Soroca Shooting Affair: Evidence by Eye-witness: Young Man Who Was to Have Been in Ill-fated Party a

Deputy Mirescu, the’ leader of the Roumanian Social Democratic Party, who has been in Soroca investigating the shooting affair there on the instructions of the Executive of the Party, tells the J.T.A. representative here that his enquiry has brought to light a great deal of new material which he will shortly present to Parliament.

We succeeded in finding an eye-witness of the shooting of the six victims, he said, and we have taken a statement from him. It seems that he was to have been a seventh member of the ill-fated party, and escaped their fate only because he had arrived at the place arranged for the crossing of the River Dniester before the others did, and he took shelter in a little hut a short distance off. From his hiding place there he saw all that happened. I am not now able to reveal his name for obvious reasons, Deputy Mirescu went on.

He did not go with the rest to the house of the smuggler Ion Mihalasch, who acted as their go-between with the frontier guard, who was to have conducted them across the river, and gave him a sum of 4,000 lei as a bribe. This amount had been agreed to by the frontier guard for taking five people across the river (the sixth member of the party was the smuggler), and as there were six of them, they had drawn lots to decide which should be left behind. The lot had fallen on Riva Darcautzan, but he (the eye-witness) had withdrawn in her favour, because her fiance was in the party, and he did not want to separate them. They arranged, however, that he should also come to the spot arranged, thinking that while they were all crossing the guard might be persuaded to let him cross too. As he waited in the hut for his friends, he saw a sledge drive up, filled with frontier guards, with Captain Gaja, the Commandant of the Soroca frontier guard, among them. He heard Captain Gaja ordering a soldier to bring out the young people who were in Mihalasch’s house. Three-quarters of an hour later, the group came up, and five minutes after, without any warning having been given, the shots were fired.

The soldiers, the statement declares, tried to drag the bodies to the middle of the river Dniester, where there was a crack in the ice, with the intention of throwing them into the water. The Russian frontier guard on the other side prevented this, however, by playing searchlights on them, and threatening to shoot if the Roumanian soldiers ventured further towards the middle of the river. The watcher says in his deposition that he was in his hut for a quarter of an hour after the shooting took place, before he thought it safe to leave his hiding place.

I afterwards spoke to the widow of the smuggler Mihalasch, Deputy Mirescu went on, and her statements concerning the time when the young people arrived in her house and when they left, and also when the soldier arrived in their house, agree with the statements made to me by the eye-witness.

BLOOD STILL SEEN THROUGH ICE: CAPTAIN OF FRONTIER GUARD HAD BEEN REPROACHED BY HIS SUPERIORS FOR NOT BEING SUFFICIENTLY VIGILANT TO PREVENT CROSSING OF FRONTIER AND WANTED TO PROVE HIS ZEAL

The fear of the frontier guard which exists among the inhabitants of Bujurovka, the auburb of Soroca which adjoins the scene of the shooting, can be gauged by the fact that not one resident would dare to conduct us to the scene of the out-rage, Deputy Mirescu said, and we had to find the place for ourselves, with the help of the directions of the frontier guards. The place was covered with ice, through which the blood could be seen.

Asked by the J.T.A. representative whether the young people had wanted to cross the frontier into Soviet Russia for political reasons, because they were Communists, Deputy Mirescu said that he was convinced that this was not the case. Only one of them, Leib Rudmann, he said, was a Communist. Tikinowski had been falsely alleged to be a brother of Dr. Tikinowski, who was involved in an espionage affair a year ago. Tikinowski had a ticket to go to the Argentine, and it was only at the last minute that Rudmann had persuaded him to seek employment in Soviet Russia, instead of undertaking the long journey to the Argentine. Tikinowski’s relatives state that in addition to the ticket he had 125 dollars and 3,000 lei on him, which were not found on the body.

As to the motive for the outrage, Deputy Mirescu said that Captain Gaja had recently been repeatedly reproached by his superior officers as responsible for frequent cases of people crossing the River Dniester and he had therefore wanted to make an example of one party in order to frighten off further attempts, and at the same time to show his superior officers that he was zealous in his duties of preventing the crossing of the frontier.

How would you explain the fact, the J.T.A. representative asked, that the official enquiry has given such totally different results to all the private enquiries, including your own?

That, Deputy Mirescu replied, is explained by the fact that General Marcovici confined himself in his investigation to questioning the Commandant of the Frontier guard, and the police. He stubbornly refused to make any enquiries from among the large number of witnesses among the inhabitants of Soroca, who wanted to make statements. At the second enquiry, too, to which a representative of the Ministry of Justice was added, only five out of the fifty witnesses who had come forward were heard, and the attitude of the enquiry commission was such a brow-beating one as to frighten them into confining themselves to merely formal statements, without going into the facts. It throws light on General Marcovici’s attitude to the whole matter to mention that he did not even visit the scene of the outrage.

No one has ever thought of accusing the higher authorities or the Government of responsibility for this unfortunate occurrence, Deputy Mirescu concluded. Nevertheless, I have obtained the impression from a talk which I have had with M. Argetoianu, that the Government does not wish the Soroca affair to be reopened.