The “Jewish Daily Bulletin” yesterday received the following telegram from J. Rosenthal, Technical Counsellor to the Roumanian Legation in the United States:
“In the ‘Jewish Daily Bulletin’ of today replying to the charge that in publishing one of our statements, you omitted a word from it, you affirm that said word was not contained in our statement and in an attempt to prove that you are printing a photostat.
“This photostat, however, is not the one of the original statement to which we had referred. We had referred to our statement published in the ‘Jewish Daily Bulletin’ of the 20th of June while the photostat you are printing today is that of our statement published on June 24th.
“Let me add that on June 20th, after I had received your ‘Bulletin,’ having noticed the omission, I telephoned your office where your secretary, Miss Shultz, confirmed to me that she knew that the word in question was omitted and that she could not understand how that occurred as she had seen the original statement herself.
“I am instructed by His Excellency, Charles A. Davila, our Minister, to ask you to publish this telegram at the earliest possible date so that it should be made clear that the photostatic copy in today’s ‘Bulletin’ was not the one of the statement to which we had referred and that the omission in question has actually been committed.”
Mr. Rosenthal, as evidenced by the telegram quoted, confuses the situation. The statement of June 20th to which he refers was a cabled message from Filotti, the Roumanian press chief, stating that an investigation into the Bronstein case had been ordered. This statement was received by telephone and not in writing.
The “Jewish Daily Bulletin,” it becomes obvious, could not have published a photostatic copy of something which it never received in writing.
Mr. Rosenthal quotes Miss Shultz of our editorial department as confirming that the word “new” had been omitted. from the original statement which she had seen. This ,too, could not have occurred as Miss Shultz could not have “seen the original statement.”
The statement of June 22nd from the Roumanian Legation of which a photostat appeared in the “Bulletin” of July 13th, did contain the term “new” as the photostat reveals.
As instructions had been given to publish the statement of the Roumanian Legation in full, the inadvertent omission of one sentence from the text of the statement as it appeared in the “Jewish Daily Bulletin” has led to the controversy on this point with the Roumanian Legation.
In a letter addressed yesterday by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency to Minister Charles A. Davila, regret that this error should have occurred was expressed.
However, it does not appear that this entire controversy over whether or not the word “new” was applied to the government investigating the Bronstein case, is of great significance.
It is something of a novelty to find a diplomat differentiating between the actions of a previous government and its successor.
To public opinion it matters little which government was remiss in its duty or acted in accordance with the dictates of duty with regard to the Bronstein case.
Does the Roumanian Minister wish to indict the previous government which he represented no less than the present one? And is the Jewish Telegraphic Agency justified in the assumption that Minister Davila joins with it in its critical attitude toward the negligence displayed in the matter of the Bronstein case?
As was pointed out in the communication addressed to Minister Davila the important facts in the case are: first, that on May 7th, Samson Bronstein, Zionist leader of Yedinez, Bessarabia, was subjected to torture, described as on a par with medieval inquistion methods; second, that the Roumanian Legation in the United States promptly labelled this story as an invention, acting upon instructions from the central authorities in Bucharest; third, that an investigation into the case was promised by the Roumanian Legation in behalf of the government on June 6th and that up until June 22nd, no word of that investigation was heard; that on June 22nd again an investigation was promised and the announcement made that the Captain of the Gendarmes, the chief of the gendarme’s post and the prefect of police had been subjected to disciplinary measures and that it was not until July 11th that the actual disciplinary measures of Captain Panisoara took place.
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.
