[Enclosure]
The Polish Prime Minister (Sikorski) to the Polish Ambassador in the United
States (Ciechanowski)
1) General Sikorski expresses his thanks to the President for his
friendly understanding of the gravity of the situation created
in Polish-Soviet relations by the sudden and illegal decision of
the Soviet Government to withdraw Polish citizenship of the
Polish deportees in Soviet Russia.
2) The General lays great hope in the President’s intervention in
this matter and realizes that the choice of time and method for
this intervention must be entirely left to the President’s
decision.
[Page 330]
3) At the same time, General Sikorski takes the liberty to point
out the importance of the element of time. It appears to him
inevitable that delay in defining an appropriate attitude on the
part of the United States and Great Britain cannot fail to
encourage the creation of accomplished facts detrimental to
Poland’s rights and interests and difficult to readjust in the
future.
4) The Polish Government will remain calm being aware that this
new attempt on the part of the Soviet Government to exercise
pressure on the Polish Government must be regarded as a direct
result of the present military successes of the Red Army which
may be of a temporary nature.
5) Soviet tactics at present consist in depriving the Polish
deportees of relief and in treating them as hostages—in
anticipation that such action would undoubtedly arouse the
Polish community.
This action has as its ultimate purpose to prepare the way for
pressure on the Polish Government with regard to the problem of
Poland’s Eastern boundaries.
It makes the situation of the Polish Government especially
difficult at a time when it has to encourage the population in
occupied Poland to keep up its heroic resistance to German
pressure and to German promises to renounce all terrorism in
exchange for collaboration of the Polish population in the
struggle against “the Polish [Soviet?]
danger”.
6) The refusal to grant permits to leave the USSR. to the
families of Polish officers and enlisted men, as well as
orphans, and the threat to deprive them of further relief,
causes great bitterness particularly in the ranks of the Polish
Army in the Middle East and may seriously affect its morale.
Washington,
February 8,
1943.
