An aristocratic diplomat who preserved Poland’s diplomatic continuity in exile
On 17 April 1943, Raczyński’s Foreign Ministry requested that the International Red Cross investigate Katyn.
Edward Raczyński was a diplomat of the Second Polish Republic and a leading figure in the Polish government-in-exile in London. During the war he informed the Allies about the mass murder of Jews in German-occupied Poland and took part in the Polish diplomatic action requesting an international investigation into the Katyn massacre in 1943. After 1945 he defended the continuity of the government-in-exile while supporting democratic opposition in communist-ruled Poland, and served as President of Poland-in-exile from 1979 to 1986.
Also known as: Edward Bernard Raczyński · Edward Raczynski
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1919–1925Served in Polish diplomatic missions in Bern, Copenhagen and London
- 1925–1932Head of the International Treaties Department, Polish Foreign Ministry
- 1932–1934Polish ambassador to the League of Nations
- 1934–1945Polish ambassador to the United Kingdom and diplomatic representative of the government-in-exile
- 1941–1943Foreign Minister of the Polish government-in-exile in London
- 1954–1972Member of the Council of Three of the government-in-exile
- 1979–1986President of the Republic of Poland-in-exile
- 1986–1993Senior figure in the Polish émigré community in London
Related historical events
The Note of 10 December 1942: The First Official Report on the Holocaust
Between 22 July 1941 and 14 July 1943, while Raczyński served as Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Polish government-in-exile made the German mass murder of Jews the subject of a formal diplomatic document addressed to the Allies. Raczyński's Note of 10 December 1942 was the first official report on the Holocaust. It was drafted from material prepared by the Jewish Affairs Department of the Polish Home Army headquarters, carried to London on microfilm by the courier Jan Karski, together with his own 1940–1942 reports, and it named Treblinka, Bełżec and Sobibór as extermination camps. Typed on nine pages and organised in 21 points, the note was sent individually to the foreign ministers of the 26 states that had signed the 1942 Declaration by United Nations, and it appealed not only for the condemnation and punishment of German crimes but also for means that might restrain Germany from continuing mass extermination. In the same period Raczyński raised the wholesale destruction of Polish Jews with Anthony Eden on 1 December 1942, proposing a warning to Laval and a meeting of representatives of the occupied countries; the Foreign Office rejected the idea of such a meeting. On 18 January 1943, at the Allied Council, he demanded the bombing of Germany as a reprisal, pressure on Berlin to let Jews leave, and admission of refugees by Allied and neutral states; Eden rejected these demands and offered only vague promises about intervening in neutral countries. The transmission of the evidence and the demand for action were thus parts of a single effort whose reception by the Allies was limited.