Czech Government Fails to Find Trace of Charles Jordan Who Disappeared in Prague

The mysterious disappearance in Prague last Wednesday of Charles H. Jordan, executive vice-chairman of the Joint Distribution Committee, continued to puzzle the State Department today, as U.S. Embassy officials in Czechoslovakia reported that there was still no trace of him. The Czechoslovak Government assured the embassy that police authorities were searching for the missing JDC leader. Czech officials denied that Mr. Jordan had been detained.

American officials who are in touch with the Czechoslovak Foreign Office reported today from Prague that they had no theories to account for Mr. Jordan’s disappearance. Mr. Jordan, who was on vacation, arrived with his wife in Prague last Monday as tourists and intended to visit also the Soviet Union. Mrs. Jordan intends to remain in Prague while the authorities there are searching for her husband.

The Czechoslovak Foreign Ministry informed the U.S. Embassy, it was reported here, that the search in Prague had produced no information and that a nation-wide hunt for the missing JDC official had been ordered. The State Department said that Edward W. Burgess, the American charge d’Affaires in Prague, called on the Czech Foreign Ministry to stress that the safety and whereabouts of Mr. Jordan were matters of “gravest concern” to the United States Government.

(Louis Broido, JDC chairman, said in New York that he had “no idea” as to why Mr. Jordan might be missing. Mrs. Jordan said in Prague that her husband left the hotel room Wednesday evening to buy an American newspaper and did not return. After several hours, she called the American Embassy and that since then “a check has been made with the police and all the hospitals but nothing turned up. I don’t know what could have happened to him,” she stated.)

Before arriving in Prague, the Jordans had visited Hungary and Rumania and had planned to go on to the Soviet Union.