740.00116 E.W./10–2444: Circular telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Turkey (Steinhardt)52
The following from Department and War Refugee Board is for Steinhardt and Katzki.53
Reference is made to Secretary Hull’s statement of October 10, 1944,54 reported in the Radio Bulletin of the same date.
For your information, Governor Thomas E. Dewey, Republican candidate for President, issued the following statement on October 19, 1944:
“Information comes to this country from unquestionably reliable sources that the Nazis, trapped and knowing that they are faced with inevitable defeat, are now resorting to the known gangster terror device of threatening to exterminate their very victims—Poles, Jews and other non-German nationals—now imprisoned by them in their horrible concentration camps in parts of Poland and other countries still occupied by the Nazis.
The civilized world is now in a position in unmistakable terms to warn the Nazis—military commanders, members of the German Government, their aiders, abettors and supporters—that certain and inevitable justice awaits them for these brutal and wanton murders if their schemes should be carried out.
I am happy to note that our State Department has issued a warning that ‘if these plans are carried out those guilty of such murderous acts will be brought to justice and pay the penalty for their heinous crimes’ American public opinion will fully support the statement issued by our Department of State.”
You are requested to convey the contents of the foregoing statements to the appropriate authorities and to use all possible means to give the statements the widest publicity through any channels that may be available to you.
[On November 7, 1944, General Eisenhower issued a warning to the German people not to harm or persecute any persons in labor battalions and in concentration camps regardless of their nationality or religious faith. For text of the warning, see telegram 2563, October 30, to Moscow, printed on page 1174.]