HUNGER OVER EUROPE
Clair, Louis
Hunger Over Europe By LOUIS CLAIR THIS month, while we celebrate the holidays in America, tens of thousands of people will die in Europe of starvation and disease. This month our children gather...
...I do not want to disturb your joy, I do not want to intrude on your happiness—but I want you to think about the 800,000 Poles living in dugouts, in holes...
...Not until the third generation is it expected that our people will regain normal size and ability...
...Tuberculosis has increased "terribly...
...It is easy to be moved by the misery of our near neighbors, but the plight of millions becomes an abstraction—just another statistical fact...
...It is hard to keep these things in mind...
...But at least we can send food and clothing to the rest of Europe...
...Write to: International Solidarity Committee, 303 Fourth Ave., New York City, or Politics, 45 Astor Place, New York City...
...This month our children gather around the Christmas table—but it is expected that all children under one year will die in Berlin before the end of the Winter...
...workers need higher calorie intake...
...Healthy, happy, and strong people do not exist in Vienna," reports an American Red Cross worker, "nobody seems to have interest in anything but food and more food...
...Medical supplies are scarce in Western Europe, and nil in Eastern Europe and Germany...
...When the first snow storm swept over Berlin last month, patients stood in line to be admitted at the overcrowded hospitals...
...One million five hundred thousand children entirely without milk, fat, or sugar in parts of Bosnia and Sonth Croatia...
...These extra rations are wholly unjustifiable, as famine and epidemics threaten to engulf large populations...
...American food experts state that supplies available for consumption by the city population in the American zone of Germany will not exceed 800 to 1000 calories per person during 1945-1946...
...of the 120,000 people now living around Gospitch, about 100.000 can be fed until January on the most rigidly minimum standards by food provided from the harvest, but after January local resources will suffice to keep alive no more than 40,000 people...
...NOT only the physical but also the psychological ravages of hunger are perturbing...
...Yes, we could have prevented this tragedy, but haven't done so...
...It is as yet not possible to send anything to Germany -—the country where the need this Winter will be more urgent than anywhere else...
...AN UNRRA mission cabled from Belgrade in July: "Half population, approximately seven million, in deficiency regions desperately short of food...
...Forty-pound packages will be sold at $10 each...
...They will reproduce fewer than the normal number of children and these likewise will be below average size...
...According to Bishop Dibelius of Berlin, before the Winter is over five times as many Germans will have died as died during the war...
...And yet, are we not all neighbors?— "the German child with his hunger-bloated belly and these French children from Marseilles of whom a just completed medical report says: "The 13-year old children of Marseilles are 3Vs inches shorter and 13 Va pounds lighter than were children of the same group five years ago...
...But how can these be found among people who have become apathetic and completely listless after a prolonged period of hunger, worn out and rendered indifferent to such an extent that they might easily follow any demagogue that promises them an end to their misery...
...Clothing for distribution in Europe can be sent to the International Rescue and Relief Committee, 130 Orchard Street, New York City...
...The first condition for the building of any kind of democracy is self-reliant citizens...
...The margin of 292 calories, when multiplied by a population of 138 million, gives a total of 40,296 million calories per day—enough, at the Military Government level of 2,000 per head, to keep 20,148,000 persons from starvation...
...Until now these and similar efforts have been in vain...
...A second report states: "In the Lika area of Western Croatia the people are partly subsisting on grass...
...IFELT ashamed when I recently read in a British paper—and not a radical paper by- any means: "For Christmas fare, Britain is promised an extra pound of sugar, 4 ounces of sweets, 6 ounces of butter or margarine and 10 pence worth of meat per person...
...I want you to know that today, while you bathe in the sun of a newly found victory, it is midnight in Europe...
...The 22 participating agencies represent all faiths, as well as the CIO and AFL...
...Donald M. Nelson, formerly head of the War Production Board, will be the executive director of the new organization which is called Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe (CARE...
...One of Britain's leading economists, Sir Arthur Salter, recently stated in the House of Commons: "If mil-, lions during this Winter freeze and starve, this will not have been the inevitable consequence of material destruction ; no such world shortage exists as to have made that world tragedy inevitable...
...It recently ran large ads in a number of papers, headed: "If thine enemy hunger, feed him," and urgently requested that Germany and Austria be included in American relief efforts this Winter...
...Typhoid fever reigns in many European countries, and its incidence in Germany in September already was 30 times the normal rate...
...Twenty-two American Relief Agencies have recently banded together to set up a gigantic food package cooperative to rush food stuffs from individuals and organizations in America to individuals and organizations in Europe on a non-profit basis...
...If men are concerned only with stealing a few potatoes in the field during the night so that their families may survive the next day, they will no longer care about any political issue...
...all mail and postal service to Germany remains closed...
...The Administration has found ever new pretexts to refuse permission for the sending of food parcels...
...starvation conditions reported—UNRRA observer...
...In other words, there is no excuse that "we couldn't have averted it...
...I want you to remember the 24,000,-000 city dwellers of Italy, living on half the calories needed for minimum health, 400,000 of them lacking shelter of any kind...
...British rations are much higher than almost anywhere on the European continent and yet, "according to the Combined Food Boards' figures, civilian consumption in 1944 amounted to 3,215 calories per day per head in the United States and 2,923 in the United Kingdom...
...Not only will millions of weakened bodies offer no resistance to the germs of disease, but it hardly will be possible to even care for the sick...
...Though we may read about them in the newspapers, we are somehow not touched by these tragedies...
...In Poland, for example, 70 per cent of all hospitals have been destroyed and there are less than 6,000 doctors left, i.e...
...The American Friends Service Committee (Quakers) again is in the forefront of the fight to save the starving of Germany...
...The general death rate which is around 11 per thousand in the United States and around 25 in India, stands at 60 in Berlin today and is expected to rise to about 200 per 1000 during the Winter...
...It will take some time however, until the new organization will be able to operate, * * * THERE are a number of private organizations that will ship parcels if you send them money, or that will send you the address of a European whom you can adopt and care for yourself...
...Hospitals have been destroyed and nurses and doctors are not available...
...The London Economist recently published a very instructive comparison between the British and American rations...
...In addition to direct starvation, sickness and epidemics will claim a horrible toll...
...in this way, large-scale purchasing and n*a-profit organizations will get the maximum possible food" to Europe in the shortest possible time...
...This month, while you celebrate the happy reunion with your beloved ones, many millions of homeless, of displaced persons—the outcasts—will wearily trek along the roads of the old continent...
...of the 10,000 Poles dying monthly of tuberculosis caused by starvation diets...
...These organizations specialize in assisting those who more than any deserve to be helped: the European anti-fascist fighters from many lands, German refugees in France, Spanish Republicans, French Resistance men, Poles, Italians, Belgians...
...These children will grow to maturity but they will be subnormal in size, weight and energy...
...one to 3,500 persons, compared with one to 700 in the United States...
...this is between one-third and one-half of what is needed to keep an adult, who does not work, moderately healthy...
...Other experts have corroborated this statement...
Vol. 9 • December 1945 • No. 51
