Jews Ordered to Leave Sofia; Germans Abandon Jewish Property in Baltic Lands

Jews who had returned to Sofia and were temporarily being permitted to remain there were ordered today to leave the Bulgarian capital within ten days, the Berlin radio reports. An exception will be made only for those mobilized for war work, the broadcast said.

The measure is apparently being taken in connection with the military activities of the German command in Bulgaria in preparation for developments on the Turkish-Bulgarian frontier. The Jews in Sofia were deported from the city several months ago and confined in remote townships under special supervision. Recently, however, they were permitted to return to their homes in order to liquidate their property, and many of them were given to understand that they would not be molested if they decided to remain in Sofia.

Reports reaching here today from the German-held Baltic territory state that German civilians there are abandoning Jewish property which they acquired under Nazi occupation and are returning to Germany. A systematic evacuation of Germans from the Baltic countries to the Reich is going on, indicating that the German military command visualizes the possibility of being compelled to withdraw from Latvia and Lithuania.

Newspapers from Germany report that Henryk Konieczak, a Pole, was executed by the German administration in occupied Poland on the charge of supplying Jews with ration cards. The same newspapers report that two Hungarian motion picture producers have been acquitted of a charge of conspiracy based on the fact that they sold a motion picture in which a principal role was played by a Jewish actor, and the script of which was written by a Jew, to a German firm. The court held that the failure of the producers to inform their German customers of the participation of Jews in the writing and filming of the picture did not constitute conspiracy.