Evening star., 1943-11-22
The Uprooted Millions

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any family forcibly removed from its
home have been multiplied millions
of times over in Europe. Hitler and
his henchmen since 1889 have made
themselves the cruelest and most
drastic evicterS in modern history
and have thus created a problem
whose solution will probably require
months and even years of wise and
patient work in the afterwar period.
According to an official tabulation
made in London, the problem in
wolves perhaps as many as 30,000,000
human beings-Estonians, Latvians,
Lithuanians, Poles, CZechS, French
men, Belgians, and virtually every
other people on the continent. All
these millions have been dragged
away from the homes of their own
choice, the homes they built them
selves or had handed down to them
by their fathers, and they have been
scattered throughout Europe as if
they were cattle to be driven which,
ever way their self-appointed mas
ters have willed.
No fewer than 3,441, 500 French
men, for example, do not live now
where they lived before Hitler struck
at France. More than a million of
them still are prisoners in German
camps, several hundred thousand of
them have been drafted into the
Nazi labor corps, and 1,350,000 have
been shifted from their regular
dwelling places to other parts of
their own country. Poland has been
the greatest sufferer of all Out of a
total population of not quite 35 ,O00,-
600, over 100000 have been up
rooted, with almost 2,5OO,OO of these
shipped westward to the Reich, and
some 100000 eastward to Russia.
The mental and physical torment
involved in these forced migrations,
the individual personal effect on the
millions of men, women and children
driven against their will to far-off
alien places, can only be imagined.
There is no way an American can
measure it except by trying to pic
ture to himself how he would feel if
he and his family were subjected to
the same treatment, made all the
worse because in countless numbers
OF cases it has meant the separation
of wives from their husbands and
children from their parents. There
is a distinctly devilish implication in
it, for among other things, wholly
apart from the vast and incalculable
human suffering it has caused, it has
meant marked reduction in ma
tional birth rates and has thus
helped greatly in promoting the de-
liberate Nazi policy to leave Ger
many'S neighbors relatively much
weaker than Germany, no matter
who wins the war.
And over and above all this, this
scrambling-up of Europe's peoples
has enormously complicated the
problem of restoring order when the
shooting stops. For no true stability
can be achieved on the continent
until substantial numbers of these
uprooted millions are repatriated,
and the processes of repatriation-if
we are to judge from past expert
ence-are painful and slow. Fortu-
nately, the situation is already re-
ceiving the careful attention of
United Nations agencies, which is a
hopeful sign, because by thinking
about it now and by planning in ad-
vance to meet it, we may be able to
alleviate much of the evil it might
otherwise inf1ict not only upon the
unhappy individuals directly in
volved but upon the general struc-
ture of the next peace as we'll.