Office of the Historian

740.00119 Control (Rumania)/11–2944: Telegram

The American Representative in Rumania (Berry) to the Secretary of State

Bucharest, November 29, 1944—4 p.m.
[Received November 30—2:25 p.m.]

37. Re my telegram No. 35 of November 28.71 For a fortnight the Rumanian public has been uneasy over reports of the withdrawal of Rumanian civil administration from northern Transylvania. The Government has permitted no documents to be published but there is a growing feeling among the people that the Soviets are preventing [Page 270] the reparation of the injustice done Rumania by the Vienna Award.72

According to the documents confidentially given me in the Foreign Office, General Vinogradov on November 12 acting in the name of the Allied Control Commission addressed a letter to Prime Minister Sanatescu. After reviewing in his letter the activities of a Rumanian volunteer regiment of gendarmes operating in Transylvania the General in substance stated: (1) the installation of Rumanian administrative officials in Transylvania is forbidden; (2) the volunteer regiment of gendarmes operating in Transylvania must be disbanded, the men removed from Transylvania and the commander court-martialed, charged with instigation against the Red Army; (3) if the request is not fully satisfied by November 17 the Red Army will undertake the disbanding of the regiment.

The Rumanian reply to the above note was delivered November 19 and stated to General Vinogradov (1) all Rumanian authorities had been withdrawn from northern Transylvania and (2) the volunteer regiment was disbanded, the men removed from Transylvania and the commander who was not affiliated with the Rumanian military or civil authorities would be tried by the military. The remainder of the reply was a legal argument on Rumania’s right to administrate northern Transylvania until the formal peace and emphasized Rumanian administration had been established openly and in cooperation with the Soviet military. It closed asking for an indication when this administration could be restored.

Copies of document will be forwarded by pouch.73

Berry
  1. Not printed.↩
  2. Signed August 30, 1940; for documents, see Department of State, Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918–1945, Series D, vol. x, pp. 581–587.↩
  3. Not printed.↩