PEOPLE WITHOUT A COUNTRY

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVII, Issue 21507, 21 November 1939, Page 7

PEOPLE WITHOUT A COUNTRY

Plight Of Polish Refugees Ambassador Appeals For Help British Official Wireless (Received November 20, 5.5 p.m.) RUGBY, November 19. The Polish Ambassador, Count Raczynski, to-night broadcast an appeal for the Polish Relief Fund. He said, “you know Poland was attacked and invaded by Germany and yet you can l.ardly realise the degree of the destruction wrought by the invaders. Many provincial cities open, and undefended, have almost ceased to exist through the bombardment from the air which was relentless, methodical and senseless, otherwise than as an instance of the method of frightfulness. The capital city, Warsaw, was laid werte and its inhabitants killed in thousands. Those who survived were overcrowded in the remaining houses, without glass in their windows, coal in their fireplaces, medicine in their hospitals, or milk for their children. The factories which had provided them with work are reduced to ashes. Not that the fighting is over. News is still arriving of the eviction from their homes of Poles, whose houses and land are to accommodate Germans imported to that end from the Tyrol and Baltic countries. Millions of Poles, in purely Polish country, in parts comparatively less affected by the war, are to be tom from tl.eir homes, leaving behind all tl.eir cherished possessions to go—one fears to ask where—and to face what kind of a future? From the Eastern border of Poland come more tales of the execution of priests and intellectuals, of confiscations and deportations of thousands of innocent people into the land of Soviet Russia. Large numbers of my compatriots escaped from Poland. I am receiving daily more and more circumstantiated news of a mass of over 100.000 refugees, men, women and children who are stranded in foreign countries, mainly in Hungary, Rumania

and Lif’.uania. They are treated with k’ndness by their hosts, who are not however, in the position to provide them with warm clothing or blankets for the fast approaching winter. It is on behalf of these refugees I -m appealing to you in the first instance, as they cm be helped with the least d'ay and the least difficulty. Help f 'r stricken Poland itself will prcbably be mainly directed from n: tral countries. The fund for which I appeal is to help all alike by means of grants to approved organisations working for the Polish Relief. CHURCHES PROFANED United Pres? Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright (Received November 20, 7.30 p.m.) VATICAN CITY, November 20. Radio reports from Lwow, now in Russian hands, assert that some church have become cinemas and investments have been distributed to actors. Religious education has been forbidden and churches which are open are allotted a priest apiece, but sentries prevent young people from entering. Many churches have been allegedly profaned. One has been converted into a stable and its treasures confiscated. Lwow is a Jewish refugee centre harbouring 200,000 Hebrews. Food is scarce. The Cracow correspondent of the British United Press says that the Germans have ordered the confinement of Warsaw Jews in a barricaded area, reproducing a mediaeval ghetto.