The Sixteenth

Two and a half years ago the fate of 16 Poles almost broke up the San Francisco Conference which was planning the United Nations. Pretending to live up to its Yalta promise to broaden the Polish Government, Russia had lured the 16 underground leaders out of hiding. Then, violating their promise of safe conduct, the Russians had kidnaped the 16, tried them for "diversionary acts" against the Red Army, sentenced them to prison. The U.S. and Britain set up such a squawk that the Russians reduced some of the sentences.

But by last month all but one of the 16 were still either in prison or had begun working for the Communists. That one, Kazimierz Baginski, still struggled for democracy in Warsaw as press officer in Stanislaw Mikolajczyk's Polish Peasant Party.

Last week Mikolajczyk, sporting a new mustache grown during his flight from Poland, was reunited with his family in the London suburb of Kenton. Of his own escape he would say little, except that he had worn an overcoat and shoes bought in Quebec during the war, horn-rimmed glasses and a squashy old hat--"to make me look American." His thoughts were more on his colleagues who, like him, had tried to squeeze through the Iron Curtain. Grim news reached his refuge; he alone had made good his escape. Czech police had nabbed seven of his followers. The Communist-dominated Czech Cabinet meekly handed three of them over to the Polish secret police. Of the four Polish refugees still held by the Czechs, one was Baginski, the last of the famous 16.

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