POLAND: HERE IS THE RECORD

By Ann Su Caldwell

Distributed by the Polonia Media Network

Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, beginning World War II. This writing was published in 1945 by the Michigan Committee of Americans for Poland in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It not only presented an accurate picture of pre-war and wartime history, but an insightful prediction of the future. It was reintroduced in 1999 by Polonia Today as Polonians around the world commemorated the 60th anniversary of the invasion.

Part 6

POLAND'S ONLY LEGAL GOVERNMENT

Despite Moscow's attitude toward the constitutional Polish Government, Premier Mikolajczyk did not despair of achieving Polish-Soviet co-operation. Yielding to British pressure, he twice visited Moscow in 1944, even though he knew that Stalin disapproved such steps. Soviet recognition of the Lublin Committee of Liberation, agreement with that Committee on administration of Polish territory taken from the Germans, editorial comment at the time of Mikolajczyk's arrival that he had come too late and that only Poles agreeing with the Lublin Committee would participate in the future Polish Government--all this showed the Soviet attitude. Already, during the preceding two years, Stalin's pledges (November, 1942) had been flagrantly violated, including "the right of every nation to arrange its own affairs as it wishes" and "the equality of nations and integrity of territories."

Lublin Committee representatives, arriving August 5, were received with all honors due high foreign officials--Mikolajczyk's party, arriving July 30, had not been--and housed in the Polish embassy building. In a conference with Stalin, previous to their arrival, Mikolajczyk, acting contrary to instructions from his government, had agreed to meet these men. As hosts they received him at the Polish embassy, informing him that he was received not as premier of Poland but as head of the Polish Peasant Party.

Thus Stalin cleverly gave the Polish-Soviet problem the appearance of a Polish factional quarrel.

MIKOLAJCZYK'S EFFORTS AT CONCILIATION BLOCKED

By immediately demanding abrogation of the Polish constitution, on which the legality of Mikolajczyk's premiership depended, the Lublin group made negotiations impossible, and having played their Kremlin-instructed part, they left Moscow August 9, attended with all honors. Mikolajczyk left the day after, with humiliation for his pains, although the heroic Soviet-instigated Warsaw uprising, for which he had begged help, was at its height.

Yet when in October Churchill, already in Moscow, summoned him thither, Mikolajczyk went. Osupka, vice-chairman of the Lublin Committee of National Liberation, arrived the same day.

Mikolajczyk's memorandum, drafted by the Polish Government and approved by the Polish Underground, provided that vital questions, except boundaries, which were to await postwar handling, might be discussed. None of these, it appears, were allowed to come up. Mikolajczyk had been summoned for but one purpose-to get his signature on agreements to Stalin's demands, namely, the so-called Curzon Line, with possible changes of a few kilometers in Poland's favor, as the boundary, and the establishment of a Polish government based on the Lublin Committee and including a few Poles from outside, himself among the number.

Obviously Mikolajczyk could not agree. Both the Polish Government and the Polish nation would have repudiated the action, for it would have meant not only the loss of almost half of Poland but loss of independence as well. Mikolajczyk calmly but stubbornly refused to "sign his own and his country's death sentence."

STALIN IMPOSES HIS DEMANDS AT YALTA

Six months later at Yalta Stalin got from Roosevelt and Churchill what could not be forced from Mikolajczyk at Moscow. Stalin actually conceded nothing. From the first his policy has been to accept nothing less than capitulation regarding Poland.

The charge that the Polish Government-in-Exile is not representative is not a matter of concern to outsiders. It is the legality of the Polish Government that concerns us, and the Polish Government is just as legal, whatever its composition-it is neither "reactionary," "fascist," nor "landlord"--as is our own. And it is actively defended and supported by loyal Polish citizens everywhere.

POLES IN MANY LANDS BACK EXILE GOVERNMENT

Cables and letters assuring support to Premier Arciszewski, successor to Mikolajczyk after the latter's compromise policy had failed, have poured in from Polish political and social groups and associations in Britain, France, Iran, Turkey, the Argentine, Australia, East Africa, Egypt and from Polish Christians and Polish Jews, separately and together, in Palestine. And from a Pole who has unparalleled opportunities for knowing what the 8,000 interned Polish soldiers in Switzerland are thinking and saying comes word that at least 90 per cent of them are for the Polish Government in London.

The character of the many messages is illustrated by these two sentences from that sent by Polish miners and factory workers in a French area:

"We assure the president and the Polish Government, at the head of which stands the tried and heroic fighter for freedom and democracy, Premier Arciszewski, that we continue to follow and obey orders of the legal government of the republic of Poland. Nobody has the right to decide the fate of the Polish people against their will, which can only be expressed in free, secret, and democratic elections."

As for the Polish army, now numbering over 200,000, General Anders after Yalta cabled the Polish president:

"In view of the recent Big Three declaration, so tragic for us, I report to you, Mr. President, that the Second Corps will not recognize the decision surrendering Poland and the Polish people as loot to the Bolsheviks. In keeping with our soldier's oath we shall continue to recognize you, Mr. President, as the one and only representative of the sovereign majesty of Poland, and the government appointed by you in London as the only legal government of the Polish state."

POLISH ARMIES FOR FREE, DEMOCRATIC NATION

And from a recent editorial in Bialy Orzel, one of the Army papers, come these passages:

"As long as the war lasts, as long as our country is at war with Germany, as long as Poland does not enjoy real independence, as long as there is an occupant on her lands making unilateral decisions in our affairs and using terror, just so long may we not weaken our effort to regain full national freedom.

"And what does full freedom mean for us? Out of our own experience we know well. No attempt at falsification or criminal misinterpretation of freedom can mislead us. The Polish state will be independent only when a constitutional Polish president assumes authority on Polish soil; when Poland is governed by a government led by that president; when its citizens are subject to laws made by themselves and not imposed upon them by foreigners; when there is neither political nor social serfdom; when a foreign secret police does not control the government; when there is no terror, violence, deportation, or forced labor; when there are no concentration camps and no persecution, and the Polish soldier who for five and one-half years has been fighting for freedom is not shot or shamefully treated but is master in his own land ... A country to which Polish soldiers taking part in this war cannot return without endangering their lives cannot be called free."

That expresses the sentiments of all the Polish Army groups outside Poland. The Soviet-sponsored Polish Army in Poland, commanded ostensibly by Zymierski, is only formally Polish; actually it is as much a part of the Red Army as are the divisions from the various Soviet Republics. The real Polish Army motto is "God, Honor, Country." The truly Polish soldier is abandoning no one of the three.

POLES LOYALLY FIGHT DESPITE YALTA

Therefore Polish armies continue to fight alongside their Allies. The Poles are keeping their part of the pact signed with Britain in 1939. They uphold the principles of the Atlantic Charter. The British Premier and the American President gave away almost half of all Polish territory; gave away the homes, and most tragic of all, the families of thousands of these soldiers fighting to set other peoples free, and made these Poles men without a country. Mr. Churchill, perhaps in an effort to salve the British conscience, spoke of the possibility of granting British citizenship to these heroic men who, as he well knew, could never go home if the Yalta decisions are approved.

"We can appreciate that offer to the full," they say, and thank him. But, "we have lost much in this war for a common cause, much has been taken from us; but two things they cannot take: our Polish citizenship and the pride we have as members of a nation whose qualities of greatness have shone in this war as perhaps never before in the thousand years of its history."

POLAND NOT EVEN THREE PERCENT COMMUNIST

Since the Polish people through their underground "Secret State" approved the position taken by the Government-in-Exile, and often dictated that position, there is no question of their attitude. Not three percent of the Poles are communist. But because uncensored news does not get out of Poland except by irregular channels, the world is being given the impression that the whole country accepts the Soviet-controlled regime.