“HIDEOUS FRAME-UP”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 April 1943, Page 4

“HIDEOUS FRAME-UP”

MURDER OF POLISH OFFICERS ASCRIBED BY GERMANY TO RUSSIANS. FACTS GIVEN IN MOSCOW & LONDON. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 11.40 a.m.) LONDON, April 18. The fate of some thousands of Polish officers whose bodies the Germans announced finding near Smolensk, where they alleged the Russians had murdered and buried them, was again mentioned in Moscow and London at the weekend. The Moscow radio, broadcasting to Germany, said: “There were some former Polish prisoners in the area west of Smolensk when our forces withdrew in 1941, after which they and other Polish citizens fell into the hands/ of German executioners. The Germans killed some immediately and kept others alive for a special occasion, which has now come. The Germans have shot thousands of unarmed people, supplied the bodies with touched-up documents from the Gestapo archives, and buried the victims on Soviet soil. The fact that the bodies were not decomposed showed that the Germans murdered the Polish officers recently. The Germans want to make the world forget their crimes by slandering the Soviet. They have overshot the mark this time, with their much too fresh bodies, imperishable dairies, false witnesses and shady investigators. The Gestapo’s hand can easily be traced in this hideous frame-up.” The Polish Cabinet in London issued a statement condemning “the hypocritical indignation of the Germans’ propaganda, which will not succeed in concealing from the world their cruel, repeated and continuing crimes committed against the Poles.”

The statement listed atrocities committed by the Germans against Poles and concluded with a reference to ::the Germans’ impudent claims to appear in the role of defenders of Christianity and European civilisation.”

An earlier message reported: “The Minister of National Defence in the Polish Government in London, Lieu-tenant-General Kukiel, has issued a statement concerning 8300 missing Polish officers who were released from Soviet prison camps in the spring of 1940 .and into whose fate the Poles have decided to ask the International Red Cross to make an inquiry. The Germans allege that the bodies of many thousands of Polish officers were found near’ Smolensk and also allege that they were murdered by Russians. General Kukiel’s statement says that the Soviet began to release the Polish troops in prison camps near Smolensk, Kharkov and Kalinin in April, 1940, but 8300 officers are still missing. General Sikorski raised the matter with M. Stalin during his visit to Moscow in December, 1941. M. Stalin assured General Sikorski that all the officers had been released.”