them. Sometimes the prisoners' Polish documents were taken 
      away, but in many such cases these were returned before departure. 
      All were furnished with rations for the journey, and, as a mark 
      of special regard, the sandwiches furnished to senior officers 
      were wrapped in clean white paper--a commodity seldom seen anywhere 
      in Russia. Anticipations of a better future were clouded only 
      by the fact that 400 or 500 Poles had been listed for further 
      detention, first at Pavlishchev Bor and eventually at Griazovetz. 
      These were, as it turned out later, to be the only known survivors 
      of the lost legion, and some of them are in England now; but 
      at the time, although no principle could be discovered on which 
      they had been selected, they supposed that they had been condemned 
      to a further period of captivity; and some even feared that they 
      had been chosen out for execution.
 
      
 
 
5. Our information about these events is derived for the most 
      part from those routed to Griazovetz, all of whom were released 
      in 1941, and some of whom--notably M. Komarnicki, the Polish 
      Minister for Justice are now in England.
 
      
 
 
6. Entrainment of the 10,000 officers from the three camps 
      went on all through April and the first half of May, and the 
      lorries lined with cheerful faces, which took them from camp 
      to station, were, in fact, the last that was ever seen of them 
      alive by any witness to whom we have access. Until the revelations 
      made by the German broadcast of the 12th .April, 1943, and apart 
      from a few words let drop at the time by the prison guards, only 
      the testimony of scribblings on the railway wagons in which they 
      were transported affords any indication of their destination. 
      The same wagons, seem to have done a shuttle service between 
      Kozielsk and the detraining station; and on these some of the 
      first parties to be transported had scratched the words: "Don't 
      believe that we are going home," and the news that their 
      destination had turned out to be a small station near Smolensk. 
      These messages were noticed wh %en the vans returned to Smolensk 
      station, and have been reported to us by prisoners at Kozielsk, 
      who were later sent to Griazovetz.
 
      
 
 
7. But though of positive indications as to what subsequently 
      happened to the 10,000 officers there was none until the grave 
      at Katyn was opened, there is now available a good deal of negative 
      evidence, the cumulative effect of which is to throw serious 
      doubt on Russian disclaimers of responsibility for the massacre.
 
      
 
 
8. In the first place there is the evidence to be derived 
      from the prisoners' correspondence, in respect to which information 
      has been furnished by officers' families in Poland, by officers 
      now with the Polish armyr in the Middle East, and by the Polish 
      Red Cross Society. Up till the end of March 1940 large numbers 
      of letters had been despatched, which were later received by 
      their relatives, from the officers confined at Kozielsk, Starobielsk 
      and Ostashkov; whereas no letters from any of them (excepting 
      from the 400 moved to Griazovtez) have been received by anybody 
      which had been despatched subsequent to that date. The Germans 
      overran Smolensk in July 1941, and there is no easy answer to 
      the question why, if any of the 10,000 had been alive between 
      the end of May 1940 and July 1941, none of them ever succeeded 
      in getting any word through to their families.
 
      
 
 
9. In the second place there is the evidence of the correspondence 
      between the Soviet Government and the Polish Government. The 
      first request for information about the 10,000 was made by M. 
      Kot of M. Wyshinsky, on the 6th October, 1941. On the 3rd December, 
      1941, General Sikorski backed up his enquiry with a list of 3,845 
      names of officers included among them. General Anders furnished 
      the Soviet Government with a further list of 800 names on the 
      18th March, 1942. Enquiries about the fate of the 10,000 were 
      made again and again to the Russian Government verbally and in 
      writing by General Sikorski, M. Kot, M. Romer, Count Raczyfiski 
      and General Anders between October 1941 and April 1943. The Polish 
      Red Cross between August and October 1940 sent no less than 500 
      questionnaires about individual officers to the Russian Government. 
      To none of all these enquiries extending over a period of two 
      and a half years was a single positive answer of any kind ever 
      returned. The enquirers were told either that the officers had 
      been released, or that "perhaps they are already in Germany," 
      or that "no information" of their whereabouts was available, 
      or (Molotov to M. Kot, October 1941) that complete lists of the 
      prisoners were available and that they would all be delivered 
      to the Polish authorities "dead or alive." But it is 
      incredible that if any of the 10,000 were released, not one of 
      them has ever appeared again anywhere, and it is almost equally 
      incredible, if they were not released, that not one of them should 
      have escaped subsequent to May 1940 and reported himself to the 
      Polish authorities in Russia