Charles A. Davila, Roumanian Minister to the United States has misquoted a communique issued by his Legation and reports of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in communications addressed by him to Jewish leaders, attempting to discredit the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an effort to justify the attitude the Legation has adopted in the torture of Samson Bronstein, Zionist leader of Yedinez, Bessarabia.
This charge is made in a letter addressed yesterday to Minister Davila by Jacob Landau, Managing Director of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The communication of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency declares:
“On June 30th your Excellency addressed a letter to me asking me to specify the number and date of ‘Unser Zeit’ of Chisinau from which our first report on the Bronstein case was culled, reporting that Bronstein ‘was dragged, with his hands and feet manacled and bound together, by a horse, through the streets of Yedinez until death released him.’ You add that you ‘would like to know whether the additional details to the J.T.A. telegram dated Cernauti, June 22nd, which were published in the “Jewish Daily Bulletin” of June 23rd, were not copied from the article which appeared in “Unser Zeit” of June 6th.’
“You declare that you had come to this conclusion as many passages in the telegram of our Agency and the article of “Unser Zeit” were identical, that the only thing which was omitted in our telegram was the title of the article, ‘The Inquiry in Hotin,’ as well as any allusion to this investigation, which had already at that time been ordered by the late government, and which was considered by Mr. Landau, member of Parliament, as a success of his.
“In my reply of July 7th I promised to ascertain from our London office, which issue of ‘Unser Zeit’ the first report of our Agency was based on. With regard to the second part of your inquiry, I pointed out that perusal of the report which we carried in our issue of June 23rd contains more than an allusion to the investigation which had been started.
“We reported that the prosecutor Below and the local magistrate had left for Yedinez for the purpose of investigating the Bronstein case. We also stated that the investigation was due to the intervention of Deputy Landau. That part of the report which was no longer part of the cable was conspicuously separated from the cable, and we referred in the report itself to ‘Unser Zeit’ of June 6th as the source of that report, even adding that we took it from this issue ‘which has just reached this country.’
“I have learned to my amazement, that on the very day your Excellency wrote me a letter, to all intents and purposes making inquiries of me, you sent out a letter which already contained an answer to these inquiries as conceived by yourself, and that as a matter of fact, a similar letter had gone out on June 24th, containing like and other charges against the J.T.A.
“I understand further that a copy of your letter of June 30th addressed to us was enclosed in your communication to others, while no mention of that fact was made in your letter to us.
At the same time, no copies of the letters addressed by you to others containing serious charges against the J.T.A. and bound to discredit the J.T.A. in the eyes of the recipients, were forwarded to us, thus depriving our Agency of the opportunity to answer the accusations contained in these communications, while we were queried by you on the very points on which you did not hestitate to level charges against us in no uncertain terms. You also ask, in your communications, that the recipient obtain publicity for the “rectification” which you are supplying.
“Courtesy forbids that I characterize this attitude, which can hardly be termed as the correct procedure.
“Let me now go into the various charges made by your Excellency:
“In addition to the two questions contained in your letter to us, you state in your communication to others that the inquiry on the Bronstein case began on May 29th, long before the J.T.A. published the first news about the case. In order to substantiate this statement you refer to “Unser Zeit” of June 6th. You further charge that the Jewish Daily Bulletin of June 23rd omitted all the passages which described when, and under what circumstances, the investigation in the Bronstein case started, asserting that the J.T.A. suppressed parts of the articles on the ground that they established that the investigation had been started long before the J.T.A. knew anything about the Yedinez case.
“In your letter dated June 25th you state that the J.T.A. reports did not assume any exact form until June 19th. Your letter of June 25th contains the following passage: ‘Three days ago the Roumanian Legation released an official statement announcing that the new Roumanian government has ordered a strict investigation of the Yedinez affair. Do you know how the J.T.A. published that statement? It omitted the word new.’
“I have pointed out in my letter to your Excellency on July 7th that perusal of our Bulletin of June 23rd permits of no doubt that we referred to the investigation which had been begun by the local authorities, that we stated this investigation was due to the intervention of Deputy Landau, and it also contained the date when this investigation was begun.
“Your Excellency is very sensitive about our reproducing exactly by cable every word published in a newspaper appearing 4,000 miles from here, in a different language, while the Jewish Daily Bulletin, appearing under your very eyes, is misquoted by your Excellency in your communication, making the reader feel that we had given as a cablegram what had been culled from a newspaper which had been received in this country. Every reader of the photostat which accompanies this letter will be able to satisfy himself that we expressly stated that this item was taken from “Unser Zeit” which has just reached this country”.
“With regard to the first report on the Bronstein case, I learned from our London office that it was based on ‘Unser Zeit,’ No. 2904, on the following sentence in the leading article which appeared under the headline “We Can No Longer Bear It!”-‘The tortured Bronstein fell as an innocent victim of a drunken and abnormal person.” The article continues, “We consider this victim only an illustration…During the last weeks the lungs of many such Bronsteins have been beaten, made ready for a journey form which no one ever returned’. The reader of these two sentences could come to no other conclusion but that Bronstein had died of the tortures which had been inflicted upon him. However, as soon as it was established that Bronstein was lying in a hospital in a critical condition, the J.T.A., on June 3, five days after the first report, described his condition.
“It is true the first report was not exact, with regard to one detail. It contained an understatement as to the method of torture applied to Bronstein. The Yiddish word ‘kotchen’ was translated as ‘horse-dragged,’ whereas the treatment to which Bronstein had been subjected, according to that issue of ‘Unser Zeit,’ was much more cruel. The paper says: ‘Where are we that human beings should be manacled hand and foot with iron shackles, and the ball of flesh rolled like a wheel and tortured and beaten and destroyed?’ Let me also state in connection with this point, that your remark in your letter of June 25th that that part of the item was a quotation is not correct, as by again perusing our Bulletin of June 29th you will see that our report of the tortures which had been inflicted upon Bronstein were printed in summary fashion and not in quotation.
“You state in your communication that the investigation of the Bronstein case was started long before the J.T.A. reported the case. The first report was received by the J.T.A. by cable on May 27th, was published in the Yiddish press on May 28th, and in the next issue of the ‘Jewish Daily Bulletin,’ on May 29th. Therefore, your charge that the investigation began long before the J.T.A. reported on the Bronstein case is not in accordance with the facts.
“May I remind your Excellency, however, that while you wrongly accuse us of having suppressed the news that the local authorities had started an investigation on May 29th, your own Legation issued a statement on June 2nd, three days after this investigation had been begun by the local authorities, according to which the Roumanian government denied all knowledge of the occurrence and labelled the report of the J.T.A. as being completely invented. ‘The authorities have no knowledge of such an incident having occurred in Yedinez. It would be impossible that such barbarity could be perpetrated and remain unnoticed by the authorities and unpunished,’ said the statement cabled by the Roumanian government in Bucharest to the Roumanian Legation in the United States by whom it was made public. The fact of the matter is that the Roumanian government announced its investigation of the case fully 46 days after the torture of Bronstein, and 24 days after the publication of the first report in the ‘Jewish Daily Bulletin.’
“Although we reported that an investigation had been started by the local authorities, I may say in all frankness that we were sceptical about the effectiveness of this investigation, of which obviously not even a report had been submitted by the local authorities to the central authorities. It was due to the publicity given by the J.T.A. in American newspapers (as is stated by your Excellency in one of your communications, we were the only source of this news), that the attention of your Excellency was drawn to this case and that your Excellency urged upon your government prompt investigation of the case and punishment of those guilty. A. D. Braham, President of the Union of Roumanian Jews, who has just returned to this country, testifies in a statement that it was due to the J.T.A. that effective steps have been taken by the authorities in the Bronstein case.
“May I remind your Excellency that when the statement was issued on June 22nd that the guilty officials had been punished, it was found that even then no steps for the punishment of the guilty officials had been taken, and only two days ago was our Agency in a position to report that these measures were being taken. Not until 19 days later was punishment really meted out.
“The statement of your Excellency that until June 19th our reports were neither definite nor exact is not borne out. Full details in the case appeared in our reports on June 3rd, 13th, 23rd, 24th, 27th and 30th, and July 5th, 6th and 12th.
The most astonishing charge made against us is contained in your remark that we omitted the word ‘new’ when we published the statement of June 22nd announcing that steps had been taken by your government. The word ‘new’ was not contained in your statement. That statement was reproduced by us in full. Not a single word was omitted, as will be seen from the photostat which I am enclosing.
“The real issue at stake was whether the Bronstein case was invented and whether Bronstein was indeed subjected to the most gruesome tortures. On both these questions no doubt is permissible. It is surprising to me that your Legation has for weeks tried to harp on irrelevant details which you raised in order to instil in the public doubt as to the veracity of the J.T.A. and the authenticity of its reports. Although your Excellency is unusually severe with regard to whether or not every word contained in the J.T.A. dispatches is accurately quoted, in your own letters your Excellency fails to quote correctly a communication sent out by your Legation charging us with the ommission of a word which was never contained in that communication.
“On a par with the procedure in mailing out communications to organizations in which charges are made against the J. T. A. with regard to details on which at the same time you made inquiry of us, is the fact that while the statement declaring the first statement of the J.T.A. report “entirely invented” was communicated by your Legation to the New York Times, your Legation did not release to the New York Times your later statement in which the Bronstein case was admitted to exist and wherein the government promised to conduct an investigation was quoted.
“Permit me to conclude this letter by expressing my surprise that even after the receipt of my letter of July 7th in which I drew you Excellency’s attention to the fact that in the Jewish Daily Bulletin of June 23rd we did not give that report as a cablegram and that we referred to the investigation which had been begun by he local authorities, you did not hasten to rectify this mistake or offer us apology for the wrong committed in your communications of June 24th and June 30th,” the communication concludes.
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.
