The U.S. Russian Commission
By Irene Mandra
DPMO is
developing a plan to investigate with the Russians a number of reports that we
have gotten over the years alleging that American servicemen were sighted in
Soviet prisons and labor camps. Initial
work on the plan has been completed by the U.S. Moscow office and now will be
examined by JCSD analysts to determine
the sequence for follow-up inquiry. The
plan will then be translated into Russian and will be the basis for discussions
with Russian Commission members.
Some time
this spring, hopefully the Commission will have proceeded to the point that they will be able to launch a
bilateral inquiry that will include visits to camp sites, interviews with
former camp inmates and staff.
Possibly, efforts will prevail to find out where camp records now reside
so that they can be examined in detail.
The U.S. Commission has a small band
of researchers which will, hopefully,
compile a well thought-out plan to make it difficult for the Russians to
dismiss the information that we have received on the memoirs, which have
recently surface. In that sense,
perhaps the U.S. side can avoid a recurrence of the non-response from the
Russians, that followed the so-called 77- page document that the U.S. submitted
to the late General Volkogonoov in 1993.
Some
exciting news is that the Russians are expected to release material from
Stalin’s personal collection over the course of this year. There certainly should be many items of
interest in this collection for DPMO.
In our last newsletter, I wrote that I hope that the current chairman General LaJoie would breathe some new life into the U.S. Russian Commission, (USRJC), which will mark its eighth birthday this month. I am very disappointed that General LaJoie has not contacted me or our organization to let us know what ideas he has for the future of the Joint Commission. I would like to hear his comments and his views and expectations. So for the members who have contacted me, I wish to report that I have not heard from General LaJoie. We, the families of the missing do not believe it is too unreasonable to ask the General … “Where are we going?”, “What are you planning?”