British Embassy to Poland
45 Lowndes Square S.W.1
(No. 51)
(15/192/43) May 24th 1943.
Sir,
My despatch No.43 of April 30th, dwelt on the probability that no confederation in Eastern Europe could play an effective part in European politics unless it were affiliated to the Soviet Government, and suggested that so long as the policy of this Government was as enigmatic as it now is, it would be inconsistent with British interests that Russia should enjoy a sphere of influence extending from Danzing [Gdańsk] to the Aegean and Adriatic Seas. The suppression of the Comintern on May 20th may be considered to have brought to an end what was in the past the most objectionable phase of Soviet foreign policy and to entitle the Soviet Government to be regarded less distrustfully than formerly.[10] It is not, then, without hesitation that I address this further despatch to you which also gives grounds for misgivings about the character and policy of the present rulers in Russia.
2. We do not know for certain who murdered a lot of Polish officers in the forest of Katyn in April and May 1940, but this at least is already clear, that it was the scene of terrible events which will live long in the memory of the Polish nation. Accordingly, I shall try to describe how this affair looks to my Polish friends and acquaintances of whom many had brothers and sons and lovers among those known to have been taken off just three years ago from the prison camps at Kozielsk, Starobielsk and Ostashkov to an uncertain destination: how it looks, for instance, to General Sikorski, who there lost Captain [Jan] Fuhrman, his former ADC and close personal friend; to M. [Kajetan] Morawski, who lost a brother-in-law called Zoltowski [Adam Żółtowski] and a nephew; or to M. [Lt Col Adam] Zaleski, who lost a brother and two cousins. (See Annex I).
3. The number of Polish prisoners taken by the Russian armies when they invaded Poland in September 1939 was about 180,000, including police and gendarmerie and a certain number of civilian officials. The total number of army officers was around about 15,000. At the beginning of 1940 there were in the three camps named above round about nine or ten thousand officers and six thousand other ranks, policemen and civil officials. Less public reference has been made to these 6,000 than to the 10,000 officers, not because the Polish Government are less indignant about the disappearance of other ranks than about the disappearance of officers, or were less insistent in enquiries for them, but because the need of officers to command the Polish troops recruited in Russia was more urgent than the need to increase the total ration strength of the Polish army. There is no reason to suppose that these 6,000 other ranks, police and civilians were treated by the Soviet Government differently to the officers and mystery covers the fate of all. For the sake of simplicity however, I shall write in this despatch only of the missing officers without specific reference to other ranks, to police prisoners or to civilians. Of the 10,000 officers, only some 3 or 4,000 were regular officers. The remainder were reserve officers who in peace time earned their living, many with distinction, in the professions, in business and so on.
4. In March of 1940 word went around the camps at Kozelsk, Starobelsk and Ostashkov that under orders from Moscow the prisoners were to be moved to camps where conditions would be more agreeable, and that they might look forward to eventual release. All were cheered by the prospect of a change from the rigours which prisoners must endure to the hazards and vicissitudes of relative freedom in Soviet or German territory. Even their captors seemed to wish the prisoners well who were now daily entrained in parties of 50 to 350 for the place at which, so they hoped, the formalities of their discharge would be completed. As each prisoner was listed for transfer, all the usual particulars about him were re-checked and re-registered. Fresh fingerprints were taken. The prisoners were inoculated afresh and certificates of inoculation furnished to them. Sometimes the prisoners’ Polish documents were taken away, but in many such cases these were returned before departure. All were furnished with rations for the journey, and, as a mark of special regard, the sandwiches furnished to senior officers were wrapped in clean white paper – a commodity seldom seen anywhere in Russia. Anticipations of a better future were clouded only by the fact that 400 or 500 Poles had been listed for further detention, first at Pavlishchev Bor and eventually at Griazovets. These were, as it turned out later, to be the only known survivors of the lost legion, and some of them are in England now; but at the time, although no principle could be discovered on which they had been selected, they supposed they had been condemned to a further period of captivity; and some even feared that they have been chosen out for execution.
5. Our information about these events is derived for the most part from those routed to Griazovets, all of whom were released in 1941 and some of whom – notably M. Komarnicki, the Polish Minister for Justice, are now in England.
6. Entrainment of the 10,000 officers from the three camps went on all through April and the first half of May, and the lorries, lined with cheerful faces, which took them from camp to station, were in fact the last that was ever seen of them alive by any witness to whom we have access. Until the revelations made by the Germans broadcast of April 12th 1943, and apart from a few words let drop at the time by the prison guards, only the testimony of scribbling on the railway wagons in which they were transported affords any indication of their destination. The same wagons seem to have done a shuttle service between Kozelsk and the detraining station; and on these some of the first parties to be transported had scratched the words: ‘Don’t believe that we are going home’, and the news that their destination had turned out to be a small station near Smolensk. These messages were noticed when the vans returned to Smolensk station, and had been reported to us by prisoners at Kozelsk, who were later sent to Griazovets.
7. But though of positive indications as to what subsequently happened to the 10,000 officers there was none until the grave at Katyn was opened, there is now available a good deal of negative evidence, the cumulative effect of which is to throw serious doubt on Russian disclaimers of responsibility for the massacre. (See also my despatch No.52 Secret of today’s date).
8. In the first place, there is the evidence to be derived from the prisoner’s correspondence in respect to which information has been furnished by officers’ families in Poland, by the officers now with the Polish army in the Middle East, and by the Polish Red Cross Society. Up till the end of March 1940, large numbers of letters had been despatched, which were later received by their relatives, from the officers confined at Kozelsk, Starobelsk and Ostashkov; whereas no letters from any of them (excepting from the 400 moved to Griazovets) have been received by anybody, which had been despatched subsequent to that date. The Germans overran Smolensk in July 1941, and there is no easy answer to the question why, if any of the 10,000 had been alive between the end of May 1940 and July 1941, none of them ever succeeded in getting any word through to their families.
9. In the second place there is the evidence of the correspondence between the Soviet Government and the Polish Government. The first request for information about the missing 10,000 was made by Minister Kot to Wyshinsky [Andrei Vyshinsky][11] Deputy Foreign Minister on October 6th, 1941. On December 3rd, 1941, General Sikorski backed up his enquiry with a list of 3,845 names of officers included among them. General Anders furnished the Soviet Government with a further list of 800 names on March 8th 1942. Enquiries about the fate of the 10,000 were made again and again to the Russian Government verbally and in writing by General Sikorski, M. Kot, M. [Tadeusz] Romer [Ambassadors to Russia 1942–43], Count Raczyński [Foreign Affairs] and General Anders, between October 1941 and April 1943. The Polish Red Cross between August and October 1940 sent no less than 500 questionnaires about individual officers to the Russian Government. To none of all these enquiries extending over a period of two-and-a-half years was a single positive answer of any kind ever returned. The enquirers were told either that the officers had been released, or that ‘perhaps they are already in Germany’, or that ‘no information’ of their whereabouts was available, or (M. Molotov to M. Kot, October 1941) that complete lists of the prisoners were available and that they would all be delivered to the Polish authorities ‘dead or alive’. But it is incredible that if any of the 10,000 were released, not one of them has ever appeared again anywhere, and it is almost equally incredible, if they were not released, that not one of them should have escaped subsequent to May 1940 and reported himself to the Polish authorities in Russia or Persia. That the Russian authorities should have said of any Polish officer in Soviet jurisdiction that they had ‘no information’ also provokes incredulity; for it is notorious that the NKVD collect and record the movements of individuals with the most meticulous care.
10
At a Presidium meeting of 8 June 1943, it was decided to dissolve the Comintern, an International worker’s organisation, as of 10 June 1943.
11
Andrey Vyshinsky (1883–1954) politician, lawyer, from 1935–39 Procurator General of the USSR, from 1949–53 Minister of Foreign Affairs and a Delegate to the United Nations Organisation.