The Soroca Shooting Affair: Deputy Landau Asks for Interview with King: Accuses Investigating Commit

Deputy Landau has asked the King for an audience, in order to place before him the facts in his possession with regard to the shooting of the six young Jews by the frontier guard at Soroca, showing that the facts contradict the statement made in the official communique exonerating the frontier guard, to the effect that the victims were Communists.

There is an outburst of indignation in wide circles in Roumanian Jewry and in the democratic press of the country against the official report exonerating the Soroca frontier guard. The democratic papers publish a letter to-day from Deputy Landau, in which he accuses the investigating commission of having ignored the evidence which he produced showing that the officers and non-commissioned officers of the frontier guard were guilty of having laid a trap for the victims.

Deputy Landau points out that one of the girl victims, Zelda Pferdman, was a Hebrew teacher at the Soroca Hebrew High School of the Tarbuth Organisation, and a keen Hebraist, and she could therefore not have had any Communist leanings, because the Communist regime persecutes Hebrew and exiles Hebraists to Siberia.

The Hebrew High School of the Tarbuth Organisation at Soroca was in the news about a year ago, in February 1931, when the Minister of Education ordered it to be closed down, on the charge that there was a Communist cell discovered among the students.

The Jewish Deputies protested against the closing of the school, and the matter was raised several times in Parliament. Deputy Landau and Senator Rosenhaupt of Soroca visited the Minister of Education and obtained a promise from him to conduct an investigation into the charges, as a result of which the school was later reopened.