Pipeline for D.P.s

In Glasgow early last summer, two young Polish Jews named Mordecai Szulc and Manick Kuper met a mysterious stranger whom they knew only as George. They were veterans of the Polish Army, and they were anxious to get to Canada. George was willing to help them, for $1,500 apiece.

With the help of relatives in England, they managed to raise the cash. A few days later, George was back with British passports and British identities (Szulc became "Ronald Drummond"; Kuper, "James Hughes"). They were also given Scottish birth certificates, plane tickets for Canada. Not long after that, the two Poles were in Toronto. Szulc got a job with a furrier, Kuper with a tailor.

The story came out last week when, in Toronto, Royal Canadian Mounted Policemen arrested Szulc, Kuper and five other Polish Jews who had been routed to Canada by George from a D.P. camp in Germany. Charged with illegally entering Canada, all seven were jailed. The arrests brought the first news of a passport racket that has been in full swing for nearly a year, has kept Scotland Yard in a dither for weeks.

Detectives got their first hold on the racket when a Canada-bound "Scotsman" at Prestwick airport, Scotland, pulled out a passport bearing the name of a criminal then in a Glasgow jail. Police arrested the masquerader, were soon hot on the trail of a passport forging and smuggling ring.

At first, they learned, the racketeers had used passports stolen from the Passport Office. The blank books were smuggled into Belgium, "validated" with a forged Foreign Office stamp, then sold to the highest bidders in Paris, Hamburg or Munich. When demand swamped supply, George and his associates hit on another scheme. Over many a pint in Glasgow pubs, they asked local folk to hand over their identity cards "to help a friend who wants to get to Eire." For a fiver, hundreds of Glaswegians did so. The card details, plus photographs of D.P. clients, were then used in filling out passport applications. When the passports were issued, George took them to Germany.

At week's end, Britain's Foreign and Home Offices, Canada House in London and the British Control Commission in Germany were all busy looking for suspects. One official guessed that before the investigation ended it might become "one of the biggest things we have handled for years." So far, at least 40 D.P.s were thought to have entered Canada by the phony passport route. As for the seven arrested in Toronto, their future was up to Ottawa's immigration authorities. Toronto Rabbi David Monson was pleading their case. Said he: "These people aren't criminals."

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