Wandering Refugees Present Greatest European Problem

Northern Advocate, 22 August 1945, Page 3

Wandering Refugees Present Greatest European Problem

(Rec. 11.40 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. Refugees have upset all attempts to ge Germany’s food problem on a workable basis. They are < rapidly spreading disease particularly dysentery, typhoid and typhus. Refugees from the East who received one night’s shelter in Berlin before being sent elsewhere, between July 1 and August 15, totalled 874.986. 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 cieal with the problem. The provincial authorities are ordering burgomasters to take in refugees equal in number to the normal inhabitants, but towns short of food usually send refugees, on their way. Reports indicate that tens of thousands of persons are still being evicted. Roughly 25 per cent of refugees wanting- to reach relatives in Western Germany drift aimlessly to British ad American zones hoping that the barrier at present preventing entry may be lifted. Welfare officials see only one solution of the refugee problem—a 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.