Hungary and Czechoslovakia have decided to take energetic measures to halt the illegal emigration of Jews westward over their frontiers, reliable sources stated today. Frontier precautions and the number of guards along the Czechoslovak and Hungarian frontiers with Austria will be redoubled, the same sources said.
As a consequence of these new precautions, approximately 1,000 Hungarian Jews, who had succeeded in fleeing from Hungary, are now stranded at Bratislava where they had gathered in the hope of smuggling themselves across the frontier to Vienna, which is only 38 miles west.
The Czech authorities have refused to permit this group of 1,000 Jews to cross into Austria, although earlier this week a group of 1,200 had little difficulty boarding “busses at Bratislava and driving here. The same officials are reported to be threatening to return them across the Czechoslovak-Hungarian border.
Reliable informants add that the Russians are joining with the Czechoslovak and Hungarian authorities in efforts to halt the illegal refugee traffic by strengthening the roadblocks in their occupation zone of Austria, particularly along the highways leading from the east to Vienna. In addition, the Russian authorities here have refused to permit the transfer of the 1,200 Jews, who arrived earlier, from two camps in their zone of Vienna to the United States sector.
Meanwhile, a group of 850 Jewish refugees has Just left the U.S. zone of Austria on the first stage of their trip to Israeli Another 400 Jews will leave Sunday.
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