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Massacre on Russian-roumanian Frontier: Soroca Affair Paised in Roumanian Parliament in Debate on Re

March 4, 1932
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At the last meeting of the Chamber, Deputy Parischivescu-Besniev put an interpellation to the Government, asking what action it intends to take in view of the massacre of 40 Moldavian Roumanians by the Soviet Russian frontier guards, while they were trying to cross the River Dniester back into Roumania.

Certain Deputies had made a big noise over the shooting affair at Soroca, he complained, but they were silent now when they should be protesting against the outrage committed by the Soviet guards.

Deputy Dr. Singer immediately rose, and declared that the Jewish Parliamentary Club had already introduced a resolution on protesting in sharp terms against all massacres carried out by the frontier guards on the Dniester. He urged the Government to seek a way by means of a mixed Roumanian Russian Commission and through peaceful negotiations of preventing such massacres ever occurring again.

Reports appearing in the Roumanian press have given the number of victims as between 200 and 300, all of them Moldavian farmers who had been living in the Soviet Ukraine. Being opposed to the forcible collectivisation of their land, they had decided to cross the River Dniester into Roumania, but they were shot down by the Russian frontier guards. All night long there was incessant shooting along the Roumanian border, the reports say, and not one of the refugees succeeded in reaching the Roumanian shore. With the aid of field-glasses, they add, it is possible from the Roumanian shore to see how the Russian shore is littered with corpses.

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