The Unheeded Message of the Holocaust: An Interview with Jan Karski

 The Unheeded Message of the Holocaust:

Interview with Polish underground courier, Jan Karski.

Produced for Australian Broadcasting Corporation - Note that this is an incomplete transcription but contains most of the interview recorded in Jan Karski's home in Washington D.C in 1986. The original was recorded on a reel-to-reel, Nagra mono tape recorder by my wife, Arlene Krebs.

From air check from "Soundscapes: Explorations in Radio Sound and Music", WBAI New York.

WBAI New York.

INTRO: The program comprises an interview with Jan Karski, a Polish underground worker and himself a Catholic – he wrote a book a book called “Story of a Secret State” (Houghton Mifflin, 1944) after the war that describes his experiences during the war and particularly poignant among those is his visit to the Warsaw Ghetto, invited by the Jews and to a concentration camp to see for himself, an eyewitness, not a Jew but a Catholic, to take back word of the Holocaust to Britain and America.

Tikal and the Jaguar Inn

1989

The sky was changing quickly now and a red dawn was rising behind the city. Soon it would be time to leave. We were naked, with the smell of sleep and sex still infused on our creamy bodies standing in the frame of the doorway over looking the Hotel Colonial’s ornate courtyard waiting for the new morning to begin. I was silent, preparing my mind for the jolt back to New York. The air felt good, gentle and cool and I reached for Vivianna and held her close for a moment and then turned and went inside to dress.

Columbus: based on a radio feature commemorating the 500th Anniversary of His Arrival in the Americas.

A Radio Documentary Feature Program in Three Movements

produced for Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Radio Helicon
(Proposal to Australian Broadcasting Corporation) 

1.    COLUMBUS: Europe is in ferment. The Dark Ages are over and the Renaissance is beginning. The Moors and Jews are forced out of Spain. The Inquisition is unfolding to protect the weak and ignorant from evil doctrines. The printing press has arrived and soon Cervantes will write Don Quixote and El Greco will precursor Expressionism and Cubism, and his personality and works will source inspiration for poets and writers such as Rainer Maria Rilke. Martin Luther nails his thesis on a church door and Michiavelli is writing “The Prince”. Columbus has been plunged into the sea off Lisbon. He learns Latin and Castilian and reads ancient books of navigation from the pioneering work of Henry the Navigator and dreams of sailing west to Asia. In 1492 he sails to the Americas.

Creating Nodes of Permanence

Akaido:  a martial studies, philosophy, and religious belief. Aikido is often translated as "the Way of unifying (with) life energy" or as "the Way of harmonious spirit." The goal is to create an art that practitioners can use to defend themselves while also protecting their attacker from injury. Aikido is performed by blending with the motion of the attacker and redirecting the force of the attack rather than opposing it head-on.

“…only the ecological problems created by modern capitalism are of sufficient magnitude to portend the system’s demise.” Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom  (1982).

     Australian is the oldest and driest continent, the only one never to have experienced an ice age. Aborigines have lived on this continent for 60,000 years. There are still Aborigines who live in the dreamtime  when earth and man were one with the animals, the land and plants and their world was dreamed into being. Their society prospered and grew because they followed and learned in songs, tattoos and paintings, the great narrative of nature.

Principles of Permaculture - David Holmgren and Bill Mollison.

Principles of Permaculture Design. David Holmgren
David Holmgren is author: Permaculture Principles and Pathways beyond Sustainability.
Assembled and produced by Tracy Dee Cook and Andrew Leslie Phillips
Hancock Permaculture Center.
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Permaculture principles are brief statements or slogans - a checklist when considering the complex options for design and evolution of ecological support systems. These principles are universal, although methods that express them vary greatly according to place and situation. 

Principle 1: OBSERVE AND INTERACT
In conservative and socially bonded agrarian communities, the ability to observe and adapt traditional and modern methods of land use, is a powerful tool to evolving new and more appropriate systems.

Good design depends on thoughtful and protracted observation of people and nature. It is not generated in isolation but through continuous and reciprocal interaction with the subject.

Observing then combining traditional and modern ecological permaculture design will be more successful than fossil fuel dependent systems. A diversity of local systems will naturally generate their own innovative ideas which will interact and cross-fertilize creating redundancy and resilience - a Mandelbrot set of self-replicating sustainable systems.

Permaculture is Systems Thinking

 We are often asked: “ What is Permaculture?”  Usually the definition is couched in agricultural terms but the principles and directives of permaculture thinking are adaptable beyond the garden and in fact embrace a far more inclusive hypothesis. 

 To me permaculture is systems thinking.  Systems thinking is a process of understanding how things influence one another. In nature systems thinking examples include ecosystems where elements such as air, water, plant and animals all work together to survive, flourish or perish. In organizations systems consist of people, structures, and processes that work together to make an organization healthy or unhealthy, sick or abundant.