not with Winston Churchill. He was then sent to the United States, where he met all the relevant American leaders from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and members of his cabinet to the Jewish leadership, the press, and public leaders. He told them what he had seen, and forwarded specific requests from the Jewish community. He published articles and a best-selling book telling the story of the Holocaust. He informed those who wished to be informed. He was a faithful messenger, and his message was not heeded while there was still time. Mission accomplished—the story was told. Mission failed—nothing changed.

E. Thomas Wood and Stanisław M. Jankowski have written a gripping biography of Karski. Were it not true, the book could read as a work of fiction, a tale of conspiracy and machinations. Part spy story, the sections on Karski's suicide attempt and escape from a Polish hospital are riveting. Part tale of intrigue, one sees how different factions of the Polish community played one another off against each other and how differences over the past, even more than over the future, made co-operation difficult at best—and often impossible. This was true even while a common enemy should have united the community—exiles as well as natives. I was struck by the parallels with the struggles within the Jewish community and the absence of unity. As Jews absorbed much of Polish culture and Polish ways in their seven-century sojourn in Poland, the converse is also true.

This is a work of scholarship. The authors, one American and one Polish, are both journalists. They write without jargon and with a breeziness that permits quick reading, but they have done their homework.