Russia at war 1941-1945

The joint Russo-Polish Tribunal investigating the Maidanek crimes sat in the building of the Court of Appeal at Lublin. It included many leading Polish personalities—the

President of the District Court, Czepanski; Professor Bielkowski (whom I had already met); a round stout prelate, Father Kruszinski, Dr Emil Sommerstein, the leading Jewish member of the Lublin Committee, and a former Sejm deputy, and Mr Witos, the

Commissioner for Agriculture. That these people were not Russian stooges could be seen from the eagerness with which one of the members insisted on telling the foreign press that the Russians had arrested 2,000 AK men in the Lublin District. In an introductory speech, the Polish president of the tribunal gave the history of Maidanek camp, a lurid catalogue of all the various ways in which people were tortured and killed. There were SS-men who specialised in the "stomach-kick" or the "testicle-kick" as a form of murder; other prisoners were drowned in pools, or tied to posts and allowed to die of exhaustion; there had been eighteen cases of cannibalism in the camp even before it had officially become, on November 3, 1943, an extermination camp. He spoke of the chief of

Maidanek. Obersturmbannführer Weiss, and his assistant, a notorious sadist, Anton Thumann, and Mussfeld, the chief of the crematorium, and many others.

Himmler himself had twice visited Maidanek and had been pleased with it. It was

estimated that 1,500,000 people had been put to death here. The big fry had, of course, fled, but six of the small fry—two Poles and four Germans—had been caught, and, after a trial, they were all hanged a few weeks later.

The four Germans—three of them SS-men—were professional killers; but it seemed a

little hard on the two young Poles, both of whom had originally been arrested by the Germans and had then "sold themselves" to them, in the hope of surviving.

[The interrogation of these men is described in my article, "First Contact with Poland", published in the Russian Review, No. 1. (Penguin Books. 1945).]

The press and radio in the West were still sceptical. Typical was the BBC's refusal to use my story, as was also this comment of the New York Herald Tribune at the time: Maybe we should wait for further corroboration of the horror story that comes

from Lublin. Even on top of all we have been taught of the maniacal Nazi

ruthlessness, this example sounds inconceivable...

The picture presented by American correspondents requires no comment except

that, if authentic [sic] the régime capable of such crimes deserves annihilation.

I saw a great deal during those days of the members of the "Lublin Committee"—

Obsöbka-Morawski, its chairman, General Rola-Zymierski, and several others. The New

Poland was still in its infancy, and less than one-quarter of Poland's territory had yet been liberated. No industrial centres, except Bialystok, mostly in ruins, had yet been

recaptured, and it was still too early to do any large-scale planning. For the present, the Committee was obsessed with some immediate problems, such as rationing in the towns, the creation of regular government jobs in Poland, so as to get people away from the hand-to-mouth existence they had led under the Germans, and the mobilisation of

conscripts into the Polish Army, despite the resistance coming from the AK men.

Osöbka-Morawski had seen Mikolajczyk in Moscow earlier in the month, and what

seemed to worry him most at the time was the support the London Polish government

was still getting from Britain and the USA.

There could be no question of an amalgamation between the London Government and the

Lublin Committee. "We are willing to accept Mikolajczyk, and Grabski, and Popiel and one more, and that is all" Osöbka-Morawski said. He added that the Lublin Committee could accept only the 1921 constitution, but London stuck to the "fascist" constitution of 1935. Unlike the Americans, Clark Kerr, the British Ambassador in Moscow, had told

him that he fully approved of the 1921 constitution—but it was just a bit awkward what to do with President Raczkiewicz.

"I was going to tell him where he could put him," Osöbka-Morawski said, and suddenly grinned like a schoolboy. "Anyway," he concluded, "the sooner we resume conversations with Mikolajczyk, the better for him; for time is working for us. We are anxious to come to a settlement, and that's why we offered him the premiership. But he had better accept soon, or the offer may not be repeated." (Which is precisely what happened.)