760C.61/1087
Statement Issued by the Polish Government in Exile, at London, on April 17, 194313
There is no Pole who would not be deeply shocked by the news of the discovery near Smolensk in a common grave of massacred bodies of the Polish officers missing in the U.S.S.R. and of the mass execution of which they have become victims, news of which is being given the widest publicity by German propaganda. The Polish Government has instructed their representative in Switzerland to request the International Red Cross in Geneva to send a delegation which would investigate on the spot the true state of affairs. It is to be desired that the findings of this protecting institution, which is to be entrusted with the task of clarifying the matter and of establishing responsibility, should be issued without delay.
At the same time, however, the Polish Government, on behalf of the Polish nation, denies to the Germans the right to draw from a crime which they ascribe to others arguments in their own defence. The profoundly hypocritical indignation of the German propaganda will not succeed in concealing from the world the many cruel, repeated, and still lasting crimes committed on the Polish people.
The Polish Government recalls such facts as: The removal of Polish officers from prisoner-of-war camps in the Reich and the subsequent shooting of them for political offences alleged to have been committed before the war; mass arrests of reserve officers subsequently deported to concentration camps to die a slow death. From Cracow and the neighbouring district alone 6,000 were deported in June 1942; the compulsory enlistment into the German Army of Polish war prisoners from territories illegally incorporated into the Reich; the forcible conscription of about 200,000 Poles from the same territories, and the execution of the families of those who managed to escape; the massacre of one-and-a-half million people by executions and in concentration camps; the recent imprisonment of 80,000 people of military age, officers and men, and the torturing and murdering of them in the camps of Majdanek and Tremblinka.
It is not to enable the Germans to lay impudent claims to appear in the role of defenders of Christianity and the European civilization that Poland is making immense sacrifices and fighting and enduring [Page 382] immeasurable sufferings. The blood of Polish soldiers and Polish citizens, wherever shed cries for expiation before the conscience of the free peoples of the world. The Polish Government deny the right to exploit all the crimes committed against Polish citizens for political maneuvers by whoever is guilty of these crimes.
- Copy transmitted to the Department by the Ambassador to the Polish Government in Exile in his despatch Polish Series No. 308, April 30. The statement was released to the London press on April 18.↩