WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — A film about a Polish underground courier will screen twice in North County followed by panel discussions.

 

"Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski" will screen Wednesday, Oct. 14, at 7 p.m. at Images Cinema and again on Wednesday, Nov. 4, at 5 p.m. at the North Adams Public Library. Admission to the Images is screening is on a sliding scale (tickets here); the library screening is free. 

 

Karski was a courier for the resistance during World War II. In 1942, he volunteered to walk through the Warsaw Ghetto and a Nazi extermination camp before traveling to London to report to the Allied Nations on the conditions of occupied Poland and, specifically, the Holocaust. He personally delivered his eyewitness account — and urgent appeal for intervention on behalf of the Jewish people — to British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, and, later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt. 

 

After the war, Karski earned his doctorate from Georgetown University, where he taught in the School of Foreign Service for 40 years. Karski was made an honorary citizen of Israel and was awarded the distinction "Righteous Among the Nations" by Yad Vashem. He died in Washington, D.C., in July 2000.

 

Academy Award-nominee David Strathairn, in a solo performance, portrays Karski in this true story of a reluctant World War II hero and Holocaust witness who risks his life and endures mental anguish and physical torture to stand tall in the halls of power and speak the truth. 

 

According to the press release: 

 

Strathairn captures the complexity and legacy of this self-described "insignificant, little man" whose timely story of moral courage and individual responsibility can still shake the conscience of the world.

 

The film takes a bold, elegant and expressionistic approach to cinematically transform the original stage play on which "Remember This" is based and to provide an intensity and intimate theatricality rarely experienced on screen. A minimalist visual aesthetic and the simplicity of the space — a table and two chairs, shot in black-and-white — captures Strathairn's dynamic one-man performance in all of its nuance and power, as he not only becomes Jan Karski, but channels over 30 characters from Karski's extraordinary life. 

 

The post-screening discussion at Images Cinema will be moderated by Sharon Wyrrick, a Berkshire filmmaker and playwright, with guest panelists Mariah Hepworth, assistant professor of history at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, and bestselling author and journalist Michelle Young, who lives in the Berkshires.

 

Hepworth's research and teaching focuses on the ways popular media have shaped Americans' understanding of their collective past and contemporary reality. Her current book project examines how D.W. Griffith's films helped Americans make sense of World War I through familiar narratives of American history, national identity, and the shared experience of new technology. She teaches courses ranging from the histories of Hollywood and American sports to American foreign policy and Indigenous America. 

 

Young's latest book, "The Art Spy: The Extraordinary Untold Tale of World War II Resistance Hero Rose Valland" was named a Best Book of 2025 by the New York Public Library, Library Journal, and Hyperallergic, and is a 2026 Massachusetts Book Award honoree. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines and journals and she founded the publication Untapped New York. She is a professor of architecture at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.

 

Panelists for the library screening have not yet been announced.