GERMAN CHILDREN EVACUATED

Southland Times, Issue 24437, 17 May 1941, Page 7

GERMAN CHILDREN EVACUATED

(8.0.W.) RUGBY, May 15. The fact that the Royal Air Force raids have compelled a large scale evacuation of children from north and west Germany to Czechoslovakia, Poland and Austria is the subject of comment by The Manchester Guardian. “To judge from a report recently made by Baldur von Schirach (the Hitler Youth leader), parents at first hung back from sending their children away. Then there was a storm of evacuation, particularly from Hamburg, Bremen and Berlin and the great towns on the west. (This was before the last series of heavy British raids). A considerable strain was put on the transport system,” states The Manchester Guardian. “Some idea of the recent increase can be gathered from the figures of the Polish Warthegau. At the end of December there were only 15,000 Berlin children there. By February 20 there were 100,000. A Czech report says that 150,000 refugees, both child and adult, have arrived in Bohemia and Moravia and 32 districts have been compulsorily evacuated by order of the Protector (Baron Konstantin von Neurath) to make room for them. This figure has probably been doubled by now.

“The general inference is that the German evacuation has been a hurried affair, for which no adequate preparation has been made. It has now been extended on a huge scale and Germany and her tributary countries offer enormous tracts that can be counted as

‘safe areas.’ All the same it is a side of the war that must have had an effect on the confidence of the ordinary people.”