Apparently there are Roumanians of note who do not approve of the anti-Semitic policy of their government, as appears from the vigorous and fearless indictment of the present Roumanian regime by one of Roumania’s greatest authors, Panait Istrati, which appeared there in “Le Quotidien.”
Publishing a report of the verdict of acquittal delivered in the trial of Lieutenant Morarescu in Bucharest, accused and self confessed murderer of hundreds of Jewish and other refugees, “Le Quotidien” adds a letter on the subject from the pen of Panait Istrati. The letter was written before the end of the trial and is referred to by the French paper as characteristic of the impression produced by the trial on certain Roumanian circles.
“Woe to the man who has the courage,” M. Istrati writes, “to read the Roumanian Press. Never in the history of the world, at no time and in no place, have such crimes been committed. Abdul Hamid, the Bloody Sultan himself, would have been horrifred by them. And these crimes have been committed in time of peace, by officers of the Roumanian regular army, acting under the protection of their Government.
“A month ago,” he proceeds, “I published a letter in which, speaking of the terror let loose by the Bratiano Government, I ventured to refer to the prisons, of which the walls resound to the cries of innocent prisoners. The whole press attacked me for that letter, declaring that my statements were merely the ravings of a novelist ‘with a hectic imagination.’ I had not long to wait for corrobation of my statements, which will prove to all honest people that I am not traducing my country nor confounding the horrible acts of its Government with the people who suffer them. I was only telling the truth.
“For eight days a most monstrous trial is unrolling itself under the eyes of the court martial in Bucharest, a trial which the Roumania Press quite rightly calls fantastic. I refer to the trial of Lieut. Morarescu, one of the numberless butchers of Bessarabia.
“Out of the hundreds of crimes committed by the accused which were testified to by the witnesses and the soldiers, the prosecution has proceeded against him on only 33. The others are too terrible to be drawn up in an Act of Indictment.
“To Lient Morarescu the refugees–women, old men and children–are agents of the Bolsheviks. Especially so the Jews. The soldiers declare that he compelled them so frequently to shoot Jews that they began to think that all refugees were Jews.
“All people with progressive ideas whom we had in Roumania have been shot or imprisoned. There is martial law throughout the country. There is no free press, no right of meetings without the presence of the police. There is no right to write or speak anything but what is approved by the Government.
“In the streets there is a populace in rags, in fear of machine-gun fire. And in the seat of Government a handful of despots with their army of partisans, who determine the fate of the whole country.
Poor Roumania.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
