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David Strathairn plays historic Holocaust witness Jan Karski in PBS’s ‘Remember This’
(JTA) — As a Roman Catholic in Warsaw during World War II, Jan Karski could easily have ignored the horrors unfolding behind the walls of the Jewish ghetto. Instead, as a member of the Polish Resistance, he donned a yellow Star of David and infiltrated the Warsaw Ghetto to report on what was happening to the Jews there.
Karski’s reconnaissance in the ghetto and elsewhere provided the West with some of the first eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust. He even met with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1943 to share what he saw — though the information he provided did not cause Roosevelt to intervene more strongly.
Karski died in 2000 at 86 and posthumously received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States’ top honor. But he is hardly a household name in the country he adopted as a home, despite his singular role in history.
The producers of a one-man show about Karski hope that will change starting Monday night, when a staging of “Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski” airs on PBS as part of the broadcaster’s “Great Performances” series. Karski is played by David Straitharn, an award-winning actor who specializes in portraying historical figures.
“Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski,” by Clark Young and Derek Goldman, first premiered in 2019 at Georgetown University, where Karski was a professor until he retired in 1984. During the height of the pandemic in 2020, the play was turned into a black-and-white film, directed by Goldman and Jeff Hutchens, shot over six days on a soundstage in Brooklyn.
The PBS pickup will give the play its biggest audience yet, and its premiere on Monday night is followed by a companion documentary, “Remembering Jan Karski.” The documentary is produced by WNET Group’s “Exploring Hate,” a multi-platform reporting initiative about the roots and rise of hate in America and around the world.
“We have the artists’ hope that with more visibility and more impact, that at least some kind of awareness can happen, but it’s daunting and the dangers of just preaching to the converted are real,” Goldman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “That’s why I’m hoping that PBS and this ‘Exploring Hate’ series can widen the awareness of Karski.”
Strathairn has portrayed Karski since the play’s first staged reading in 2014 as part of Karski’s centennial celebration.
Straithairn is known for his portrayals of historical figures, including of Edward R. Murrow, the American newsman who broadcast from Europe during World War II, in 2005’s “Good Night, and Good Luck” and as the voice of Roosevelt in 2017’s “Darkest Hour,” about England’s handling of the lead-up to the war.
“The reception far exceeded our expectation, in terms of many people who knew and were close to Karski, feeling that David had tapped something very profound and very deep about Karski,” Goldman told JTA. “People said it was like he had risen from the grave.”
Goldman, who teaches at Georgetown, never met Karski. But the play was informed by hundreds of former colleagues and students, in addition to Karski’s own memoir and interviews.
“Part of why I think the Karski story has been such a gift to explore is that it’s a story about allyship. It’s about bearing witness across difference. It’s about individual responsibility for the world. It’s about our human tendency to deny,” said Goldman.
That relevance is why Goldman considers “Remember This” a current events piece, even though most of it took place 80 years ago. This April is the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the longest sustained battle of resistance against the Nazis that took place in the same location Karski had infiltrated just months earlier.
Even all these years after Karski first sounded the alarm, people still deny the Holocaust happened. Goldman knows those people aren’t likely to tune into Great Performances, but he’s determined to try and reach those who need to hear Karski’s message.
“My interest is always in the immediacy and the present,” Goldman said. “I think one of the things theater does well, and has for thousands of years, is bring us into a communal space to notice and bear witness to things that are happening in the world, but that we might be complacent about or just in denial about, which of course is a major theme of this work.”
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The post David Strathairn plays historic Holocaust witness Jan Karski in PBS’s ‘Remember This’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Debating Zionism is fair. Protesting Israel’s president at commencement crosses the line
I am grateful for Noam Pianko’s recent essay, “Debating Zionism is good for Jews, actually.” Pianko argued that criticism of a small group of graduating seniors at the Jewish Theological Seminary who objected to JTS’s invitation to Israeli President Isaac Herzog to serve as this year’s commencement speaker was misguided, citing JTS’s long history of internal debates over Zionism.
I was among those critics. In a May 3 blog post for The Times of Israel I argued that even six students publicly opposing Herzog’s presence was six too many — not because Jewish institutions should avoid debate, but because there is a difference between debate premised on a shared commitment to Jewish peoplehood, and debate that rejects of one of Jewish peoplehood’s central expressions.
Pianko rightly reminds readers that JTS has never been ideologically monolithic. Its history includes tensions between tradition and change, particularism and universalism, theology and modernity. Those tensions are part of what has made JTS so influential in American Jewish life for nearly 140 years.
The history of debate over Zionism within the seminary’s intellectual culture does not weaken my concern. It sharpens it.
The crucial issue is conceptual precision. Expressions of skepticism about Zionism in earlier periods of JTS history were often very different from today’s anti-Zionism.
In some cases, they reflected a classical religious view that Jewish return and sovereignty would come through a messianic process rather than through human political action. That position was a theological claim about timing and agency, not a negation of Jewish national aspiration. In others, like Ahad Ha’am’s cultural Zionism, for example, an emphasis was put on Jewish renewal through language, spirit and civilization, while questioning whether political statehood should be the immediate or primary goal. That was an internal argument about how Jewish national life should unfold — not over whether such a life was valid.
Contemporary anti-Zionism, in contrast, frequently challenges the legitimacy of Jewish sovereignty itself. That is not simply another version of an older seminary debate. It is a different claim with different consequences.
To be clear, the students’ letter is not a simple declaration of anti Zionism, and it should not be caricatured as such. Their stated concerns include the devastation of the war in Gaza, the moral responsibilities of Jewish leadership, and the fear that honoring Herzog without sufficient public reckoning sends the wrong message about Palestinian suffering.
Those concerns deserve serious engagement. But seriousness also requires asking what this protest communicates in institutional context. At a moment when the Jewish people and Israel’s legitimacy are under intense assault, opposing the presence of Israel’s president at a flagship Jewish seminary risks turning anguish over Israeli policy into a symbolic rejection of Israel’s legitimacy as a central part of Jewish life. That is the line I believe JTS must be careful not to blur.
So while Pianko is right to highlight ideological range in JTS’s past, we should not flatten the past into the present.
Zionism did not become central to Jewish life by accident. It emerged as the primary vehicle through which the Jewish people reclaimed agency, safety and a collective future after centuries of vulnerability. The establishment of the state of Israel transformed Jewish existence. That fact does not erase earlier debates, but it does change the center of gravity.
Institutions like JTS have a responsibility to teach that complexity honestly — which Herzog’s presence at commencement, and thoughtful, well-informed debates around it, will help to do. Seminaries should expose students to the range of Jewish thought, including theological reservations, cultural critiques and internal disagreements about Zionism.
At issue is not whether the varieties and history of Zionism should be debated at JTS. Of course they should. Instead, this incident is a reminder that a flagship institution of Jewish learning can and should remain clear that Jewish peoplehood, Jewish sovereignty and the state of Israel are not peripheral to contemporary Jewish identity. They are central.
The post Debating Zionism is fair. Protesting Israel’s president at commencement crosses the line appeared first on The Forward.
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UK Man in Court Charged With Arson at Former London Synagogue
Orthodox Jews stand by a police cordon, after a man was arrested following a stabbing incident in the Golders Green area, which is home to a large Jewish population, in London, Britain, April 29, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Hannah McKay
A British man charged over an arson attack at a former synagogue in east London last week was in contact with someone using an Iraqi phone number shortly before the fire, prosecutors told a London court on Tuesday.
Moses Edwards, 45, appeared in the dock at Westminster Magistrates’ Court and was remanded in custody until a further hearing next month. He gave no indication of any plea.
The fire at the former East London Central Synagogue was caused by wine bottles filled with an accelerant, which exploded damaging the outside of the building, prosecutors said.
The incident followed a series of arson attacks on Jewish targets in previous weeks, with police saying they were investigating possible Iran links to some of the fires.
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Israeli Para-Athlete Wins Gold at European Taekwondo Championships, Beats Opponent From Azerbaijan
Asaf Yasur, center, posing with his gold medal during the awards ceremony at the 2026 European Taekwondo Championships in Munich, Germany. Photo: Facebook/Israel Taekwondo Federation
Israeli Paralympic athlete Asaf Yasur took home the gold medal in the 2026 European Senior Taekwondo Championships being held this week in Munich, Germany.
The 24-year-old competed in the men’s under-58kg weight category, and on the first day of the championships he beat Azerbaijan’s Sabir Zeynalov 2-1 in the finals after being victorious over Turkish athlete Hamza Tehrani 2-1 in the semifinal. Israel’s national anthem, “Hatikvah,” played in the arena during the medal ceremony, as Yasur stood on the podium with his gold medal.
The Jerusalem native had both of his hands amputated when he was 13 years old following an electrocution accident. Earlier this year, Yasur won gold at the 2026 US Open Paralympic Taekwondo Championship. He previously took home gold medals at the 2024 Paris Paralympics — where he made his Paralympics debut – the 2024 European Championships, and the 2023 World Para Taekwondo Championships. He also won the 2021 and 2023 World Para Taekwondo Championships and silver at the 2023 European Para Championships.
The European Taekwondo Union organizes the European Senior Taekwondo Championships, which is held every two years. This year marks the fourth time the championship is taking place in Germany, after previous being held in Bonn in 2006, Stuttgart in 1984, and Munich in 1978.