HOPELESS CONFUSION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25940, 5 September 1945, Page 5

HOPELESS CONFUSION

PLIGHT OF GERMAN REFUGEES DEPORTED BY THE POLES LONDON, Sept. 3. According to welfare workers, between 8,000,000 and 12,000,000 Germans are now homeless wanderers as the result of mass deportations from territory provisionally assigned to Poland under the Potsdam agreement. The welfare workers expect millions of them to die this winter if immediate action is not taken. They say permission should be sought from ‘the Polish Government for at least a temporary return of Germans to some agricultural areas where crops are not reaped. Towns and villages are empty and no autumn sowing has been clone. Evictions are still going on from Danzig and Pomerania, although the flow from Silesia is lowly diminishing. Poland, it is reported, intends to deport 15,000,000 altogether. Local German authorities are anxious to move on refugees when they arrive in Germany so that the food shortage in their districts will not be aggravated by refugees. As a result of the refugees milling about in hopeless confusion disease and hunger are spreading. There are lines of rough graves outside Kottbus station, between Dresden and Berlin.

Great German arms plants are now turning out goods to keep the German population alive, and grain-carrying wagons are emerging from the debris of Krupps at Essen. The Ruhrmschie plant at Oberhausen. which previously produced liquid oxygen for V-weapons, is now making fertilisers. The Henomag tank works at Hanover are turning out tractors, and the Miag factory at Brunswick is making milling machinery instead of Messerschmitt fighters.