Mr. Speaker, today I wish to direct the attention of the House of Representatives to a sad anniversary. Almost 60 years ago, on April 13, 1943, Americans awoke to a startling announcement from Radio Berlin: the disclosure that thousands of…
Mr. Speaker, today I wish to direct the attention of the House of Representatives to a sad anniversary. Almost 60 years ago, on April 13, 1943, Americans awoke to a startling announcement from Radio Berlin: the disclosure that thousands of bodies of Polish officers had been found by the Germans in a remote wood near the Dneiper River called Katyn Forest. These men had been captured in the fall of 1939 by the Red Army and executed the following spring by the NKVD which later became the KGB. Until the German discovery all trace of these men had disappeared.
The German discovery put tremendous strain on the western alliance from the moment it was announced. Our mortal enemy had accused the Soviet Union, a great ally who had just defeated the Wehrmacht at Stalingrad, of the unspeakable crime of murdering prisoners of war. For many in the West, it appeared to be a cheap propaganda stunt by Joseph Goebbels. Perhaps the Germans had murdered the Poles and were merely covering their tracks by blaming the crime on the Soviets. But as more and more facts were collected, it became abundantly clear that the Russians, not the Germans, had the blood of the Poles on their hands.
Over the next two years the governments of the United States and Great Britain took great pains to hold together the Alliance with the Soviet Union and downplayed Soviet responsibility for the murders in Katyn Forest and at two other sites that took the lives of more than 14,000 Polish officers. Eyewitness reports that should have been made public were classified top secret and subsequently disappeared. An Ambassador to the Balkans was forbidden to disclose incriminating documents and photographs. Polish broadcasters were censored by the Office of War Information.
Finally, between September, 1951 and December, 1952, a Select Committee of the U.S. Congress stepped in to investigate this horrible crime. This committee held hearings in six cities and four countries, received testimony from 81 witnesses and took depositions from another 100 who could not appear in person. Its published report of 2,162 pages filled seven volumes. In many ways, this investigation was Congress at its best. It meticulously assembled a body of fact that left no doubt about its principal conclusions: first, that the Soviets were guilty; and second, that the State Department and Army Intelligence (G-2) had engaged in a determined effort to shield the American people from the truth.
I recently learned that the seven-volume published record of the Select Committee to investigate the Katyn Forest massacre is not available anywhere in Poland. At the request of the Polish Government, I have arranged to provide Poland with a copy of this record which most experts believe is the most comprehensive body of record ever assembled on this subject. I would like to thank the Librarian of Congress, Dr. James H. Billington, and his fine staff for their extensive cooperation and assistance in this matter.
On Friday, I will present this document to Ambassador Przemyslaw Grudzinski, who will accept it on behalf of the Polish government. These records will then travel to Poland with Mr. Allen Paul, an American author whose book, Katyn: Stalin's Massacre and the Seeds of Polish Resurrection, provides a comprehensive overview of the crime and the context in which it occurred. Mr. Paul's book has recently been translated into Polish and will be released at an event in Warsaw on April 12. He will place the hearing record at that time, in my behalf, in the hands of Mr. Andrzej Przewoznik, Secretary General of the Polish Government Council on War Archives, Public Monuments and Historic Sites.
It is to be hoped that the record established by the Select Committee will aid public officials, historians and many others in efforts to understand the terrible crime of Katyn and its continuing impact on Russo-Polish relations. I am including with this statement some excerpts of Mr. Paul's reflections on the importance and scope of the select committee which will be delivered on April 12 in Warsaw at a Conference on the 60th Anniversary of Disclosure of the Katyn Forest Massacre.
Mr. Speaker, as we observe the anniversary of the discovery of this tragedy, let us hope and pray that humanity is spared such tragedies in the future.
Thoughts About the Congressional Investigation of Katyn
At this moment we are only a few hours away from the
sixtieth anniversary of Radio Berlin's sensational
announcement that the Wehrmacht had found the bodies of
thousands Polish officers in Katyn Forest who had been
``bestially murdered by the Bolsheviks.'' Fresh from their
catastrophic defeat at Stalingrad, the Germans were eager to
divert the world's attention from the pierced veil of
Wehrmacht invincibility, and they correctly surmised that
this, too, was a golden opportunity to sow seeds of discord
in the Western Alliance. At that moment the victims--men who
had served Poland faithfully, in fact one might say,
valiantly, men who represented the present and future
leadership of their nation, fathers and husbands, physicians
and engineers, professional soldiers and shopkeepers,
unfortunate souls placed by an unkind fate in Soviet hands,
prisoners of war who were not recognized as POWs by their
captors--from the moment the news crackled over the airwaves
from Berlin, these tragic victims became geopolitical pawns
and would remain so for years to come.
. . . Amidst all the atrocities of World War Two why have
the crimes commonly referred to as the Katyn Forest Massacre
been so enduring? Poland's feisty wartime Ambassador to the
Soviet Union, Stanislaw Kot, proved to be eerily prophetic on
this issue. In 1941, exasperated by continued stonewalling by
the Soviet government on the case of his country's missing
soldiers Kot said, ``People are not like steam. They cannot
evaporate.'' More than 60 years later, we are still thinking,
writing and debating the facts of the case because, I
suspect, it provides such a powerful mirror into the human
soul.
Let me turn now to one of the great milestones on the
arduous path to truth about the terrible murders in Katyn
Forest, that being the work of what was officially called
``The Select Committee to Conduct an Investigation and Study
of the Facts, Evidence and Circumstances on the Katyn Forest
Massacre.''
On September 18, 1951 the United States Congress authorized
what would become the most comprehensive neutral
investigation of this crime ever undertaken. It followed by
five years an abortive attempt to address this darkest of
tragedies at the Nuremberg trials. That charade collapsed
under the sheer weight of Soviet prosecutorial ineptitude. In
1948 the Poles themselves--through their London-based
government-in-exile--completed their own investigation and
published it as, The Crime of Katyn: Facts and Documents. It
was the most complete record of the crime at the time but it
was far from what the Poles had hoped for: a high profile,
independent investigation and trial to prove once and for all
that the Soviets--not the Germans--were responsible for these
brutal murders.
In their conclusion to the 1948 report, the Poles had
emphasized Roman-law canon: i.e. ``nobody can be judge in his
own case.'' The Soviets had attempted with disastrous effect
to judge their own case at Nuremberg. The Poles knew that
they, no more than the Soviets, could judge this case, thus
they called for an international tribunal to affix guilt and
mete out punishment.
In a sense the investigation sponsored by the U.S. Congress
vindicated the Poles' findings in 1948. The congressional
investigation lasted from September 18, 1951 to December 22,
1952. It resulted in hearings in six cities and four
countries; 81 witnesses were heard; and private depositions
were taken from 100 individuals, most of whom required
anonymity to protect relatives still in Poland. The final
report of 2,162 pages filled seven volumes. After all was
said and done, the Select Committee of Congress concluded,
just as the Polish Government-in-Exile had four years
earlier, that an international tribunal, in this case the new
United Nations International Court Justice, should
investigate the crime.
This similarity of findings in no way diminishes the scope
and importance of the congressional investigation. Once and
for all it put the United States clearly on the side of the
truth in this case and that was no small accomplishment. The
committee clearly, meticulously and, I would say,
courageously documented U.S. concealment of Soviet guilt and
its de facto pursuit of an ends justifies the means policy.
. . . Like the recommendations of the Polish government-in-
exile in 1948, the recommendations of the Select Committee of
Congress were never acted on. During the war geopolitical
realities--principally the fear that the Soviets would sign a
separate peace with Germany--stood squarely in the way. After
the war geopolitical realities--the fact that the Soviets
could block action at the United Nations--continued to stand
squarely in the way.
. . . The words of Sir Owen O'Malley and Ambassador
Stanislaw Kot ring just true today as the day they were
uttered. Kot told us in 1941, ``People are not like steam.
They cannot evaporate.'' Kot would tell us today that the
quest for justice for Poland's officers and deportees will
inevitably continue. And surely O'Malley would tell us that
justice, if found nowhere else, must be found in our own
hearts.