The secret police today returned to Boris Smolar, chief European correspondent of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, his passport and all papers confiscated during a raid last night upon his quarters.
Restoration of the documents brought to a swift and the first case in which an American correspondent had been deprived of his passport. It followed energetic intervention by Prescott Childs, American Consul, and the Association of American Correspondents, of which Mr. Smolar is a member.
Return of the documents was accompanied by the apologies of a high official of the secret police. When Mr. Smolar, upon the order of two agents who conducted the raid of his quarters, reported to police headquarters this morning he was met by the official who politely informed him: “We’re sorry. It was all a mistake.”
This apology was followed later in the day by a statement expressing the official regrets of Wolf von Helldorf, Berlin police president, made in reply to a written request from the American Consulate. The statement also described the incident as “a mistake.”
No further complications are expected to be made for Mr. Smolar’s activities.
When the American Consul, together with the correspondents’ association, called at the Foreign Office to make representations on Mr. Smolar’s behalf, officials of the department appeared startled at news of the raid and detention of the passport. The Foreign Office immediately communicated with the police.
It is understood that the police indicated to the Foreign Office that the search had been ordered because some of Mr. Smolar’s mail stories were considered by Nazi agents to constitute “atrocity propaganda.” These stories had been seized when the correspondent’s mail was examined at the post office.
Among the material confiscated last night were included a number of mail stories addressed and ready for dispatching. All of these were returned untouched and without comment as to their content.
The American colony showed the keenest interest in the case, the correspondents watching it as a test case for all American newspaper and news agency representatives.
Both the American Consulate and Embassy were prepared to take the most energetic action and expressed pleasure at the promptness with which the incident was settled.
In answer to a cable by Mr. George Backer, chairman of the board of directors of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, U.S. Ambassador William E. Dodd cabled as follows:
“Embassy is pleased to state that case was dismissed this morning with apologies to Smolar. We have seen him at the Embassy.”
Mr. Backer’s cable to Ambassador Dodd follows:
Learn secret police officials searched room of our correspondent, Boris Smolar, Pension Continental, Kurfuerstendamm 53, seized papers, took passport, ordered appear before police tomorrow morning. On behalf of board greatly appreciate your invention for Smolar, an American citizen.”
Report of the incident attracted widespread attention in the United States, the general press as well as Yiddish newspapers featuring it prominently.
Ludwig Lore, who conducts the “Behind the Cables” column in the New York Post, describing Mr. Smolar as a “faithful and courageous correspondent” writes as follows in a paragraph captioned “Too Much Truth:”
“Boris Smolar is a newspaperman of long experience. His dispatches from Berlin gave truthful and dispassionate reports of events in Germany. Not once were they disproved or discredited by the Nazi authorities. For the J.T.A. and its Berlin representative it is an honor to have incurred and deserved the enmity of Goebbel’s Propaganda Ministry and Goering’s Gestapo.”
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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.
