361.1121 Roszkowski, Mieczyslaw/3: Telegram
The Ambassador in the Soviet Union ( Steinhardt ) to the Secretary of State
[Received December 31—8:10 a.m.]
1804. Department’s 923, December 28, 5 p.m.4 I have no doubt that the case referred to by Umanski5 in his talk with the Under Secretary6 on December 167 is that of Mieczyslaw Roszkowski as the Embassy has made representations in behalf of no other person with a like or similar name nor is there any other case pending in which American citizenship is in doubt. His case was the subject of my telegram 1030, August 16, 1940. Roszkowski was born on October 29, 1920 in Fall River, Massachusetts. He was taken to Poland as an infant by his parents along with his two American born brothers. His father and two brothers are now in the United States. Roszkowski never of his own volition set foot in the Soviet Union but was seized in Poland by the Soviet authorities subsequent to the invasion of Poland. The Soviet authorities do not claim that Roszkowski has ever taken any step to divest himself of his native American citizenship. On the contrary the Embassy’s records indicate [Page 928] that he applied on January 8, 1940 at the American Consulate General in Warsaw for an American passport and was about to depart for the United States. The Soviet authorities have steadfastly refused to grant the Embassy access to Roszkowski since his arrest notwithstanding repeated requests for an interview and have refused to divulge to the Embassy the charges against him.8 They have also failed to reply to urgent notes from the Embassy dated August 17, November 28, and December 10, 1940.
Our Berlin [Embassy] by telegram of May 14, 1940, advised this Embassy that the Department had approved the issuance of an American passport to Roszkowski.
In view of the fact that Roszkowski is a native born American citizen, Umanski’s statement that he had never been in the United States and that his only claim to American citizenship arose from the fact that he had apparently applied for certain American documents in 1939, is not in conformity with the facts. The Embassy’s representations on Roszkowski’s behalf resulted from an inquiry by the Department as to Roszkowski’s welfare and whereabouts made after his arrest. The present status of the case is that the Soviet authorities continue to refuse the Embassy access to Roszkowski or to recognize his American citizenship.
- Not printed.↩
- Konstantin Alexandrovich Umansky, Ambassador of the Soviet Union in the United States.↩
- Sumner Welles.↩
- See memorandum of December 16 by the Assistant Chief of the Division of European Affairs (Henderson), Foreign Relations, 1940, vol. iii, pp. 420, 426.↩
- The father, Ignacy Roszkowski, informed the Department of State in a letter of January 15, 1941, from Chelsea, Massachusetts, that he had learned from a person just returned from Soviet-occupied Poland, who had been present at the trial, that Mieczyslaw Roszkowski had been sentenced to 3 years’ imprisonment in a reformatory labor camp by the public court of Lapski raion (district), for illegal possession of firearms. This sentence was reduced to 1 year.↩