EVICTED PEOPLE

New Zealand Herald, Volume 82, Issue 25288, 23 August 1945, Page 5

EVICTED PEOPLE

8,000,000 REFUGEES CONFUSION IN GERMANY LACK OF ORGANISATION I/ON DON", Aug 21 Experts estimate that 8,000,000 people have been evicted from Czechoslovakia, Silesia, Brandenburg, Pomerania, Danzig and EasL Prussia, says Renter's Berlin correspondent. The refugees have upset r'.ll attempts to get 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 deal with the problem. The provincial authorities are ordering burgomasters to take in refugees equal in number to the normal inhabitants, but the towns, which are short of food, usually send the refugees on their way. Reports indicate that tens of thousands of persons are still being evicted. Roughly 25 per cent of the refugees wanting to reach relatives in Western Germany drift aimlessly to the British and American zones, hoping the barrier that at present is preventing their entry may be lifted. Welfare officials see only one solution to the refugee problem—a centralised organisation with a plan to settle the refugees provisionally according to local food resources, labour needs and similar factors obtaining in different parts of Germany.