Additional facts that have been discovered make it clear that an in depth study of each of the personages involved in an onsite review (let us use a genteel word) of the Katyn Massacre opens up further and earlier paths of knowledge by the Western Allies.
Thus, persistent
research on Dr. Piga, who although a member of the International Medical
Commission, never made it to Katyn and has therefore generally been omitted
from the list of IMC members, and review of the previously mentioned Goebbels
letter of July 1943, questioning Dr. Piga’s sudden Berlin illness, led to two
even more damaging possibilities – with both conclusions based on the 1952
interview with Dr. Piga at the US Embassy in Madrid –
- firstly,
(and as mentioned earlier) that the US was so firmly convinced of Soviet
guilt in April of 1943, that it wanted to ensure that a lesser number of
credible IMC forensic specialists was present, and therefore that it
pressured the Spanish Foreign Ministry, and that therefore there must
exist additional still unknown State Department documents confirming this
action, and that
- Secondly,
there may have been further attempts by the State Department, perhaps in Denmark,
Finland or Switzerland to try to keep their specialists from going to
Katyn.
This timeline
concerning reports and knowledge of the facts is very significant in that it
interfaces with the US President’s Special Emissary to the Mediterranean and Red
Sea basins, Archbishop Spellman’s report on a meeting with FDR. For, based on the Archbishop’s aide de
memoire, Roosevelt was clear in his decision about the post-war fate of Central
and Eastern Europe no later than the summer of 1943 and announced it to the Archbishop
on September 2, 1943, well before the Yalta Conference, and several months
prior to Teheran.
Although the
President had returned from Montreal with Churchill and the three had dinner
together on September 1, it was not until the morning of the following day,
when Churchill had departed, that FDR discussed these matters. It would appear that FDR’s desire to
accommodate Stalin at any cost, included satiating his desires for expansion of
the Soviet empire, without advising Churchill in a timely fashion.
The various
occurrences in the timeline under review will also clarify the reasoning behind
FDR’s response to George Earle’s efforts to present the truth about Katyn.
As time progresses,
various of these newly raised issues will be addressed in detail as will the
ongoing efforts of the Polish Underground to document the facts as best they
could.
There will also be
a discussion of the troubling role of the Orthodox prelate, Metropolitan
Nikolai, who abetted international Soviet propaganda efforts starting in 1941
and continued by serving on both Soviet Extraordinary Commissions, as well as
the wartime and postwar actions of the various Western journalists in Moscow at
the time of these commissions.
Finally, there will
be a review of what can now be determined to be unfounded postwar allegations against
General Bissell.
But let us remember
that as all the progressed, in Paris, the theatres were open, the galleries
mounted shows – all approved by the German censors – and Cocteau, Picasso and others
saw no issue in presenting their work in venues attended by the Wehrmacht. In France, as has been written – the show
went on.
© Krystyna Piórkowska
