Red Cross Aid Given in Probe of ‘Massacre’
Will Help Obtain Neutral Experts to Investigate Nazi Charges
By PAUL GHALI
SPECIAL RADIO To The Binghamton Press and the Chicago Daily News, Inc.
Berne, April 23. 1943—The International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, after deliberating for nearly a week in the closest secrecy the requests of the Polish and German Governments to participate in identification of bodies exhumed in Katyn Forest, has just issued an official communique declaring its readiness “in principle to assist in the appointment of neutral experts” to investigate the affair.
The committee’s decision, however, is made subject to the expressed condition that “all parties concerned” request its intervention in accordance with the memorandum of Sept. 12, 1929, in which the committee informed belligerents of the principles by which it would be guided in making inquiries.
The result of today’s decision is, naturally, that the committee will not intervene unless requested to do so by Russia.
Geneva circles believe that the committee is extremely reluctant to be dragged into the affair but simultaneously does not wish to incur the displeasure of any government on whose good will it must rely for success in its work.
The communique just issued represents a compromise between the conflicting issues at stake.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Poland’s government in exile seeks an investigation into Germany’s charge that 10,000 Polish officers had been massacred in 1940 by the Russians and buried near Smolensk. Moscow argues that its Polish ally should be loyal enough not to swallow Nazi allegations.