Office of the Historian

860M.01/10–145

Memorandum of Conversation, by the Chief of the Division of Eastern European Affairs (Durbrow)

[Washington,] October 2, 1945.

This afternoon I received Mr. P. Zadeikis, Minister of Lithuania, who left with me the attached note53 in which he expressed the hope that “the American Government will continue its benevolent attitude in regard to the aspirations of the Lithuanian nation for the restoration of Lithuania’s independence and will use its powerful influence in bringing about the realization of democratic principles as expressed in the Four Freedoms54 and in the Atlantic Charter55 so that the processes of economic ruin and the depopulation of Lithuania under the present foreign military occupational regime of the Soviets may be brought to an end and the country returned to its rightful master, the Lithuanian people,”

I have assured Mr. Zadeikis that the Note would be brought to the attention of all the officers of the Department concerned but gave him no encouragement that this Government would be in a position to effect any change in the present situation.56

Elbridge Durbrow
  1. Note 1441, October 1, 1945, addressed to the Acting Secretary of State, not printed.↩
  2. See President Roosevelt’s State of the Union message to Congress, January 6, 1941, Congressional Record, vol. 87, pt, 1, p. 44, or Department of State, Peace and War, United States Foreign Policy 1931–1941 (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1943), p. 608.↩
  3. Joint statement by President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Churchill, August 14, 1941, Foreign Relations, 1941, vol. i, p. 367.↩

  4. President Truman received on November 16, 1945, a telegram from Paris sent by former leading Lithuanian officials on November 14 in which they appealed to him “to save the Lithuanian nation from starvation and complete annihilation.” The telegram charged that Soviet occupation authorities were carrying out the “systematic extermination” of the people and the “ruthless spoliation” of national resources. About 50,000 patriots, most active in the resistance against Nazi occupation, had been encircled by Soviet troops and were being exterminated. “Mass arrests and deportations of Lithuanians to Siberia and the Altai are in progress while thousands of Russian colonists are being settled in Lithuania.” (860M.01/11–1645)

    Secretary of State Byrnes requested the Embassy in Paris by airgram A–1509, November 30, 1945, to acknowledge the telegram in behalf of President Truman and to state that the President had referred the telegram to the Department of State for the consideration of the appropriate officials of the Department. (860M.01/11–3045)

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