DYING IN TRAINS

New Zealand Herald, Volume 82, Issue 25339, 22 October 1945, Page 5

DYING IN TRAINS

REFUGEE TRAGEDIES TYPHOID AND STARVATION (Reed. ft.Bs p.m.) LONDON. Oct. 20 Two hundred of about 300,000 refugees who arrived in Berlin from Eastern Germany in the past month were found dead in the railway trucks in which they travelled. A British Military Government medical officer said that most, of them died from typhoid or starvation. The health of the refugees trying to get from Eastern Germany into the British zone, he added, was very bad. From yesterday the passing on of refugees from Berlin to the British zone in Western Germany is to cease because for the next few weeks all transport will be allotted to "Operation Stork," under which 50,000 children >vi!l be moved from the capital to the western zone, where there is more chance of feeding them during the winter

This will mean that the refugees still arriving in Berlin from the east at the rate of 10,000 a day will pile up there, though there is no housing or any food for them. An epidemic of typhoid continues to rage in Berlin, with a mortality rate of about 25 per cent. The venereal disease rate is extremely high, and in some areas 75 per cent of the women are infected.

All forced repatriation of Germans has been stopped bv the Polish Government. M. Henryk Strasburger, the new Polish Ambassador to London, said he had notified the British Foreign Office to this effect. However, a "spontaneous movement" was continuing. M, Strasburger explained that thousands of Germans whom Hitler had sent in to occupy districts of Poland were not waiting for the return of the rightful owners, but were leaving ol their own volition. The Ambassador stated that although his Government wished to see the return of all exiled Poles, especially specialist workers, it had no intention of trying to force any to return. LONG OCCUPATION MONTGOMERY IN FAVOUR LONDON, Oct. 20 "Personally, I would say Germany is a very good place in which to keep a British army," said Field-Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery in a speech when lie received the freedom of Maidenhead; "I shall keep a British army in Germany as long as possible, and at 'the expense of Germany. The thing I am fighting in Germany today is disease. If we can deal with that we shall gel the country through the winter." Field-Marshal Montgomery added that he was able to give the Germans less than half the British food ration. MISSING CHILDREN (Rpcd. fl.Bo p.m.) SINGAPORE, Oct. 20 The British military administration in Singapore is making an appeal for news of white children who were lost when ships were sunk during the evacuation of Singapore and who are believed to be growing up in Sumatra villages. Some children were last seen floating 1 in their lifebelts and on boxes and are believed to have drifted ashore,