PILLAR TO POST

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 89, 12 October 1938, Page 16

PILLAR TO POST

A JEWISH COUPLE

SYMPATHETIC MAGISTRATE

(By Air Mail, from "The Post's" London

Representative.)

LONDON, September 5. A remarkable case of a Jewish bookseller and his wife, described as "aliens of uncertain nationality," came before Mr. Herbert Metcalfe at the Old Street police court.

Pinkus Rotenbach, 34, and Cecilia Rotenbach, 32, of Cranwich Road, Stoke Newington, were charged with having landed in this country without permission.

It was stated that they became alarmed at recent activities against aliens and surrendered to the police. Through an interpreter, they said they had been in London two years.

Mr. H. Metcalfe, the Magistrate, read from a statement made by Pinkus Rotenbach in which Rotenbach said he was born at Lodz in Poland, and in 1920 went to Frankfurt and later to Holland. A Jewish agency in Berlin sent him to Palestine in July, 1934, and he remained there about five months, but, owing to ill health, returned to Holland. There he was told by the police that he could stay for only a few months. Subsequently he was put over the border into Belgium, and was there told that he could not stay very long. He had been married at The Hague, and had a child.

In desperation he went to the captain of a small steamer and gave him all the money he had. He and his family were brought to London, where they were helped ashore by sailors and taken to the Jewish quarter.

Mr. Alfred Kerstein, who appeared for the Rotenbachs, asked the Magistrate to take a merciful view of this case which was so different from the usual type coming before him. The Rotenbachs had been living quite respectably and he urged on the Magistrate that it was not a case where they should be sent to prison.

Mr. Metcalfe said he agreed that this was by no means the ordinary type of case. The Rotenbachs were obviously very respectable people who had had a very shocking time through no fault of their own. He thought it was one of those cases where he might exercise the utmost leniency, just as in other types of cases the greatest severity was called for. The Rotenbachs had been pushed about from one country to another. Imposing a fine of 10s each he said he would make a recommendation for depoi'tation in the ordinary way, but this did not necessarily mean that the recommendation would operate.

Bail was fixed in the sum of 40s each for the Rotenbachs to appear when and where required.