EUROPEAN EVICTIONS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXV, Issue 225, 22 August 1945, Page 5

EUROPEAN EVICTIONS

REFUGEES IN GERMANY

(Rec. 10.50 a.m.) LONDON, Aug. 21. Experts estimate that 8,000,000 people have been evicted from Czechoslovakia, Silesia, Brandenburg, Pomerania, Danzig and East Prussia, says Reuter's Berlin correspondent. The refugees , upset all attempts to get Germany's food problem on a workable basis and they are rapidly spreading disease, particularly dysentery, typhoid and typhus. The refugees from the oast who received one night's shelter in Berlin before being sent elsewhere between July 1 and August 15 totalled 874,980. Reports from Saxony state that approximately 4,000,000 refugees have arrived there. Saxony's normal population is about 5,000,000. More than 2,000,000 more are drifting throughout the country north-east of Berlin. There is a complete lack of German or inter-Allied organisation to deal with the problem. Provincial authorities are ordering burgomasters to take in refugees equal in number to the normal inhabitants, but the towns are short of food and usually send _ the refugees on their way. Reports indicate that tons of thousands of persons are still being evicted. Roughlv 25 per cent.' of the refugees wanting to reach relatives in Western Germany drift aimlessly to the British and American zones hoping that the harrier at present preventing their entry may be lifted. "Welfare officials see only one solution to the refugee problem—centralised organisation with a plan to settle refugees provisionally according to local food resources and labour needs. Similar factors are obtaining in different parts of Germany.