860C.48/731: Telegram
The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Standley) to the Secretary of State
[Received 10:50 p.m.]
480. The Polish Ambassador called on me last evening at his urgent request. He stated that he was anxious that the following information reach Washington immediately: That afternoon he had called on Vyshinski to discuss the evacuation from the Soviet Union of 50,000 Polish children, the granting of religious freedom for Polish citizens in the U. S. S. R. and the fate of Ehrlich and Alter.1 Vyshinski stated that the Polish proposal regarding the evacuation was not acceptable because of transportation difficulties; that such action was unnecessary since the welfare of the children was assumed by the Soviet Government. The Ambassador informed me that there are 160,000 Polish children registered in the Soviet Union and that a large number of them are facing starvation in the near future. Vyshinski refused to grant permission for Polish clergymen to enter the Soviet Union or [Page 152] to release those under detention in the country. He based his refusal on the grounds that the Soviet constitution guarantees full religious freedom2 and that Polish citizens were entitled to take advantage of this privilege; that the Soviet Government by law could not favor the development of any one single group of persons which would be the case if special privileges were granted the Poles. Although Vyshinski accepted a list of 94 Polish priests under detention the Ambassador stated that he appeared to be wholly uninterested in the question. Vyshinski refused to discuss the Ehrlich-Alter question on the grounds that, as Jews, they were Soviet citizens. The Ambassador added that all former Polish Jews in the Soviet Union are now considered by the Soviet authorities to be Soviet citizens. During the course of the conversation which he defined as “very unsatisfactory”, the Ambassador was impressed by Vyshinski’s unsympathetic, uninterested and at times sneering attitude.
- Henryk Ehrlich and Wiktor Alter, former residents of Warsaw and Lublin, and leaders in the Jewish Socialist movement in Poland, had been arrested and imprisoned by Soviet authorities in Kuibyshev on December 3, 1941, where they were reported to be correspondents of the Jewish Daily Forward of New York. Although they were Polish citizens, interest in their cases was taken by the Department of State upon intercession of Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt and William Green, President of the American Federation of Labor. There are some details about these persons in Republic of Poland, Polish-Soviet Relations, 1918–1943, Official Documents, pp. 178–180.↩
- The United States had already manifested some interest in the protection of church property and in freedom of religious worship in the Soviet Union; see Foreign Relations, 1941, vol. i, pp. 995 ff.↩