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They were Prepared 10
GERMANY
IT'S beginning to be daylight, but the scene is grim and ruinous..... Europe
must Ik fed, must be clothed, must be put together again. The world, which is now one indivisible whole of suffering and despair or hope and human triumph, must be nursed into some feeling of security and growing sanity". Those were words used by J. B. Priestley in a broadcast talk in May, 1945. A month later relief workers, among them G.I.S. teams, moved into the British zone of Germany.
It was a country ol chaos. Its population consisted of an army of occupation in the first stages of organisation; a German nation dazed by defeat; agglomerations of DPs, emerging from a life of degradation and fear; the rehabilitation corps of UNRRA; and relief workers attached to various voluntary societies 1 under the direction of the British Red Cross Commission).
The G.I.S. Kitchen and Canteen units were given the non-medical supervision of four hospitals with German staff and Russian and DP patients—a situation in which great tact and firmness were required. They were then posted to a village near Hanover where they were divided into three sections. One section went to Norlh-West Germany and dealt with " Operation Stork " (the evacuation of Berlin children into the country and the reception of German refugees). The second section served hot meals daily to foresters and workers in a large Polish DP camp near Hanover (a Guider from Kenya was in this team). The third section spent a few weeks near the Russian border feeding refugees coming into the British zone.
The General Relief team which had been working in Rotterdam moved on to Belscn. By the time they arrived the " horror camp " had been burned down and the still-living inmates had been moved to a barracks a mile and a half away from the place of infamy. There were about 15,000 inhabitants of twenty-two nationalities in various stages of recovery, already organised into a community. Members of the team were fitted into the organisation in the capacities for which they were best suited— transport, children's hospital, general welfare, clothes-distribution, registration. One member (with a Bachelor of Economics degree) was asked to explore the question of payment for DP labour. She produced a scheme; the first pay-day arrived, and the stream of 1,350 employees came to receive what for many of them were the first wages they had had for years.
On the re-organisation of Bclsen in September, 1945, this team was transferred to Fallingbostel —an enormous barracks, not at all a friendly background for the 25,000 homeless DP men, women and children assembled there. The team set up a health centre and a canteen for 750 children, before they were moved on to Gcbhardshagcn, near Brunswick, to take charge of eleven camps and a children's home.
The Hospital team, having finished its work in Holland, had moved into Germany and set up a small general hospital which drew its patients from the surrounding DP camps. Besides general medical work, it had a much appreciated maternity ward. It also cared for a number of tubercular patients whose grave condition was the result of the hardships they had suffered as forced labourers.
Meanwhile, two more G.I.S. general relief teams had been sent out. The members of one of them slept the first night on drying racks in a cigarette factory in Vlotho, before being posted to Walbrol; the other team were sent to a " permanent " camp housing 900 Yugoslavs. Both teams immediately found plenty of work to do.
UNRRA had already started on its work of rehabilitation, planned for a limited period, during which time it was hoped that all danger of starvation and of epidemics would be averted, displaced persons would be returned to their homelands, ex-prisoners of war repatriated, and German social services re-established. To these ends L'NRRA supplies were poured into the country, while Military Government took over all more or less suitable buildings and posted relief workers to transform them into transit camps.
The teams' headquarters were at central points (when possible) to serve a widely scattered group of camps, for the number of relief workers relative to that of DPs was extremely low. Each member oi the team, alter a long drive (of perhaps up to fifty miles) to reach the camp in her charge, set about a systematic survey of the individual needs of the men, women and children in it.
The general pattern of relief was the same in its broad outlines, but the nature of the work varied from area to area, and from month to month, as the European chaos was gradually sorted out, and as political moves in other countries caused fresh influxes of uprooted people and fresh problems to arise. Displaced Persons were predominantly Polish, Baltic and Yugoslav, with an admixture of many other nationalities. Ill-housed, ill-clothed, underfed and infested, relieved from forced labour and having no alternative employment, released from concentration camps and often having no remaining family, they offered a wide scope for service.
Bodily needs came first—food enough to carry on from day to day; clothing, and especially shoes to protect bare and travel-worn feet; cleansing, for practically all were louse- ridden; transport for the next stage of the journey in the early days of hopeful movement, or maybe transport to the nearest hospital, if man, woman or child was not in a fit state to travel further. Where a national group was divided into political factions, as were the Yugoslavs, there was need for constant vigil- ance to prevent small quarrels growing to dangerous proportions.
Some of the people hoped for, and others feared, repatriation. The former were des- patched as soon as pos- sible to their home- lands; an outlet for the latter was sought in emigration, for which plans started to be made.
" Home " : a Displaced Persons' camp, typical of many in its haphazard dreariness
Eastward Bound: Polish Displaced Persons setting out from a camp in Germany on their homeward journey in 1947
" Westward Ho !99: Displaced Persons leaving Poppen- hagen on their way to work in England in 1947
Such schemes were slow in coming to fruition, however, and camps became more or less static. It was realised that relief work would have to be prolonged. Now to the bodily needs were added others equally important. It was imperative that people with receding hope, herded together in close proximity, should have some form of employment for minds and bodies. The teams set about organising cobblers' workshops, tailoring and sewing rooms, training centres, English classes, discussion groups, sport for the youths, playrooms for small children—but always they worked with and through commit- tees elected from the DPs themselves.
There was plenty of talent among the people, and the team-members spared no effort to get materials and tools so that the talent could be turned to practical account. Often the materials were pitiably inadequate: the debris from wrecked planes that became the shining dome of a Polish church; the piece of washed butter- muslin which, when painstakingly embroidered in traditional design, became the altar-cloth in a Lithu- anian church ; the bits of old felt that were turned into comfort- able shoes for children; the black-out material that was made into suits and dresses for boys and girls . . . . Supply has never caught up on demand: clothing and materials for handcrafts are still (in 1950) needed.
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