HUNGER AND DISEASE IN CITY

Press, Volume LXXXI, Issue 24614, 10 July 1945, Page 5

HUNGER AND DISEASE IN CITY

Reuter's correspondent says: “In stark contrast with the much-publi-cissd night clubs and black market, Berlin faces disease. Rats, flies, damaged drains, lack of heating, short: ge of soap, wrecked houses, and undernourishment are helping ;to increase typhus, gas'ro-enteritis. and other diseases.

“Trie authorities warn that conditions cannot be expected to improve and that a grave position will arise In the winter, when the population must endure windowless and fuelless homes in temperatures sometimes 20 degrees below zero. “The ration system is chaotic and domestic fats and meat are desperately short The staple diet of Berliners is black bread, potatoes, and whatever caji be gained by barter,” “British officials have revealed that the Russians, before the Anglo-Ameri-can occupation, stripped 50 per cent, of the material from the factories in the British zone of Berlin.” says the correspondent of the "Drily Telegraph in the capital.

seriousness of the food situation is indicated by the collapse of many Berliners' from under-nourish-

ment while clearing the capital’s bomb wreckage. “In these drawn Berliners’ faces I have seen the unmistakable grey hunger pallor which is not evident elsewhere in western Germany. The Allied authorities are already saying that the only solution is to thin out the population by evacuating Berlin’s inhabitants to the surrounding country. “■lt is not easy for a British soldier to sit and watch people starving, no matter what their guilt. The Berliners are not only beaten, they are broken and paralysed by defeat, and they have become nomads wandering aimlessly in a city of brick dust. “A senior officer said that unless their situation improved it would be necessary to relieve the British troops living in this tomblike atmosphere every two months.” The correspondent adds: In the lasi fortnight Berliners have not seen sugar, jam. butter, margarine, cooking oils, or fats of any kind, eggs, chicken, or chocolate. n “There is no milk, except .or children aged under one year, who receive a pint, and children between one and two, who receive a' quarter oi a pint daily.”