Western Inertia
Refugees in Europe, 1957-1958. Report of the Zellerbach Commission on the European Refugee Situation.
Published by the Commission. 164 pp. $3.50.
The materials in this document inspire, in the mind of this reviewer, dismal reflections about the general defensiveness and unimaginative inertia of the Western powers vis-à-vis Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe. The stance of our government in recent years has been entirely passive; it meekly awaits the successive blows the Soviets rain upon it and aspires to do no more than ward off disaster. It seems entirely unaware of the cracks in the Iron Curtain that might allow it actually to take the offensive. Otherwise, it would surely have exploited much more forcefully and positively the situation revealed by these documents.
The Zellerbach Commission, consisting of seven distinguished Americans, was created by the International Rescue Committee to survey the condition of European refugees in the hope that the results would draw the attention of the American people to a problem and an opportunity. The members of the Commission traveled through the main centers of refugee settlement in the fall of 1957 and composed their report in the spring of 1958. That report, although it comes to us in a poorly printed, paper-bound volume, is an expressive, even a dramatic, document. The central fact disclosed by it is that the refugee represents a permanent European problem, rather than the lingering by-product of the war that ended fourteen years ago. The Commission was not concerned with the refugees (displaced persons) who were uprooted before 1945, although some of these still have found no permanent home. Its concern was entirely with the refugees compelled to flee to the West since the peace, for a constant stream of fugitives passes into the lands that are still free, and in the spring of 1958 there were fully 160,000 refugees in camps in Western Europe.
Where do all these people come from? In the last year alone, fully 15,000 Yugoslavs escaped across the borders of that country. Other fugitives are in flight from Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and Russia itself. (I leave aside the 170,000 Hungarians who escaped from their country after the putting down of their revolution.) The number of refugees remains large despite the efforts to resettle them because they are constantly being added to. They are evidence of the continued discontent with their rulers of the people who live under Soviet rule.
Just as we missed the opportunity to make anything of the East German uprising or of the Hungarian revolution, so now we remain apathetic toward the problems of these victims of oppression. The refugees are greeted not as allies but as suspects. They are received and interned in concentration camps like that of Valka in Germany, of which the Report gives a graphic account—their first contact with the free world is within the all-too-familiar nightmare context of the concentration camp. It is small wonder that a few turn around and go back. Many more lose hope in the weary months of waiting for acceptance that follow. An opportunity is here tragically being wasted. Suppose the Yugoslav or Polish escapees who look expectantly out at us from the photographs of the Glasenbach and Valka camps were generously welcomed and provided with assistance and guidance to reestablish themselves under conditions that would quickly bring them the rewards of freedom. Could one doubt that the word of their good fortune would soon reach back to the dark world they left behind, bringing a ray of hope to those still there? Forces would be set in motion that would soon enough disquiet their masters.
But that is only a dream. We lack the imagination and the willingness to take the risks that might make it a reality.
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