Eggs for D.P.s

A polyglot mass of Russians, Frenchmen, Poles, Belgians, Netherlander, Italians, Serbs, Bulgars, Greeks threatened to clog and millstone the victors in broken Germany (see FOREIGN NEWS). They were going home or escaping war or just falling in with the vague, aimless movement of the mass.

The Allied armies called them "displaced persons" or D.P.s, tried only to get them out of the way. A few officers hurriedly detailed, a few doctors and nurses scrounged supply and transport for them as best they could. Nobody had been prepared for this handicap of unexpectedly rapid conquest. In the emergency the army built compounds or used former German camps to house the hordes. One UNRRA team was on the scene, a few more were expected--but the teams had neither food nor transport.

For most of this mass of humanity there would be long, cheerless months, even years ahead before they could "open the rusted doors with the rusted keys." The physical task of moving the 15,500,000 foreign civilians and war prisoners out of Germany would have to await peace and some kind of order. In Sweden, Switzerland and elsewhere, thousands of earlier refugees awaited repatriation. But sooner or later they would get back; sooner or later political Europe would feel their impact.

Now they were mostly preoccupied with the delights and hazards of freedom. Several hundred Russian, Polish and Czech farm laborers shut Count & Countess Wolff von Metternich in their Westphalian castle, organized an impromptu commune. Said one of the Russians: "For five years we watched them eat eggs. Now we eat eggs."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.