The first woman to serve as U.S. Secretary of State and a Polish officer who provided some of the first accounts of the Holocaust are among 13 people who will be honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Tuesday.

The medal is the nation's highest civilian honor, awarded to those who make extraordinary contributions to world peace, national interest and security, or other cultural endeavors.

"I am so honored to have gotten the Medal of Freedom," former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told CNN's "Starting Point" last month. "It makes me feel very proud to be an American, and that's the story that goes together."

Jan Karski, the former Polish officer who escaped Nazi imprisonment and provided first-hand accounts to the Western Allies of atrocities he witnessed in Warsaw, will receive the award posthumously, along with Gordon Hirabayashi, who defied the forced relocation and internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and Juliette Gordon Lowe, the founder of the Girl Scouts.