LOST PEOPLE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 163, 12 July 1945, Page 5

LOST PEOPLE

EUROPE'S PROBLEM 3,260,000 Returned To Homes From Germany LONDON, July 5. Behind the bare figures showing the transfers of displaced persons from defeated Germany to their' home countries lies a story full of drama. Nearly 5,800,000 people of many nationalities were located by the Allied authorities after they overran Western Germany, but by July 2, 3,260,000 had been repatriated. Another 2,530,000 were being cared for in Allied displaced persons camps. A statement by the combined Civil Affairs Committee (Anglo-American Group), issued by the War Office to-day, says that Supreme Headquarters has estimated that the entire problem may resolve itself by September 1 into caring for the remainder of non-repatriates and statesless persons. Roaming Ragged Armies Vast, ragged, hungry armies of people roamed the German countryside, and the Allies had to bring order out of chaos, channeling the movement of people, controlling public safety, providing medicines, food, temporary housing, clothing and delousing them to prevent disease, and determining the nation-, ality • and status of displaced persons.' The Allies provided proper sanitation facilities and the best available domestic conveniences and sports and recreation centres. In the German concentration camps some people had gone without food so long that they would have died had they been allowed to eat normally, so facilities for intravenous feeding had to be supplied immediately. One nutrition consultant, 50 British medical students, and 143 Belgian medical students were rushed with top priority to the camp at Belsen to feed intravenously people in stages of advanced malnutrition.

• Similar emergency steps were taken throughout the Allied areas.

U.S. and British Films

Speciaf hospitals were set up, mobile film units were circulated to entertain former prisoners of the Germans with the latest American and British films.

Special' dusting apparatus was flown in to delouse displaced persons and prevent the Spread of disease, including typhus. German medical supplies and German food stocks, both from civilian sources and captured enemy stocks, were earmarked. Special truck convoys and trains brought Red Cross relief supplies stockpiled in Switzerland to Allied prisoners in Germany. Army groups were instructed to raise living conditions of these people Without consideration of any adverse effect on the living conditions of the German people. Germans were moved out of their homes into former German concentration camps to provide shelter for displaced persons in German houses, wherever necessary. **.*■.* By the end of summer, the United Nations Rehabilitation and Relief Administration will have assumed virtually the entire manpower burden of handling the displaced persons.