There is probably no affair emerging from the history of World War II which so definitely points to the opportunism and moral indifference of democratic leaders, when power considerations and immediate gains were involved, than does the Katyn Forest massacre-the mass murder of thousands of Polish prisoners of war.
Both leaders of the United States and British governments had in their hands circumstantial, but nonetheless conclusive, evidence that security agents of the Soviet Union had committed the murders. Both Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill manipulated without qualm the conscience of their people by distortion and omission of facts to conceal the case and to suppress information about it.
In doing so, they were as cynical as their counterparts in totalitarian camps. Ultimately, they contributed to the erosion of ideals for which they were presumably fighting. (The Soviets have since acknowledged their guilt.)
It is the sad duty of policymakers to make, on behalf of ”national interest,” choices between greater and lesser evils. In 1943-44, the general climate of public opinion and the mood of the leaders were geared to defeating Germany. Why, however, after the cessation of hostilities in Europe was the Katyn affair still suppressed by officials in the United States?
Even in the postwar years, after President Roosevelt had died, the war with Japan had been won and the United Nations Charter was in effect, the policy of suppressing the Katyn case was continued by the State Department. The war had been over for several years when a survivor of the annihilation came to the United States for a visit in the early spring of 1950.
The Voice of America invited him to make a broadcast in Polish to Poland. He submitted a script. Officials of the Voice of America meticulously eliminated all references to the Katyn massacre. He was not even allowed to mention the word ”Katyn.”
Whatever the official position of the United States government concerning the Katyn affair, many Americans not only abhorred the crime but resented the manner in which knowledge of it was kept from the public. In 1949, a group of distinguished personalities from American public life organized themselves to inquire into the matter. The American Committee for the Investigation of the Katyn Massacre Inc. came into being. State Department or not, the members started a vigorous campaign to bring the case to the attention of the public. A congressional committee was established, commencing hearings Oct. 1, 1951, in Washington. Subsequently, hearings were conducted in Chicago, London, Frankfurt, Berlin and Naples.
The committee unanimously concluded that the security police of the Soviet Union were responsible for the massacre. It made recommendations that the ”depositions, this evidence and these findings should be presented to the General Assembly of the United Nations, with the end in view of seeking action beforethe International World Court of Justice against the Soviet Union for a crime of violation of the law recognized by all civilized nations.”
This statement was subsequently supplemented: ”If the United Nations cannot act, then the President of the United States should seek the assistance of an International Commission of nations, other than Germany and Russia to sit as a jury, hear the facts of the Katyn Forest Massacre, weigh the evidence, record its findings and make such recommendations as it determines are required by justice.” These recommendations were made in 1952, but no action was undertaken.
British leadership was even more efficient in suppressing the case. No systematic investigation of this affair, to the author`s best knowledge, was made. Even seven years after the end of the war, Churchill refused to comment on the Katyn Forest Massacre.
I will not undertake to argue that the reluctance of our government to talk about the Katyn affair, much less to consider the question of Soviet guilt, is tantamount to the actual perpetration of the crime, although the legal principle of accessory after the fact invites application. However, it is difficult to deny that the conduct of our government in this affair is parallel to and morally equivalent to that of a businessman who has entered into arrangement with some other businessman for some mutually advantageous
(and even honorable) end, who observes his partner commit an exceptionally cruel and callous murder, and who refrains from mentioning this fact lest his partner take offense and the common enterprise be jeopardized.
It may be argued that acquiescence in one evil, including murder and the suppression of truth, may be justified in order to extirpate a greater evil. If we accept this proposition, however, we must accept its consequences. One consequence is that we have reduced to a shadow the difference between our own moral stance and that of the totalitarian regimes, with which we so proudly contrast ourselves. Another consequence, I believe, is the gradual erosion of the moral values that have been ”temporarily” suspended.
In no other case occurring during World War II was the position of leadership so detrimental to the integrity of the values for which our society presumably stands, particularly with regard to our concept of justice on the international level, as in the Katyn affair. The treatment of the Katyn case at the Nuremberg Trial may serve as an example. It was a sorry performance and a story in itself.
In this connection, Churchill had the decency to make a frank statement:
Referring to the consideration of Katyn at Nuremberg, he wrote, ”it was decided by the victorious governments concerned that the issue should be avoided and the crime of Katyn was never probed in detail.” Here was a case where the murderer sat among the judges, and his democratic colleagues helped to hide his bloody hands with their own judicial robes.
It seems to me that if we, who proudly boast of our Western heritage, do not react, without regard to the inconvenience it may cause us, to the Katyn massacre, we destroy the credibility of our values not only in the eyes of communists and of neutrals but even in our own eyes. Whatever the reason, I believe that democratic societies cannot afford callousness toward human life, through an amnesty of silence, without destroying the basic values which provide the very reason for their existence.
