The Pittsburgh Press (October 3, 1946)
Denny: Nazis’ victims
By Ludwell Denny
BELSEN, Germany – Eleven thousand Jews in the refugee center here, near the dismantled Nazi slaughter camp, are more interested in what becomes of themselves than in the fate of the Nuernberg criminals.
As long as they are homeless and hopeless, and as long as anti-Semitism increases throughout the world, they will feel that Nazism is partly victorious regardless of Allied military success and the Nuernberg sentences.
These 11,000 constitute about two-thirds of all Jews left in the British zone, but officially there are 130,000 in the United States zone and 35,000 more in Austria. The total for the two countries is believed nearer 250,000.
The influx of new Jewish refugees, chiefly into the American zone, averaged about 1000 daily for six weeks following the July pogrom in Kielce, Poland, but is now about 500 daily.
Upwards of 100,000 more probably will get through from Eastern Europe during this fall and winter.
Here at Belsen, as in American-zone camps with which there is both open and underground contact, about 90 percent are determined to go to Palestine, legally or illegally. Even among the smaller number living in villages outside the camps – chiefly Germans of mixed parentage or having a non-Jewish spouse – about 70 percent want to go to Palestine.
Complain about calories
Since the Poles were moved out of this camp there have been no more riots and since a Jewish UNRRA director was put in charge here, Jews say there is no overt mistreatment. But they insist the average 1400-calorie daily ration is only half enough.
The main objection, however, is that they must live in any camp, that they are denied normal living and opportunities accorded most other human beings. Bitterness is deep. The whole atmosphere is tense as nerves show the strain of years of persecution.
The situation is growing more explosive as time approaches for the end of UNRRA and more direct control by the military of camps in both the British and American zones.
Whatever may be the attitude in London and Washington, British and American authorities in Germany and Austria are anxious to end this abnormal and obviously dangerous system of holding the victims of Hitlerism in countries where they are not wanted and do not want to be.
Worse trouble may lie ahead
Numerically, at least, the less publicized problem of other refugees is larger than that of the Jews. There are about a million “displaced persons” left in Europe – the hard core remaining after millions have been repatriated.
There are more than 750,000 in Germany, almost 500,000 in the U.S. zone, and most of the remainder in the British zone.
Of these DPS, about 400,000 are Poles, divided almost equally between American and British ones. They are Ukrainians whose homeland was taken by Russia and anti-Red Poles afraid to return to Poland.
The next largest group includes about 200,000 from the Baltic states annexed by Russia. They have the highest level of education, and many are professional and skilled workers. Also there are about 35,000 Yugoslavs who refuse to return home under the Tito dictatorship.
There is a serious food and housing shortage. Morale is shattered, crime is rising. Allied military authorities in Germany and Austria are as helpless as the DPS themselves in solving the problem.
The solution rests with the United Nations. Unless the Soviet bloc ceases to obstruct the creation of an international refugee organization, as proposed by the U.S. before UNRRA folds, and unless all free nations provide a haven for a proportionate share of these homeless victims of totalitarianism, worse trouble is ahead.