FEBRUARY 7
1944
President Roosevelt asked Stalin not to allow the Polish border issue to undermine future international co-operation. Roosevelt proposed that the Polish Prime Minister Stanislaw Mikołajczk accept the desired territorial changes and then be allowed to alter the makeup of his government without any evidence of foreign pressure. (Note: Winston Churchill also intensely pressured the Polish Prime Minister to resume talks with Stalin,, but Mikolajczk refused to comply due to several issues regarding the Katyn Massacre, Poland's postwar borders, and most particularly opposition to Stalin's plan for a communist government in postwar Poland.
Telegram (no. 236) Feb 7, 1944 7pm: From President Roosevelt to the Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Soviet Union ( Stalin ) " I have followed with the closest attention the recent developments in your relations with Poland. I feel that I am fully aware of your views on the subject and am therefore taking this opportunity of communicating with you on the basis of our conversations at Tehran. First of all, let me make it plain that I neither desire nor intend to attempt to suggest much less to advise you in any way as to where the interests of Russia lie in this matter since I realize to the full that the future security of your country is rightly your primary concern. The observations which I am about to make are prompted solely by the larger issues which affect the common goal towards which we are both working. The overwhelming majority of our people and Congress, as you know, welcomed with enthusiasm the broad principles subscribed to at the Moscow and Tehran Conferences........ I am sure that a solution can be found which would fully protect the interests of Russia and satisfy your desire to see a friendly, independent Poland, and at the same time not adversely affect the cooperation so splendidly established at Moscow and Tehran......... I have given careful consideration to the views of your Government as outlined by Mr. Molotov to Mr. Harriman on January 18, regarding the impossibility from the Soviet point of view of having any dealings with the Polish Government-in-exile in its present form and Mr. Molotov’s suggestion that the Polish Government should be reconstituted by the inclusion of Polish elements at present in the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union. I fully appreciate your desire to deal only with a Polish Government......(that would) establish permanent friendly relations with the Soviet Union, but it is my earnest hope that while this problem remains unsolved neither party shall by hasty word or unilateral act transform this special question into one adversely affecting the larger issues of future international collaboration......... Prime Minister Churchill tells me that he is endeavoring to persuade the Polish Prime Minister to make a clean-cut acceptance as a basis for negotiation of the territorial changes which have been proposed by your Government. Is it not possible on that basis to arrive at some answer to the question of the composition of the Polish Government which would leave it to the Polish Prime Minister himself to make such changes in his Government as may be necessary without any evidence of pressure or dictation from a foreign country? As a matter of timing it seems to me that the first consideration at this time should be that Polish guerillas should work with and not against your advancing troops. That is of current importance and some assurance on the part of all Poles would be of great advantage as a first step. " Roosevelt
1979
The "Angel of Death" died. Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi doctor who performed medical experiments at the Auschwitz death camps, died of a stroke while swimming in Brazil, however, the death was not verified until 1985. During World War II he was the physician in Auschwitz concentration camp and part of a team of doctors in charge of selecting prisoners to be killed in the gas chambers and for performing deadly human experiments on prisoners. Arrivals who were deemed unfit for labor were immediately killed in the gas chambers. Mengele escaped Auschwitz on January 17, 1945, shortly before the arrival of the liberating Soviet troops. He fled to South America where he evaded capture for the rest of his life. Mengele's experiments with eyes included attempts to change eye color by injecting chemicals into the eyes of living subjects and killing people with heterochromatic eyes so that the eyes could be removed and sent to Berlin for study. His experiments on dwarfs and people with physical abnormalities included taking physical measurements, drawing blood, extracting healthy teeth, and treatment with unnecessary drugs and X-rays. Many of the victims were sent to the gas chambers after about two weeks, and their skeletons were sent to Berlin for further study. Mengele sought out pregnant women, on whom he would perform experiments before sending them to the gas chambers. Witness Vera Alexander described how he sewed two Romani twins together back to back in an attempt to create conjoined twins. The children died of gangrene after several days of suffering. (Note: He is buried in Embu das Artes under the name "Wolfgang Gerhard", whose identification card he had been using since 1971.)
1990
The Central Committee of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party agreed to endorse President Mikhail Gorbachev’s recommendation that the party give up its 70-year long monopoly of political power. The move signaled the imminent demise of the Soviet Union. The February Central Committee Plenum advocated multi-party elections; local elections held between February and March returned a large number of pro-independence candidates. The Congress of People's Deputies then amended the Soviet Constitution in March, removing Article 6, which guaranteed the monopoly of the CPSU. One State Department official commented that, “The whole Soviet world is going down the drainpipe with astonishing speed. It’s mind-boggling.” Former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger commented that he was “personally gratified and astonished that anyone would have the chance to say such things in Moscow without being shot.”
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