File No. 241.11R74–8.
The Department is informed that the Austrian Government will probably
deport the Goldbergs upon the expiration of the sentences imposed upon
them for offenses committed in Austria. You are, therefore, instructed
to endeavor to obtain and to forward to the Department in due time
information as to the time when and country to which they will be
deported, in order that appropriate measures may be taken with a view to
their extradition to the United States.
The American Chargé
d’Affaires to the Secretary of
State.
American Embassy,
Vienna, June 24,
1911.
No. 249.]
Sir: With reference to the Department’s
instruction of May 6, 1911, the embassy’s telegram of June 141 and the Department’s
telegraphic reply of the same date1 in regard to the extradition from Austria of
Jacob and Joseph Goldberg, wanted in Boston for housebreaking and
larceny, I now have the honor to report as follows:
On receipt of the Department’s first instruction in the case the
ambassador wrote to the foreign office on May 24, asking, in
accordance with the Department’s directions, whether—and if so, when
and to what country—the Goldbergs were to be deported upon the
expiration of the sentences they are now serving at Zloczow and
Stanislau, respectively.
On June 13 an official of the foreign office called at the embassy
and personally stated that, in view of the dangerous character of
these criminals and the efforts of the American authorities to
secure [Page 11] their conviction and
punishment, the Austrian Government was ready to grant their
extradition without a promise of reciprocal action in similar cases
on the part of the United States Government, even though their
alleged crime did not fall within the provisions of the treaty of
July 3, 1856.
Acting on this statement, the ambassador telegraphed to the
Department on June 14 in the above sense and received on the
following day the Department’s telegraphic reply, to the effect that
the Government of the United States accepted, with an expression of
appreciation, the offer of the Austrian Government to grant this
extradition without promise of reciprocal action in similar cases,
which the Government of the United States would be prohibited by its
Constitution from making. This decision was duly communicated to the
foreign office.
Under date of June 19 the foreign office addressed to the embassy its
first official note in the matter, stating merely that, should the
Government of the United States attach importance to the extradition
of the Goldbergs, it would be possible that the competent court
would grant such extradition, to which end a formal requisition
should be addressed to the Austrian Government and the necessary
papers forwarded.
As the embassy had no authority from the Department to make such a
formal demand, I prepared a note to the foreign office, stating that
the Government of the United States did attach importance to the
extradition of the Goldbergs, and that the extradition papers,
which, according to telegraphic advice received and communicated to
me by Inspector Lynch, of the Boston police, would arrive in Vienna
early in July, would in themselves constitute a formal requisition
in the sense desired. This note I took in person to the foreign
office, and, having read it to the competent official, was informed
that its contents were satisfactory to the foreign office and that
such steps as were necessary to insure the continued detention of
the Goldbergs would be taken pending the arrival from America of the
extradition papers.
I have, etc.,
