A thousand persons, 900 of them Jews, who had gained Rumanian citizenship under international treaties of 1920 and 1924 have been stripped of their nationality by the police of Czernowitz acting under instructions of the War Ministry, it was revealed here today.
The official reason given was that these persons had obtained “citizenship illegally or by officials’ mistakes.”
Anti-Semitic newspapers reported that all of them would be asked to leave the country shortly.
Revision of post-war naturalizations was reportedly started by the Rumanian Government last January with the avowed intention of weeding out persons who had acquired nationality rights fraudulently or through error. At that time it was reported that about 4,000 persons in Czernowitz had lost their citizenship.
A bill introduced in the last session of Parliament would have deprived of citizenship persons who gained Rumanian national rights automatically as inhabitants of territory annexed by Rumania after the World War. The bill would have barred from citizenship all persons concerning whose naturalization there was no legal proof.
Although the bill was not acted upon, steps were taken in the provinces of Bessarabia, Transylvania and Bukovina by police commissioners assertedly acting under secret instructions of the Government to carry out its provisions. Czernowitz is in Bukovina.
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