2,000 Face Deportation if Rumania Revises Citizen Lists

It was conservatively estimated here today that 2,000 persons, most of them Jews born in Russia and Galicia, are in danger of deportation if, under a proposed law, they are deprived of Rumanian citizenship acquired automatically as residents of territories annexed after the World War.

A bill providing for revision of citizenship lists in such territories has been pending in the Rumanian Parliament since Dec. 17. It would set up a commission of revision to examine the lists, as compiled under the law of 1924, and eliminate from them all persons concerning whose naturalization there exists no legal proof. Those dropped from the lists will be given no opportunity to submit new evidence and are barred from making appeals.

Under the proposed law, mayors and notaries public are required to post within one month of the law’s publication, lists carrying the names of all persons whose nationality has been established in accordance with the 1924 regulations. Persons not included in those lists are no longer to be considered Rumanian citizens.

(A Bucharest legal expert, commenting on the bill, pointed out that according to the law of 1924, inhabitants of the territories in question were not required to furnish any proof since the law recognized them as rightful citizens without any formality. He said it was up to local commissions to compile lists of the nationals and it was left to individual inhabitants to contest names inscribed through error or fraud. It was only those not named on these lists because they were absent at the time they were compiled, he declared, and who demanded right to be placed on the lists, who were required to furnish proof.)

Although the bill has not yet been acted upon, it has been ascertained that steps to carry out its provisions have already been quietly initiated in the provinces of Bessarabia, Transylvania and Bukovina by police commissioners acting under secret instructions from the central Government.

According to some officials, the revision deals only with those who have acquired citizenship since 1924, in which case it is estimated that only about 35,000 naturalizations will be questioned. Of this number, several thousand definitely will be cancelled, with a minimum of 2,000 slated for deportation. Whether the latter will be readmitted to their native countries after holding Rumanian citizenship so long is a matter of speculation. It is further complicated by the fact that many of the persons affected were born in the territories which became Rumanian by annexation.