From: lbs@tkmhp2.physik.uni-karlsruhe.de (Lech Borkowski)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.polish
Subject: Reports from the Polish underground about the extermination of Jews
Date: 15 Sep 92 04:22:12 GMT
Reply-To: lbs@tkm.physik.uni-karlsruhe.de
Organization: University of Karlsruhe, Germany


 In the book "Courier from Warsaw", Wayne State Univ. Press, Detroit,
1982, Jan Nowak-Jezioranski describes his work during WW II 
as a secret courier of the Polish government in exile.
 I would like to turn your attention to chapter 25, p. 273-276.
Let me quote some of the text beginning on p. 273:

 "...The reading of these secret documents in the archives led me
to other discoveries. I thought I was small fry, and was amazed
to see voluminous reports and notes from the various people
I met and spoke to that had found their way to the Public Records
Office. I was astonished that even Eden had sent Churchill
a four-page report of my conversation with him. I also found 
reports from lower-grade officials, experts in Polish affairs who
wanted to speak to me soon after my arrival in London. Amon
these were Frank Savery, the former British consul in Warsaw, 
and Moray McLaren and David Osborne from the Political Intelligence
Department of the Foreign Office. 

	In all these meetings I myself introduced the subject
of the extermination of the Polish Jews and the destruction of
the Warsaw ghetto. The crime of genocide, the slaughter of hundreds
of thousands of people, the scale and methods used, unprecented
in history, seemed matters of highest importance. Everybody had
listened with interest mixed with disbelief. Thirty-odd years
later, looking through the notes and reports of those interlocutors,
I found all the references to the Jews omitted. Jan Karski,
my predecessor, arrived in London from Poland in 1942 with
extensive eye-witness information about the fate of the Jews.
Before he left Poland Karski, posing as an Estonian policeman,
risked his life by getting into the concentration camp
at Majdanek to see with his own eyes what was happening to the Jews
sent there. Karski met with Anthony Eden on his return to London
and told me that at his audience he described at length
the systematic and progressive extermination of the Jewish
population. The undersecretary of state considered the conversation
so important that a report on it was circulated to all members
of the war cabinet. I looked this up at the Public Records Office
and was astonished to find everything Karski had said about
the extermination of the Jews omitted from the document. Why?"


on p. 275:

"...Szwarcbart denied this:'The Polish government and
the undergound movement in Poland are our principal sources
of information, but not the only ones. Besides, the Poles
pass on to us reports and documents that come form Jews
themselves.'
	'Do you think that if, in place of myself, a Jew
had just arrived from Warsaw with this news, they would
disbelieve him too?' I asked.
	'They would not believe him either. An emissary
of the Jewish organization BUND, Szmul Zygielbojm, reached
the West. His comrades in Poland kept sending him reports
here through the Polish underground. One report said
that seven hundred thousand Jews had already been exterminated.
One of the leaders of the Polish Socialist Party, Adam Pragier,
who is himself Jewish by origin, told Zygielbojm that
this was propaganda which nobody would believe, that one
zero must be erased and one must say that *seventy* thousand
Jews have been killed. Then public opinion in the West
would accept it as possible.' Zygielbojm, he said, could not
bear the fact that even world-wide Jewish organizations cared
nothing for his warnings. In the end he committed suicide
from despair.
	In the rest of the conversation it transpired that Szwarcbart
had been informed of these events even before my arrival 
in London. By radio and courier the underground authorities
had seen detailed documents, photographs, and figures about
the course of the extermination plans. The Polish government
passed these on to the British and to the world Jewish
organizations."


 Lech Borkowski
LBS@NEPTUNE.PHYS.UFL.EDU
Newsgroups: soc.culture.polish