British authorities have refused to grant political asylum to a Polish-Jewish refugee who spent two years in Polish jails as a political prisoner. But Home Secretary James Callaghan announced today that 28-year-old Nina Karsow, a writer and her blind husband. Dr. Szymon Szechter, may remain in Britain for 12 months. Their permit was due to expire on Saturday.
The case of Miss Karsow became an international cause celebre and drew widespread sympathy from Western writers and intellectuals, among them Bertrand Russell. His cabled plea on her behalf to Polish Communist Party chief Wladyslaw Gomulka was believed partly responsible for her release from prison last September. She was arrested in 1966 when police found an unfinished a privately sponsored humane society, designated Miss Karsow “prisoner of the year.” She came to England with Dr. Szechter and a companion, Viktoria LeBlang, earlier this month to participate in Human Rights Day celebrations and applied for permission to remain.
Miss Karsow was crippled at the age of two when her mother leaped from a train carrying Jews to the Treblinka death camp. Her mother was killed but the child was rescued by a Polish resistance woman. Until recent years she did not know she was born a Jew. She was secretary to Dr. Szechter, a Polish historian and Soviet Army officer in World War II. He was arrested with her but never tried and his subsequent efforts focussed international attention on her case. She was tried in secret and for that reason refused to testify. Dr. Szechter said she was a victim of anti-Semitism and police brutality. He appealed to “men of good will” and named several Western writers to observe conditions in Poland as reflected in her case.
The Home Office’s refusal to grant the couple’s bid for political asylum came to light when Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe and other friends protested. Mr. Thorpe asked for a meeting with Mr. Callaghan who he hoped “will show compassion in view of the history of this case.” Under international conventions subscribed to by the British Government, a refugee is entitled to apply for political asylum in the first country reached after escaping. But authorities here said that Miss Karsow and her husband were not entitled to remain in Britain because this was not the first country or their only possible place of refuge. The couple went from Poland to Austria and could live in Israel. The Home Office maintained therefore that there was no question of being given asylum because their lives were not in danger.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
