[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 54 (Thursday, April 3, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E660-E661]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        TRANSMITTAL OF IMPORTANT CONGRESSIONAL RECORDS TO POLAND

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                         HON. PAUL E. KANJORSKI

                            of pennsylvania

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, April 3, 2003

  Mr. KANJORSKI. 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.

[[Page E661]]

  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.

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