This absolute babe is Jan Karski, a prominent member of the Polish resistance during the Second World War.

Not just satisfied with sabotaging or harassing the local occupiers like lesser mortals after escaping the Russians and Germans as a prisoner of war, Karski got in touch with the exiled Polish government to report for duty. During the first four years of the war, he embarked on terrifyingly badass missions to provide the Allies with information about life in occupied Poland, more importantly about the Nazi extermination of Jews in his country. Undeterred by the Gestapo breaking every bone in his lovely face, Karski dedicated his career as a Resistance fighter to making the Holocaust public even before the war ended. Though not Jewish himself, he smuggled himself into the Warsaw Ghetto twice and the Belzec extermination camp to gather information, which he then snuck out of the country and brought to Allied government officials as far as Roosevelt in Washington DC.

After reading his 1944 autobiography Story of a Secret State, I discovered that my new history crush was, coincidentally, my mum’s Theory of Communism lecturer at Georgetown, where he taught for about forty years after the war. In her words, ‘He was a god’ and had ‘intense blue eyes’ (weird inherited history crush? I think so). Even Obama has the hots for Jan Karski - he’s awarding him a posthumous Presidential Medal of Honour in a few weeks. Can you blame him? Check those cheekbones.