871.4016/261
The Minister in Rumania (Gunther) to the Secretary of State
[Received March 11.]
Sir: I have the honor to transmit herewith copies of four of a series of five articles4 written by an American journalist, Mr. Leigh White, regarding the pogrom conducted against the Jews of Rumania in the course of the recent Iron Guard insurrection. Certain of the outrages committed against the Jewish population have been mentioned in my various telegrams (see especially Nos. 89 and 965 of January 30, 5 p.m., and January 31, 12 noon), but I feel that Mr. White’s articles may be of value to the Department in forming a more complete picture of the full extent and incredible horror of the bloodthirsty vengeance wreaked on the Jews, “the enemies of the country”, by lawless and irresponsible elements of the Iron Guard during the uprising.
It must be remarked that, while no authoritatively accurate figures are available, Mr. White’s estimates of the numbers of dead and [Page 863] wounded are, as my other reports have indicated, substantially higher than my best information would serve to support. Similarly, many passages in his account may be suspected of journalistic coloring or exaggeration, although I have sufficient confirmation of many points—there is no doubt, for example, that hundreds of dead were seen lying naked and, in many instances, mutilated at the morgue and near the Jilava road—that it is impossible to say just where he has over-elaborated and where he has under-stated his story. Generally speaking, it may be taken as a reasonably good account of these appalling events, although he was not informed of some of the massacres, notably that at Baneasa, the wood near Bucharest.
Obviously, the local censorship would not pass such articles out of Rumania. For this reason, Mr. White, a roving representative of the New York Post and Columbia Broadcasting Corporation for several countries of Southeastern Europe, carried his stories out of Rumania and despatched them from Sofia. When he returned to Bucharest last week, he was confronted with notification from an irate Under Secretary for National Propaganda that he no longer enjoyed the right of radio, telephone, and telegraph facilities in this country, the Rumanian Legation in Washington having telegraphed the first two of his series back to the Foreign Office. I shall endeavor to exercise my good offices on his behalf.
Respectfully yours,