The Council of Ministers, at a meeting held in London
on the 17th of April 1943, after acquainting itself with all information
received in the matter of Polish officers, whose bodies had been recently
discovered near Smolensk, and having taken notice of a report in this
matter received from Poland, issued the following statement:
No Pole can help, but be deeply shocked by the news,
now given the widest publicity by the Germans, of the discovery of
the bodies of the Polish officers missing in the USSR, in a common
grave near Smolensk, and of the mass execution of which they were
victims.
The Polish Government have instructed their representative
in Switzerland to request the International Red Cross in Geneva to
send a delegation to investigate the true state of affairs on the
spot. It is to be desired that the findings of this protective 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, deny to the Germans any right to base
on a crime they ascribe to others, arguments in their own defence.
The profoundly hypocritical indignation of German propaganda will
not succeed in concealing from the World the many cruel and reiterated
crimes still being perpetrated against the Polish people.
The Polish Government recall 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 districts alone, 6000 were deported in June 1942;
the compulsory enlistment in the German Army of Polish prisoners-of-war
from territories illegally incorporated in 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 or in concentration
camps; the recent imprisonment of 80 000 people of military age, officers
and men, and their torture and murder in the camps of Majdanek and
Treblinka.
It is not to enable the Germans to lay impudent claims
and pose as the defenders of Christianity and European civilization,
that Poland is making immense sacrifices, fighting and enduring suffering.
The blood of Polish soldiers and Polish citizens, wherever it is shed,
cries for atonement before the conscience of the free peoples of the
World. The Polish Government condemn all the crimes committed against
Polish citizens and refuse the right to make political capital of
such sacrifices to all, who are themselves guilty of such crimes.
