'Karski' to be read to commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Byline: Richard Duckett

It has been nearly five years since Marc P. Smith's play "Karski'' was last performed.

Smith -- a playwright, director, producer and co-founder of the former Foothills Theatre who died in 2011 -- attracted international attention with his final two plays -- "A Journey to Kreisau'' (2008) and "Karski'' (2009), last staged in May 2010 at the Kosciuszko Foundation in New York City -- which in different ways dealt with individuals resisting the Nazis during World War II and the transmission of memory through the arts.

Despite the five years, the plays are still reverberating with significance and attracting interest, and "Karski'' will be given a free staged reading in a one-act form at 7 p.m. April 15 at the Central Massachusetts Yom HaShoah Commemoration (Holocaust Remembrance Day) hosted by Congregation Beth Israel, 15 Jamesbury Drive, Worcester.

In his play, Smith focused on Jan Karski, who joined the Polish underground army at the onset of the Nazi occupation of his country and reported first-hand on the subsequent horrors he had witnessed to Western leaders -- only to be treated with disbelief.

It's a story of continued relevance, said Smith's wife, Susan L. Smith, a co-founder of Foothills, who adapted "Karski'' to a one act play from the full script for the April 15 staged reading. "Absolutely, it presents the question not only 'what would you have done?' but also 'what would you have done?' specifically to leaders who are informed about what happened,'' she said. Some "just didn't feel that they wanted to take the next steps to make others aware.''

Karski, who became an American citizen in 1954 and died in 2000 (he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012), wrote a...