Court action has been started here to compel the State Department to issue passports to two middle-aged Jewish sisters, Mrs. Werva Giegerich and Mrs. Fannie Rubinowicz, now held in Nazi concentration camps, who claim to be natives of the United States.
The State Department said today that the case was still under investigation but that thus far the women’s attorney had “failed to produce sufficient evidence to warrant issuance of passports.”
According to an injunction filed in the United States District Court by Attorney James J. Laughlin, Mrs. Giegerich, 48, is in a concentration camp at Gars, France, and Mrs. Rubinowicz, 46, is imprisoned in Leszno, German-occupied Poland.
The sisters, according to the attorney, were born in New York City and went to Russia in their early youth. At the time of the Russian Revolution they said they were born in Russia in order to escape imprisonment. For this reason they have been denied passports despite presentation of allegedly authenticated American birth certificates.
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