Franklin Delano Roosevelt didn’t want to accept refugee Jews into America and he didn’t want to find places outside of Russia for Soviet POWs captured by the Nazis who may have wished to defect. Operation Keelhaul returned them to Soviet hands. In the movie The Third Man, the Soviets similarly want to grab refugee Alida Valli. The U.S. government kept its evil treatment of refugees secret for 50 years. We are told about Keelhaul “It was obvious to all that prisoners were sent to a fate of execution, torture, and slave labor.”
Nikolai Tolstoy was a witness:
“Tolstoy described the scene of Americans returning to the internment camp after having delivered a shipment of people to the Russians. ‘The Americans returned to Plattling visibly shamefaced. Before their departure from the rendezvous in the forest, many had seen rows of bodies already hanging from the branches of nearby trees.'”
(Thanks to Steve Candidus for reminding me of this episode, brought to mind by asking “Should America extradite him [Snowdenski] to the USSR?”)
12:28 pm on June 22, 2013
