871.4016/253: Telegram
The Minister in Rumania (Gunther) to the Secretary of State
[Received January 31—6 a.m.]
89. Please transmit also to the President. Although wholesale sacking and pillaging were, of course, the order of the day, reports are now reaching me of appalling brutality to the Jews of Bucharest during the recent uprising of German and Communist-inspired elements of the Iron Guard. The Turkish Ambassador’s1a estimate of 284 Jews wantonly killed in the slaughterhouse near the Jewish quarter is the most conservative in numbers. He blamed primarily the savage Macedo Rumanians, otherwise known as Kutzovlachs. But according to a reliable Jewish informant of mine up to yesterday noon 727 burial permits for Jews in the common grave in the Jewish cemetery had been applied for. The slaughterhouse certainly did figure inasmuch as I have it indirectly from an engineer working there that when he reported for work the next day he found 60 Jewish corpses on the hooks used for carcasses and all skinned. The quantity of blood about would seem to indicate that they had been skinned alive.
The above estimate takes no account of the much larger number of those wounded, maimed or beaten beyond recognition by the brutes and footpads of the Iron Guard. Ignorant primitive young savages whose dull vengeful minds responded to the German-controlled and inspired Rumanian press of repetitive slogans and shibboleths of Jewish and Jewish-English alleged inimical evil doings. It makes one sick at heart to be accredited to a country where such things can happen even though the real faults of inspiration and encouragement lie elsewhere.
- Bey Suphi Tanriöer.↩