860C.01/8–2444: Telegram
The Chargé to the Polish Government in Exile (Schoenfeld) to the Secretary of State
[Received August 24—2:55 p.m.]
Poles 83. Premier Mikolajczyk asks me to transmit message given below dated Warsaw August 23 which was addressed to him by [Page 1393] delegate of Polish Government in Poland and President of Council of National Unity with the request that it be conveyed to the President and Mr. Churchill:
“For the second time we are appealing to you. It is already for 3 weeks that we are carrying on our bloody struggle left to rely upon our own strength only, insufficiently supplied with weapons and ammunition and without air support. At the same time reports from all Polish territories occupied by the Soviets, whether disputed or not, show that the civil administration and home forces coming out into the open, are being interned, arrested or imprisoned by the Soviets in the illfamed concentration camp of Majdanek.20 This applies to the same home forces which have so effectively assisted in fighting the Germans. In this way after 5 years of unrelenting resistance against the Germans, for which we pay with our blood, the Polish nation is coming under the no less cruel slavery of one of the Allies. Can the great peoples of the United States of America and of Great Britain watch passively this new hecatomb of friendly Poland? Is not even the Polish Air Force allowed to come to assistance of succumbing Warsaw? Is Poland to become victim to some division of spheres of interest?
We solemnly declare that we are fighting on the ruins of Warsaw ablaze, that we shall go on fighting for independence and that we shall continue to defend the latter against any kind of imperialism. The peasants, the workers and the intelligentsia stand united in this struggle.
The Polish nation cannot understand either the passiveness of the great Allies in face of succumbing Warsaw or the silent toleration of oppression and violence under Soviet occupation. Their reaction cannot be but one of bitter disappointment.”
- Maydanek (Maidenek), originally a huge German concentration camp near Lublin, where over 1,500,000 persons were reputed to have been destroyed in various ways during the war.↩