FAMINE IN RUMANIA

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 February 1947, Page 7

FAMINE IN RUMANIA

DESPERATE PEASANTS SEARCH FOR AID SOVIET ALSO IN DIFFICULTIES NEW YORK, Feb. 19. The famine in Rumania is so grave that peasant families with many children are feeding only the healthiest and allowing the ‘others to starve. Desperate peasants are boarding trains in search of aid. Some are dying in the carriages, and others arc committing suicide when unable to obtain food. The Paris correspondent of the New York Times says disease is mounting. Tuberculosis, pellagra, malaria, and venereal disease are gaining a hold, while typhus _is spreading in Moldavia. The famine conditions have even reached Bucharest, where the bread rations have been sharply reduced. Leaving Stricken Areas A large-scale movement of peasants has begun from the faminestricken rural areas to the towns. Some villages are now entirely deserted.

Food shortages in the western and south-western republics of the Soviet Union are causing great hardship throughout, the nation. Rations of all kinds have been reduced in the State shops in Moscow. The famine conditions have been induced mainly by the 1946 drought, which hit the black earth belt running from the heart of Rumania as far east as the Volga. The Rumanian Government is so eager to obtain food that it _ has undertaken to send gold to Switzerland to be held there as promised payment for American assistance. Shipments to Russia Under an agreement with Russia, Rumania had pledged large food shipments to the Soviet Union. Many carriages of food are still tied up in Rumanian sidings as a result of traffic jams, and the Rumanian Government is seeking their release from the Russians to meet the emergency. The Rumanians are irritated because the Russians have not offered aid to them voluntarily. The correspondent says it is clearly difficult for.the Russians to aid their Rumanian friends because their own difficulties are likely to increase during the year.