Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Karski, Albright and Dylan Get Medals of Freedom

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.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.