The Jewish Daily Forward, denying that Orzech’s cables were “false and tendentious” and asserting that Lithuania had rarely figured in his dispatches, said today that it suspected Soviet pressure was behind the deportation order.
J.C. Rich, city editor of the Forward, explained that Orzech had reported the “kidnaping” by the Soviet authorities in Wilno, prior to its cession to Lithuania, of prominent Jewish Socialist leaders who had escaped from Nazi-occupied Poland. Orzech himself, Rich said, was a Socialist leader in Warsaw and had escaped to Lithuania after the Nazi invasion.
Abraham Cahan, editor of the Forward, today cabled the American Consulate in Kaunas asking intervention in behalf of the correspondent. He said he was taking the case up with the State Department.
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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.