WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Obama awarded the Medal of Freedom to Jan Karski, Madeleine Albright and Bob Dylan, among other recipients.
Twelve of the 13 recipients received their medals in a ceremony Tuesday at the White House. Israeli President Shimon Peres will receive the medal in a separate event next month.
Karski, who died in 2000, was a Polish resistance fighter who was among the first to document the Nazi genocide against European Jews.
Albright, the former secretary of state and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, learned in 1997 from a reporter that her parents hid her Jewishness from her. She recently wrote a book about her family’s Jewish heritage, "Prague Winter," in which she discusses 25 relatives who perished during the Holocaust.
Dylan, who changed his last name from Zimmerman, transformed rock and folk music in the 1960s.
