Wladyslaw Gomulka, the first secretary of the Polish Communist party, asking for clemency "for this victim of nazism."
{Russell said: "It is evident that Nina Karsov has suffered miserably since early childhood. The demands of mercy and humanity require that she be released from prison immediately."
(The "Open Letter" sent to Bertrand Russell was published in the March 22 issue of the London Guardian. The text is as follows: ]
x *k *
We are writing to you from Poland, the home of a proud nation, a nation which has developed a greater love for freedom than any other people in the world. A nation which has inscribed the words "for our freedom and yours" on its banners.
And which many times has shed its blood for the freedom of other nations -which, during the last war, was named "the inspiration of the world"; which suffered the heaviest losses in that war and the greatest number of wrongs, not only, unfortunately, from its enemies, but also from its allies -- not only from thosé who hated it for having been the first to thwart their criminal schemes, but also from those for whom it had been a model and an example in the struggle for a better future for all humanity.
' You are. the citizen of a country which has firmly established the principles of civic freedom, a country which can boast of full freedom of thought and expression, in which there is no preventive censorship. It is fitting for us Poles, addressing an Englishman in an open letter, to recall that there was a time when our Fatherland was a model of civic freedom to all the nations of the world.
The legal. act guaranteeing personal freedom to every citizen of Poland, known as the privilege granted by King Wladyslaw Jagiello under the title "Neminem Captivabimus Nisi Jure Vietum," preceded the English “Habeas Corpus Act" by
nearly 250 years, and in the days when
peace treaties between civilised European
States advocated the heinous principle of
"Cuius Regio Eius Religio,". when in Eng-
land the fate and professed religion of
representatives of the nation's upper
classes depended on whose bed the ruling
monarch was conceived in, and when the in-
strument of religious propaganda was the
sword --— when the streets of Paris shud-
dered under the abominable atrocities of
the night of St Bartholomew and when the
concept of religious freedom did not ex-
ist and seemed unthinkable in-Russia,
Spain, Italy, or Scandinavia -~ in Poland,
the ideal of tolerance was in full bloon.
Pawel Wlodkowic cried out to the
whole world that no person can forcibly
be compelled to profess any religion --
persons adhering to a different faith
than the monarch occupied the highest of-
fices in the State -- and the social sys-
tem, although by no means perfect, guaran-
oN
pe IN LF
/ v yl] 4
WLADYSLAW GOMULKA
teed political rights in the sixteenth century to a far greater section of the people than did England in the early nineteenth century, or France towards the end of the eighteenth century. In Europe and in the whole world, Poland was a veritable oasis. of freedon.
This love of freedom, which has enabled Poles to survive the long period when their country was deprived of its statehood and partitioned between aggressor Powers, is so strongly rooted among the Polish people that any existing political system must reckon with it. The people will not reconcile themselves to the curtailment of freedom imposed on them; they want Poland to become once again, as in past centuries, one of the most progressive countries in all the world in this respect.
In October, 1956, the eyes of the world were focused on Poland as the country which nourished the hope that the principle of freedom can become reality also in a system based on the economic and political premises which prevail within our frontiers. Since that time many things have unfortunately taken a different course than that desired by the vast majority of Poles. Many deterrents have emerged and in many respects we have more than once regressed on a very broad scale. But, none the less, many of the acquisitions of the "Polish October" have survived to this day, and no one has so far dared question them officially.
Freedom, whatever its nature, is born of free thought. And that is why we are approaching you today in connection with a person who is fighting for freedom of thought and who, for this very reason, has been subjected to retaliatory measures and has been confined to gaol for a year and several months now.
Nina Karsov, a 27-year-old girl whose health became ruined due to her tragic fate at the time of the Nazi occupation in Poland, is now bearing the undeserved consequences of her profound love of freedon.
Her observation of reality and of the ideological ferment among university youth, her disapproval of certain methods of political life, her criticism of important and influential persons -- although all of this was reflected solely in her private notes and her diary which she had been compiling as material for a novel based on personal reminiscences, the dough from which she wished to mould her literary work; a diary which was not to be published until after the lapse of 25 years; all this nevertheless became the reason why she was deprived of freedom and sentenced, by a court of the first instance, to three years' imprisonment.
Although the Polish court based
itself on the prosecution's demand for
a five-year sentence even three years
could lead to tragic and irrevocable
consequences in view of the health of
this victim of the Nazi occupation.
For Nina Karsov is ill. Thrown
out from the window of a moving train
as a 3-year-old child -- a train whose
destination was the extermination camp
-- she was saved from instant death by
soldiers of the Polish underground,
participants in the resistance movement.
A Polish family took the child in and
raised it as its own.
Yet she emerged from the terrible
experiences under the occupation with
severe frost bite, injured and crippled
arms, injured and crippled spine, and the
Basedow ailment. She emerged from all
this with poor health and vulnerability
to all kinds of sickness, even though
loving care and nursing enabled her to
survive to finish high school and grad-
uate from college. Yet the organism of
a human being who had literally been
torn from the grip of death in early
childhood and burdened with lasting in-
juries calls for incessant care and
solicitude.
The confinement to prison and
the lack of proper, specialised medical
care could become for Nina Karsov a
continuation of her wartime tragedy and,
even if she should survive physically,
could rob her of any prospect of voca-
tional work as well as the normal family
life of a woman and mother, reduce her
to the state of the cripples that are
the bitter heritage of the most cruel
of wars and the most cruel of occupa-
tions that ever oppressed our Polish
land.
Your voice is often heard in the
world in the defence of the right to
national freedom; in the defence of
racial, social, religious, and political
equality; in combatting human injustice
whatever it may be; and in the defence of
the principles of true humanitarianisn.
It is a voice that the Polish court in
its higher instance, which will pass the
final decision concerning the fate of
Nina Karsov, would undoubtedly also have
to take into account.
Let this voice be heard now in the
defence of a young woman who has had the
temerity to think independently and who
wants full freedom of thought for her
people. For all the ideals you have
fought for in your life can only be
achieved if the freedom of man's indepen-
dent thought is preserved.
A Group of Intellectuals
IN