In 1944, when Soviet troops were approaching Romania, Józef Beck was still interned in that country. On June 5, he died alone of tuberculosis. However, the newly discovered documents show that the Polish authorities tried to free him from imprisonment until the end. This was helped by… the Swiss.
New materials on the attempts to release the former minister of foreign affairs were not found in Poland, Romania or London, but in Switzerland. They clearly show that as early as May 1944, the Helvetic diplomacy was trying to bring Józef Beck to his country.
Why was Switzerland doing this? As a neutral state, it represented Polish interests in Romania allied with Germany and looked after the Poles residing there. However, no evidence of any actions taken by the authorities in Bern on behalf of the former Polish minister has been known so far.
Hermann Göring and Józef Beck in July 1935 (photo:Lothar Schaack, Bundesarchiv, CC-BY-SA 3.0).
Romanian lie
Aleksander Ładoś, a Polish envoy in Bern, asked for help in getting Józef Beck out of Romania in May 1944. The materials found by Dr. Paweł Duber from the Józef Piłsudski Museum in Sulejówek show that the Swiss made efforts in this matter, but they were fruitless. Romanian Deputy Prime Minister Mihai Antonesco only assured that the Polish minister would be evacuated deep into the country, which was not true.
The material is based on a scientific article published in the periodical "Memory and Justice".
In early June, the Polish authorities again asked the Swiss for support in the case of Beck, who was dying in Romania. As Paweł Duber emphasizes, this initiative was delayed and doomed to failure. The former minister died before the Helvetian diplomacy could do anything in this matter.
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Why was it not until the spring of 1944 that an attempt was made to bring Józef Beck to Switzerland? He was one of the people most held responsible for the September disaster and had many enemies in the Polish authorities in exile. Leaving him in Romania was very much to our liking for political reasons as well.
Nevertheless, the former minister of the Polish government was not wanted to fall into the hands of the Germans or the Soviets. Hence the delayed efforts to evacuate to safe ground.
The source of the above news is:
Paweł Duber, Unknown documents regarding the attempt to get Minister Józef Beck out of Romania in 1944 , "Memory and Justice", 2014, No. 2 (24), pp. 447-452.