Staatenlose in Bessarabia May Obtain Citizenship Through Governor-general’s Intervention with Govern

Many thousands of inhabitants of Bessarabia are still deprived of their citizenship rights, and in consequence of this abnormal position, encounter difficulties at every step, the Kishineff Yiddish daily “Unzer Zeit” writes. General Riscanu, the Governor-General of Bessarabia, we have now learnt from a sure source, has been interesting himself in the position of these unfortunates, it proceeds. General Riscanu was impressed by the information conveyed to him that there are more than a hundred thousand Bessarabian inhabitants whose names are not on the citizen registers, it says, and he asked the Appeals Commission for Citizenship Affairs whether this is correct and why so many people have been refused their citizenship. When the information was confirmed by the Commission, it goes on, General Riscanu communicated with the central authorities in Bucharest, and urged that immediate measures should be taken to put the question on a more satisfactory footing, so that these thousands of inhabitants of our Province should be enabled to acquire their citizenship rights.

The people of Kishineff and of Bessarabia are grateful to General Riscanu, the paper writes, for his initiative in this matter, and we hope that his intervention will be more successful than previous attempts in this direction, which have come to nothing. We anticipate something real and definite this time, it continues, We learn from the same source, “Unzer Zeit” says, that a Bill has already been drafted which will enable all persons who are entitled to citizenship, to obtain their citizenship rights. The Bill provides that all residents who have been passed over in this matter of citizenship may now have their names placed on the citizenship registers, and all those whose applications for citizenship have been rejected by the appeal courts, will now have their cases re-examined.