M.P. seeks inquiry into ‘shameful’ war episode

Press, 23 February 1978, Page 9

M.P. seeks inquiry into ‘shameful’ war episode

NZPA-Reuter Londons A British Conservative I Member of Parliament called for an official inquiry I into what some historians! have called one of the most! shameful episodes in modern | British history — the forcible repatriation of more! than 30.000 Russian prison-1 ers to their deaths in the! Soviet Union just after! World War 11. The member, Mr John! Stokes, made his demand in a motion tabled in the House of Commons. The latest account of the

(tragedy was detailed in a I [book published in Londonj I earlier this month by Count j ! Nikolai Tolstoy, a relative of I [the famous novelist. [ Drawing on recently reI leased British official docu- [ meats, the book, “Victims of [Yalta,” describes how Brit- | ish soldiers crammed the ! Russian prisoners in cattle [waggons at bayonet point and sent them to an uncerI tain future in Stalinist Rusilsia, many ending in front of II firing squads or in Siberian > [ labour camps. They were sent back 3'under a secret pact between

H the British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, and the . j Soviet Foreign Minister, [ Vyacheslav Molotov, that jwas later confirmed by ■ Churchill and Stalin at Yalta in 1945. Mr Stokes said that an in- - quiry was vital if . the truth i of the case was to be fully : established. "Many of these officials ■ are now* retired but some • are still in the Foreign f Office,” Mr Stokes said, i “Some of them have risen to very high positions.” The c Foreign Office has declined i 1 comment.