[1] The mission consisted of three American members: former US ambassador Henry Morgenthau, Brigadier General Edgar Jadwin of Engineer Corps, and professor of law Homer H. Johnson from Cleveland; and from the British side Sir Stuart M. Samuel.
The final report "denied the authenticity of the pogroms" but it noted "isolated excesses" of antisemitic nature, in which approximately 300 Polish Jews died, which it attributed to the chaos of the post war situation.
In June 1919, Herbert Hoover, then head of the American Relief Administration (ARA), after discussions with Polish Prime Minister Ignacy Jan Paderewski, wrote to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson warning that the reports of atrocities were damaging the reputation of Poland, a nascent ally being cultivated by the U.S. to counter Soviet Russia.
While Paderewski had welcomed the investigation, Morgenthau found hostility in other Polish political circles, especially from the camps of National Democratic Party ("Endecja") leader Roman Dmowski and his rival, Chief of State Jozef Pilsudski.
"[6] Pilsudski resented the interference of Morgenthau's mission in Polish affairs, although he was acknowledged as an opponent of the open anti-semitism of Dmowski and a leader committed to a liberal policy towards Jews and other minorities that respected their rights.
He attended a packed service for the 35 Jewish victims of the Pinsk massacre of April 1919, noting afterward that "This was the first time I ever completely realized what the collective grief of a persecuted people was like.
In Pinsk, a Polish officer accused a group of Jewish civilians who had gathered at a town meeting to discuss the distribution of American relief aid of being Bolsheviks and of plotting against the Poles.
The Morgenthau mission issued a strong condemnation of the commander responsible:While it is recognized that certain information of Bolshevist activities in Pinsk had been reported by two Jewish soldiers, we are convinced that Major Luczynski, the Town Commander, showed reprehensible and frivolous readiness to place credence in such untested assertions, and on this insufficient basis took inexcusably drastic action against reputable citizens whose loyal character could have been immediately established by a consultation with any well known non-Jewish inhabitant.
The report states that in Lviv "disreputable elements [from the Polish Army] plundered to the extent of many millions of crowns the dwellings and stores in the Jewish quarter, and did not hesitate to murder when they met with resistance.
[18] Morgenthau noted that it would be unfair to condemn the entire Polish nation for the acts of renegade troops or mobs, and believed the attacks were not premeditated or the result of a preconceived plan.