Newspapers / The Pilot (Southern Pines, … / Sept. 12, 1952, edition 1 / Page 6
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Page Six Friday. September 12. 1952 The End of The DP Program • • • By Katharine Boyd Last week, the Displaced thought to give to these sons Commission came to an end. ® The war-time agency that han- look at the DP problem, last were the agencies who were di- dled the refugee problem lor this country turned over its books to the State Department for final liquidation. The news was carried by most papers on an inside page; the write-up was of less than column length. It was a sad indication, one might say, of the way this nation has looked upon the whole matter of these lost and forlorn, whose numbers run into the mil lions. The problem has been treated with negligence, not to say self ishness. In the midst of our great plenty we have had little time unfortunates. “Out of sight, out of mind” is a saying that applies to most of us, and, to most, the problemi of the refugees has been purely a matter of statistics published in the back pages of the paper. Ex cept for an occasional tirade by some senator condemning the ^um of money, small as it was, allotted to the Commission, or crying out against the entrance of “danger ous aliens” into the country, or the criticisms occasionally heard of some DP family who has not made good, we haven’t heard much about them. But to those of who may have had a direct us Ifalb'! Btke/i 9uoTherm..!k week’s story of the end of the DP Commission brought a real shock. I had such d first-hand look, both on the receiving end and on the problem at its source. I oiet a DP family that arrived by mis take in Southern Pines and spent a few hours with them, and, last summer when I was in Italy I spent a day at the big refugee camp at Bagnoli outside of Na ples. Both experiences wi^ll remain vividly before me, I 4hink, for both, in a certain way, illustrate the times in which we live and this country’s relation to them. Our DPs We have had several DPs and their families in our area and most of us have heard about them; some have had direct contact with them. The experience occur red to me the way things do some times occur to anyone mixed up with a newspaper: When people don’t know quite who to turn to here, they call The Pilot. So when the Welfare Department was noti- ifed that a DP family was about to arrive in Southern Pines, with no one to take care of them, they called me. It appeared that the oeople who had applied for the family had cancelled their appli cation several months before, on learning that the family could not arrive in time to help with the spring farming, but something had happened; the cancellation had not reached the right office So the family arrived. By luck I was at the station when they came. I found them already ensconsed in a taxi, just about to take 'off for the farm whose own had left for the rest of the delays would constantly occur. If one member of a family became ill or failed to pass a test, for in stance, the whole family had to wait. Many of the families had aged parents or grandparents with them, who frequently broke down in health or mentally, thus delay ing the^ departure of the whole family, as the rule was that fam- ilies must go together. The an guish adding to the crowded con dition of living, caused by such disappointments, was only equal- (Continued on Page 7) OPTIONAL THERMOSTAT for set-it and forget-it comfort! (with or without electricifv) DUAL CHAMBER BURNER gets more heat from every drop of oU! OPTIONAL AUTOMATIC Power-Air Blower turns itself on and off! PLUS MANY OTHER COMFORT-INSURING FEATURES Model 622 41,500 BTU Cluioie> |uw lUM BURNEY HARDWARE CO. Model 722 . 53,000 BTU ] Aberdeen. N. C. LOOK... MO HAMOSIf CUTS BY ITSElf-JWST STAKE OUTI ''' K' ^' summer. I got them out, looking utterly bewildered, and took them to my house. They were six: fath er, mother, two little girls and a little boy, all under six, and a tinv baby of a few months. Never had I seen people so exhausted and so woe-begone; never had I seen, children so thin, so white, so anxiou^-eyed. But, since then, since my visit to the camp in Italy, I have seen many such. The family was Polish, and spoke only Polish and German; I spoke neither, beyond saying: “good,” , and “thanks,” and “pretty” and “bread and milk.” But those words were just about what was needed. To make a long story short, the food I and the neighbors provided and the feel ing of affection and consideration that we all felt for them and thatv I am sure, the DPs must have understood, did the trick. Even tually we found someone who could speak German and could ex -^lain what had happened and, as thev had come over through the National Catholic Welfare Confer ence, the Sisters of St. Joseph’s took them out there and gave them the rest and food and care they needed. A home was found for them and, as far as I know, thev have gotten along pretty well. There is little doubt, how ever, that due to the poor ar rangements made fbr the recep tion of DPs in (this country, the period of adjustment, of what we really should call: rehabilitation, is very long and very hard. And that thought leads me into my experience in Italy, because h was there that I saw the back ground of the refugee problem and began to understand its sig nificance to our times, and, more directly, one of the big reasons why the adjustment of the DPs to their new lives and jobs was often slow‘and fraught with difficulties both for them and for their em ployers. Where They Came From The refugee camp at Bagnoli is, or was, last summer, the largest in Italy and one of the four or five ibig camps in Europe. It was situ ated on a hillside in the outskirts of Naples, housed in the buildings of what had been one of Musso lini’s Youth Camps. Great brownish concrete bar- rectly responsible for bringing the DPs to this country. It may be recalled that our DP program,] while headed by the government commission, was actually handled by a group ,of church and welfare organizations. Each had its office at Bagnoli: perhaps two or three small rooms, and a staff of seldom more than four or five workers. The inadequacy of the means of handling the problem was over whelmingly evident at Bagnoli but so was the earnestness and conscientious, desperately hard working energy of these workers, doing what they ' could with the small funds they had to work with; always haunted by their realization of how great was the need and how little they could do. Words could net possibly do just ice to the selfless devotion of the agency people. Those of us who sent food or clothes or money to Europe through our churches: Presbyte rian. Catholic, Jewish, Unitarian, Lutheran and so on, may feel com pletely .satisfied that what we sent was stretched as far is it could possibly go, and used wise ly and well. And I was impressed, too, with the friendliness and con fidence with which the agencies cooperated with one another. Bagnoli was what was called a “processing camp,” one of those depressing terms that are applied SO’ glibly to human beings these days. It meant, in this case, that Bagnoli was supposedly the last stage on the journey to a new life for the inhabitants. It had been planned that refugees would come to Bagnoli, only after they had passed most of the necessary qualifications for emigration. So it had been thought that the ave rage stay at Bagnoli would be s matter of weeks. That happy plan had lasted not much more than the few weeks envisaged. Because the International Refugee Organ, ization did not have funds to es- tabilsh an adequately staffed sys tem of screening, or of housing for the millions under their charge, refugees were moved on before they could be “processed,” in the preliminary stages; or, as happened in the Venezia Giulia region, near Trieste, epidemics be gan to break out, under the ter rible housing conditions that ex isted, and it was imperative that the people be moved out, any where, in any way. They were put wherever there was room. On the other end of things, the ’processing” began to jam from the start. The load on doctors, nurses and office workers at Bag noli was so great that the wheels turned more and more slowly, as more and more refugees poured into the camp. And heartbreaking USE LIGHTthat's right FUR BETTER SIGHT Good advice Reddy! . . . and with school days here again it’s doubly important to make sure that yOur youngster is provided with proper lighting for study. 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The Pilot (Southern Pines, N.C.)
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Sept. 12, 1952, edition 1
6
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