The Horse Adjutant ligentsia were murdered at gunpoint, mainly in the Katyn forest. They fled from the onslaught of the German initial blitzkrieg hoping to find allies in the East to return and fight in strength. Dissemination of information about the actual authors of the crime, the significance of which for freedom-seeking Poles had a great symbolic and moral dimension, could not be tolerated in the country in which the Soviet Communists were ruling. As much as killing the Polish soldiers and Katayn at the hands of the Russians was an atrocity, it was considered a crime of the highest order to talk about it after the war because it could affect Polish-Soviet relations, which were based on a lasting alliance, friendship, and cooperation. Later we learned in the article that the source of his knowledge of the Katyn massacre was a German book found in an attic of his primary school. The Ger- mans must have left it there. Zygmunt Góralski was executed on March 30th, 1953. When Poland became a self-governing country again, the Gorlaski family applied for a restoration of the family name. Suffice it to say that Leon was caught up in something far above his decision-making ability. As a soldier for the Office of Public Security, he would be remiss in not helping to track a fugitive. Leon continues, “As my courses became more specialized, I started to focus on radio- telephony. As graduation neared, I started to feel uneasy. I had not felt that kind of uneasiness in a long time, not since my liberation from Buna. What brought this on was interrogations with the authorities. They were deciding what to do with me upon graduation. They asked me a series of probing questions about my life. They were espe- cially interested in my family within the United States, and my cousin in Israel. These interviews became abrasive. The crux of their questioning centered on why I entered ‘Polish’ under nationality instead of ‘Jewish.’ When I was probed, I kept my answers simple. At the time of those inquiries, I was a marked man. Marked by an unmistak- able prison tattoo. It was common knowledge that a low number on a tattoo meant the wearer was a political prisoner, but a high number was a different story; it could mean only one thing: the wearer must be Jewish. No matter how I behaved, I could not escape constantly being defined by my race.” Once again anti-Semitism raised its ugly head through state-sponsored policies, this time from the Polish Soviets. What precipitated the problem was Soviet relations with the United States. Much of it was centered on the U.S. backing of the new State of Israel. All kinds of rumors start- ed. Some of them charged Jews with extraordinary crimes that were hard to disprove and easy to foment, like espionage. According to the rumors I heard, Stalin wanted to remove every Jew from every government position; it was a complete reversal of the
241
Made with FlippingBook Digital Proposal Creator