British actor Ralph Fiennes looks likely to be chosen to play the lead role in a biopic about Jan Karski, the man from Poland who warned the West about the Holocaust.

The Story of a Secret State by the Polish World War Two hero, Jan Karski, is to be published by Penguin next month.

Iain Canning, the producer of the Oscar-winning feature The King’s Speech, is said to have already acquired the rights to make a film version of the story. According to British  media reports, Ralph Fiennes is likely to portray Jan Karski. His credits include an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for the role of Amon Goth, the Nazi war criminal, in Schindler’s List.

Karski’s story is indeed like a ready-made script for a film. 

As a member of anti-Nazi resistance, Karski, a devout Catholic, was smuggled by Jewish underground leaders into the Warsaw ghetto and subsequently  took part in courier missions to the West to report to the Polish government-in-exile as well as the  British and U.S. governments on the situation in Nazi-occupied Poland and the annihilation of Jews. 

He hoped to meet Winston Churchill but eventually was able to speak to Anthony Eden. In July 1943 he was received by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He appealed to the Allies for help for the Jews but no direct action was taken as a result of his testimonies.

Penguin’s edition will be the first publication of The Story of a Secret State in Britain. The book was first published in the United States in 1944 and has later had two editions in Poland. (mk)