860C.48/369
The Polish Minister (Lubomirski) to the Secretary of State
The Minister of Poland presents his compliments to the Secretary of State and begs to submit the following:
There are in East Siberia many hundreds of Polish children whose parents are either dead or have become separated from them through continual flight from the advancing Bolsheviks. Especially the flight following the defeat of Admiral Kolchak last winter took place under undescribable circumstances. The children belong chiefly to Poles who were compelled by the Russian armies retreating before the German advance in the years 1915 and 1916 to leave their homes and move eastward together with the armies. Consequently these Poles were scattered all over Russia. A big part of them, the poorer ones, were not allowed to stay in the cities of European Russia, but were forced to go eastward and finally found themselves in Siberia. The battles of Kolchak and the Bolsheviks and the advance of the Bolsheviks caused their emigration to areas occupied by the Polish troops. This new emigration, owing to scarcity of food due to difficulties of transportation in winter and precipitous flight, proved disastrous. Many thousands perished from cold or starvation and disease.
The Siberian Polish Relief Committee, formed under the presidency of Mme. Anna Bielkiewicz, undertook to save the scattered Polish orphans, with a view to sending them ultimately to Poland, and delegates of this Committee were sent to different parts of Siberia to gather the children. The number of children now in charge of the Relief Committee is about three hundred. Owing to the present economical and political situation of Siberia, the Committee cannot maintain the children in Siberia any more, as there are always new ones coming. The Committee applied to the Polish High Commissioner for Far East for transportation of these children to Poland. Unfortunately, the food and housing conditions in Poland are such as to render this absolutely impossible.
The National Polish Committee of America, well aware of the conditions in Poland and of the cruelty to the poor little ones to allow them to die in Siberia, decided at a special session to take care of these children by bringing them to the United States and providing them with a proper home, food, supervision and education until the conditions in Poland will make it possible to send them there. It is planned to place the children successively in parties with an educational body, the necessary means for which will be provided by the National Polish Committee of America, as the enclosed preamble and resolution35 show. The Polish Government, [Page 286] however, pledges itself to bear all the expenses in case of necessity. As most of these children are very small, their ages ranging from two to sixteen years, it is planned that an adult accompany each group of ten in order that they may receive proper care.
Presenting these facts to the consideration of the Secretary of State, the Minister of Poland hopes that the three hundred children referred to and thirty adults, who are at present caring for them in Siberia, be permitted to leave for the United States to stay until the Polish Government is ready to send them back to Poland.
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