Refugees from Poland, Germany and Czecho-Slovakia, including holders of valid visas for the United States, are stranded in Lithuania as result of an announcement made here by the Swedish Navigation Company and Swedish airlines that they will carry no passengers of Polish, German and Czech nationalities if they are of military age, that is between 18 and 50.
The Swedish statement follows a similar announcement by Estonia and the closing of the Latvian frontiers to refugees wishing to cross that country. There are about 11,000 Jewish refugees from Poland who will thus find it difficult, if not impossible, to emigrate from Wilno unless they secure transit visas through Soviet Russia for Palestine or some other part of the world.
The Swedish and Estonian bans are the result of pressure from Germany after a German cruiser had taken all Polish passengers from an Estonian steamer and interned them in concentration camps as war prisoners.
At the same time the Swedish lines refused to load on their steamers cargoes mostly furniture, belonging to Jewish refugees from the Reich who were permitted by Berlin to emigrate to South American countries. The Swedish lines explained that such cargoes might be considered contraband by the Allied naval authorities when passing French or British waters as they contain many articles on the Allied contraband list.
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