HOMES FOUND FOR REFUGEES

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 16, 30 December 1932, Page 10

HOMES FOUND FOR REFUGEES

WORK OF NANSEN OFFICE. MOVED ONE GROUP FROM ASIA TO SOUTH AMERICA. Geneva, Dec. 5. Picking up groups of thousands oi persons in one place and putting them in another is the job, or one of the jobs, which the Nansen International Office of Refugees has been doing since it was founded in April, 1931. Sometimes a group is picked up in Asia and put down in South America. Or it may be picked up in the Balkan peninsula and put down somewhere near Mt. Ararat. It’s all in the day's work for the Nansen Office, just as jaunts to the polar regions were all in the day’s work for the great explorer and humanitarian the office is named after.

The office, which operates under the auspices of the League of Nations, estimates that there are still more than 1.000,000 refugees in various parts of the world whom it would like to help in finding homes and employment. It is directing its efforts first towards those who appear to be most in need, and who arc accessible to the services of the office.

CROSSED MILITARY ZONE. During the first year of its activities, 14,292 refugees were settled with houses, land or employment by the office, including some 4000 Armenian refugees in Syria, more than 6000 Armenians transferred from Greece to Soviet Armenia, 772 Lutheran and Mennonite refugees from Russia transferred from Manchuria in the midst of the fighting to South America, and more than 3000 individuals or small groups of various nationalities similarly aided. Fifty-nine thousand other refugees were directly assisted in one way or another between April, 1931, and June, 1932.

Most spectacular of all these enterprises was the removal of Mennonites and Lutherans from Harbin to South America. This would have been a noteworthy feat in time of peace, but with war raging in Manchuria at the time these refugees from Russia were to start for their new home, it was a notable accomplishment. The Mennonites on their way to Paraguay were convoyed through the centre of the military zone in Manchuria on their way from Harbin to Dairen, and arrived in Shanghai just in time for the bombardment of that city by the Japanese. The Lutherans, like the Mennonites, had passed through many adventures in Siberia and northern Manchuria before they ever reached Harbin, whence they started on their long journey to Brazil. They, too, passed through the military zone in southern Manchuria on their way to Shanghai. Both Mennonites and Lutherans proceeded from China to South America by way of Marseilles and Bordeaux. HELP FOR ARMENIANS. On a larger scale, but not so thrilling, perhaps, was the work done for Armenians in the middle East. Some 6000 of these persons in Greece who had expressed a desire to be sent to the Armenian Soviet Republic, which has its capital at Erivan, were convoyed from Europe into Asia via Batum. The Republic proposes to settle these refugees, for the most part, on lands of the Sardarabad Plain, which has been irrigated in accordance with the plan recommended by the mission to Erivan headed by Dr. Nansen in 1925. The Armenian Republic is ready to accommodate 20,000 more such refugees if arrangements can be made for their repatriation.

The office is co-operating with the Rumanian Government in caring for tiic refugees who have this year crossed the Dneister into that country from Russia. It has also made grants and subsidies in cases of special need through Russian relief organisations in France and elsewhere.