REUNION POSTPONED

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 287, 30 August 1933, Page 10

REUNION POSTPONED

Soviet Wants £lOO Before Releasing Child PARENTS IN DOMINION It was announced in these columns some time ago that the reunion of a Russian child with her parents in New Zealand after a separation of a dozen years should take place within a few months. The parents were refugees from the Russian revolution, and they had to leave their infant when they escaped through China with the older children. The family found its way to New Zealand and settled at Foxton. A letter received by Mr. M. S. Galloway,'■general secretary of the New Zealand Red Cross Society, from tbe secretary of the League of Red Cross Societies, Paris, now makes it doubtful whether the child, Galena Bogatiroff, will be able to come to New Zealand as soou as was expected, for the Soviet Government is asking £lOO for a passport, and £BO for passage money. The parents, Mr. ■ Galloway told a “Dominion” representative yesterday, were able to raise only £5 at tlie moment, and he had in . hand an additional £2/9/6, sent in by sympathisers.' Representations had been made, he added to the Minister of External Affairs, who had been most sympathetic, and had, with the utmost promptitude, cabled his Majesty’s Government re-' questing that the British Ambassador at Moscow be asked to urge the Soviet Government to waive, or reduce, on' humanitarian grounds, the £lOO for official permission to leave the country, in order that the child might be reunited with her parents. Owing to the arrest of the child’s aunt, who had been looking after her, Mr. Galloway said, matters bad become even more complicated.