Bearing Witness – The Legacy of Jan Karski Today

Co-taught by Lab co-director Derek Goldman, playwright Clark Young, and inclusive pedagogy specialist Ijeoma Njaka, ‘Bearing Witness’ was a one-credit course offered in the fall semester of 2020. The course explored the life and legacy of Jan Karski, the Polish resistance fighter and Holocaust witness who brought the true horrors of the Nazi genocide to the attention of Allied leaders. The course was centered around a new film version of Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski, originally a play co-written by Goldman and Young. Using Karski’s life and teachings as inspiration, students examined their own relationship to the current historical moment, how individuals may bear witness to history and, following Karski’s example, “shake the conscience of the world.”