WILDLY IMPROBABLE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27080, 14 May 1949, Page 7

WILDLY IMPROBABLE

STATEMENTS TO PRESS BY SIDNEY STANLEY “A PSYCHOLOGICAL CASE” NZPA Special Correspondent Rec. 9 p.m. LONDON, May 13. According to reports from TelAviv, statements made by Scholomo Ben Chain, formerly Sidney Stanley, the central figure in the recent Lynskey tribunal in London, since his arrival in Israel, have been so wildly improbable that a deputation of newspaper correspondents interviewed him and asked him to “h.old his tongue.” This followed claims by Stanley that two well-known screen personalities were shortly arriving to make a film story based on his life, and that a number of American and British celebrities had accepted invitations to be his guests at a dinner. Stanley did in fact extend an invitation to Mr Herbert Lehman, a former director of UNRRA, to join him at dinner, but Mr Lehman refused, remarking: “ I don’t know Mr Sidney Stanley and I don’t want to know him.”

Shortly afterwards, the manager of the hotel where Stanley is staying, and in which Mr Lehman had also booked rooms, asked Stanley to leave. The manager admitted that after the Stanley incident Mr Lehman cancelled his reservations.

Another story given to the Tel-Aviv press by Stanley was to the effect that he escaped from Britain disguised as an admiral in the Royal Navy, that he later altered his disguise to that of a high-ranking military officer, and finally was carried as a civilian passenger on a British destroyer. Mr M£x Seligman, Stanley’s lawyer, who has been trying to restrain him from making further press statements, described him as a “ psychological case.”