Hundreds of witnesses then showed up the German liars. [The article then referred to Sovinformbureau's statement on the subject of August 8, 1941.]
Feeling the indignation of the whole of progressive humanity over their massacres of peaceful citizens, and particularly of Jews, the Germans are now trying to rouse the anger of gullible people against the Jews: for this reason they invented a whole
collection of mythical "Jewish Commissars" who, they say, took part in the murder of the 10,000 Polish officers. For such experienced fakers it was not difficult to invent a few names of people who never existed—Lev Rybak, Avraam Borisovich,
Paul Brodninsky, Chaim Finberg. No such persons ever existed either in the
"Smolensk Section of the OGPU", or in any other department of the NKVD. In the light of these facts, the request made by the Polish Ministry of National Defence to the International Red Cross can be regarded only as a demonstration of their desire to give direct aid to Hitler's forgers and provocateurs.
And then, two days later, a Tass statement said that this Pravda editorial "fully reflects the attitude of Soviet leading circles".
The statement made by the Sikorski Government on April 18 makes matters worse,
since it identifies itself with the provocative statement of the Polish Ministry of Defence... The fact that the anti-Soviet campaign started simultaneously in the
German and the Polish press, and is being conducted on the same plane—this
amazing fact allows one to suppose that this campaign is being conducted as a result of an agreement between the German occupants in Poland and the pro-Hitlerite
elements of the ministerial circles of Mr Sikorski. The Polish Government's
statement shows that the pro-Hitlerite elements have great influence in the Polish Government and that they are taking new steps to worsen relations between Poland
and the USSR.
The Soviet case was not at all well presented. Detailed facts and figures were missing.
Something of the secretiveness that had surrounded the whole affair of the "missing Polish officers" was still maintained. To the Russians, the allegations were "beneath contempt". They would say what there was to say once the Red Army got to Smolensk.
Now there was only one thing to do: draw the political conclusions.
On the evening of April 27 it was announced that the Soviet Government had suspended diplomatic relations with the Polish Government. The announcement was contained in a letter from Molotov to Romer, the Polish Ambassador in the USSR.
The word used was "prervat" (suspend), not "porvat" (break off), and those who believed that the breach was only temporary, at first attached some importance to this fine point of Russian grammar.
The Polish Ambassador himself suggested at first that the quarrel might be patched up, and that he "would soon be back in Moscow". He was clearly upset at what had happened, but made a point of being very "correct" about the Russians at the press conference he gave to the British and American correspondents the night the
"suspension" was announced. He said he had refused to accept the Russian Note, because the motives were "unacceptable". He argued that an article in the official Polish paper in London, the Dziennik Polski had, on April 15, rejected the German proposal to appeal to the International Red Cross; but he did not know when and how exactly this appeal had finally been made, and on whose authority. Instead, speaking studiously more in sorrow than in anger, he made a few general complaints about the Russians. According to the lists of the Polish Embassy, he said, there had been 400,000 Poles in the Soviet Union.
Since then 95,000 soldiers and 40,000 civilians had gone to the Middle East. The Polish soldiers had been demobilised in 1939, but the officers and N.C.O.'s were kept in camps.
The Polish Government had asked the Russians in vain to give them lists of these officers and N.C.O.'s; and, unlike Kozielsk, the camps of Starobelsk and Ustashkovo had not been occupied by the Germans. If the Polish officers and N.C.O.'s had been transferred to Smolensk, the Polish Government had not heard of it until now. It was apparent that if the Russians had left the Poles behind to fall into German hands, the Russians did not wish to admit it, and were, therefore, humming and hawing. It was most unfortunate, and had
played into the hands of German propaganda. "Je ne crois pas au crime russe— I don't believe in a Russian crime", he said, "only why could they not be franker with us? " He said the three camps in question had been closed between April and June 1940, and it had been believed that the officers had been scattered through the Soviet Union in small groups. The news that they had been left behind near Smolensk was something quite new.
In these camps (he said), there had been 12,500 officers and N.CO.'s and when the Polish Army began to be formed, it was found that only a handful of officers were available.
He then talked about the 570 children's homes, schools, canteens, old people's homes, and other Polish institutions which had been set up in the Soviet Union, and had mostly been run on lend-lease stuff by 420 personnes de confiance appointed by the Polish Embassy at Kuibyshev, but had latterly been taken over by the Russians. After that, all these centres had lost contact with the Embassy. He had heard of Madame Wassilewska but did not know what she was doing or was proposing to do.
And then, on January 16, the Soviet Government went back on its former decision
to allow certain categories of people from Eastern Poland to rank as Polish citizens.
I (Romer) had been discussing this question with the Russians for some time, and it is most disappointing to me that these negotiations should now have had to be
suspended.
He ended, however, on a note of confidence, saying he thought the quarrel would yet be patched up.
I have quoted Romer's statement because, a few days later, Vyshinsky was to answer
him, though not on the crucial point of the "missing officers." Romer's suggestion that it would "blow over" was not justified. The Russians, having in effect broken off relations with the London Government, were now going to get tough.
Romer was not to forestall Vyshinsky. From the Russian point of view he was no longer Ambassador, and, therefore, had no business to give interviews. None of his statements was passed by the censorship, not even the statement that he did not believe the Russians had committed the Katyn crime!
[ After recapturing the Katyn area the Russians tried to prove that the Polish officers had been shot by the Germans. See pp. 661 ff.]
On the very next day, while Pravda was fuming against the "Polish Imperialists" and
"German agents", Wanda Wassilewska came out with an article in Izvestia which was a landmark in the history of Polish-Russian relations. After making the usual charges
against the London Government of preventing active resistance to the Germans in
Poland, and of haggling, instead, over Poland's eastern frontiers, she said that this Government had "done everything to silence progressive Poles abroad" and to
"undermine the Poles' confidence in their natural ally, the Soviet Union."
"Yet every honest Pole knows that such an alliance is a matter of life and death to his country, especially now when Europe's and Poland's fate is being settled on this front."