Foreign News: Polish Pétain?

In occupied Poland last week the Germans went into high gear with a Nazi propaganda campaign designed to persuade the Polish people to abandon all forms of passive resistance, “follow the wise example of France.” Looking for a Polish Pétain, the Nazis approached the onetime Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Polish Sejm, tenacious and long-suffering Prince Janusz Radziwill. The landed, many-branched, internationally well-connected Radziwills, who trace their ancestry back to 15th-Century Ostyk Radziwill, are the Roosevelts of Poland.

When Poland fell last September, according to accounts from Polish refugees, soldiers of the Red Army seized Prince Janusz and a half-dozen of his family (including married daughters) and shipped them to prison in Moscow. On hearing of this, Queen Elena of Italy, a family connection, appealed to Chancellor Hitler. He ordered the German Ambassador in Moscow, Count Friedrich Werner von Schulenberg, to try to free the distinguished Poles.

In Moscow meanwhile the Soviet Political Police were systematically underfeeding Prince Janusz & Family while questioning them three or four times each day, week after week. The questions were on all types of subjects—political, historical and philosophical. Written answers running to as much as ten manuscript pages were demanded of the Radziwills, with a time limit set for completion of the manuscripts.

By the time Nazi pressure, applied by Count von Schulenberg, began to be felt by the Communist authorities, the imprisoned Radziwills had become thin and emaciated. Suddenly their Moscow prison rations were changed from short to long. The same official of the Soviet Political Police who had starved and questioned them then stood over the Radziwills to make sure they ate every morsel on their now heaping plates. They were kept from the usual prison exercise period, suffered gastritis from the intensive stuffing process. But the Radziwills were fattened up to something like normal in three weeks.

When the prisoners were thus ready to be returned to the outside world, the Communist authorities gave each Radziwill two sets of clothing, put them on a special railway car and ran it into the German slice of Poland. There the Radziwills were delivered to the Nazis and interned.

Queen Elena continued her appeals to the Führer. Some weeks later Prince Janusz & Family were told they could leave Poland. Most went to Italy, whence some recently sailed to Brazil, but indomitable Prince Janusz chose to stick it out in Poland. Whether or not the Prince decides to head a puppet government, the Nazis in any case cannot give him back his historic Radziwill estates at present as these are in Soviet territory.