1,158 Went Back

Along the frontiers of Europe a word heard ever more loudly is "redefection"--meaning the return of a refugee to his home in the Communist empire. Last week an Emergency Commission of the International Rescue Committee, having completed a two-month study in Western Europe, reported that 1,158 refugees went back to their Red homelands in the 13 months ending Jan. 31, 1956. During the same period about 6,000 non-German Europeans fled Communism by slipping through the Iron Curtain to the West. Among the reasons for redefection, according to IRC: Communist propaganda appeals and threats of reprisal against the refugees' families; the refugees' own nostalgia for their homelands, and failure to make a living in the West. Concluded General William Donovan, wartime chief of the Office of Strategic Service and head of the Emergency Commission: "Each return is not only of propaganda value to the Communists, but also has an unsettling effect among the refugees . . . The poor living conditions of refugees help these Communist efforts . . . The total problem includes disillusion, despair and failure of human courage."

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