361.1121 Pyk, Irena Teodozja/1: Telegram
The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Steinhardt) to the Secretary of State
[Received 5:10 p.m.]
223. Irena Teodozja Pyk, subject of Department’s instruction to Warsaw Consulate General dated January 6, 193922 has been reported as arrested and sentenced to death by the Soviet authorities. Berlin Embassy states that Warsaw records do not indicate she has taken any action which would result in her expatriation. Please telegraph whether she is entitled to protection. Embassy is endeavoring to ascertain [Page 933] charges on which she was arrested from her mother and will inform Department.23
- Not printed. Miss Pyk was not to receive protection if she remained in Poland, and her passport was valid only for return to the United States.↩
- A note of February 21, 1941, from the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs advised Ambassador Steinhardt that “Irena Pyk has actually been sentenced by the Lvov oblast [region] court for the crimes committed by her to the highest measure of punishment.” As an appeal had been taken, her execution had been postponed, and information on the case had been requested by the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. (361.1121 Pyk, Irena Teodozja/3) In an interview with her on April 17, 1941, in the reception room of the Commissariat for Internal Affairs, she told Ambassador Steinhardt that the reason for her arrest and sentence had been membership in a Students Society in Lvov (Lwow) which favored Ukrainian independence. She declared that 39 other students had been arrested and, as far as she knew, had been executed. (361.1121 Pyk, Irena Teodozja/14)↩