In what is believed to be a direct reprisal over the Mayor LaGuardia incident, the Nazi authorities today served a deportation order on Boris Smolar, chief European correspondent of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and an American citizen.
Giving the veteran reporter until Sunday to leave Germany, the order warns him he will be fined and escorted to the border by the Gestapo unless he complies voluntarily. It also threatens the journalist with a year’s imprisonment should he return to Germany without authorization.
The official reason for the action was stated to be:
“Your further stay in the country tends to endanger the internal security of the Reich.”
The order, for an unexplained reason, is dated December 14 last. Despite this and the officially asserted reason for the action, it was felt in American circles here that it was retaliation for Mayor LaGuardia’s speech in which he suggested a “chamber of horrors” for the World’s Fair with Chancellor Adolf Hitler as the chief exhibit.
The order, evidently anticipating strong intervention by the United States Government, states the authorities are opposed to delaying its execution pending an appeal. The American consulate here has already taken measures to intervene.
Mr. Smolar, who has recently been dividing his time between London and this city, with occasional trips to Paris, Warsaw, Bucharest and Jerusalem, returned to Berlin only last week. He intended to stay but two weeks this time, planning to go to Paris to join his wife preparatory to taking a long-deferred leave of absence.
The journalist, who has covered virtually every European capital in his twelve years with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, has been in difficulties with the Nazi authorities on previous occasions. In January, 1936, his American passport was taken from him by Gestapo agents after they had raided his hotel room. The passport was returned at Gestapo headquarters the following morning with apologies by a high official after energetic representations by the American consulate.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
