REFUGEES AND OUR WAR EFFORT
SIR,—Outside refugee committees very few people are likely to know of the part played by refugees in our national war effort. Because, to
most of us, masses of statistics fail to give a clear picture, it is proposed to show what the friendly alien is doing by giving details of one small but quite typical area, a country town in the West Midlands with a peace- time population of just over to,000.
We began, before war was declared, to take responsibility for child refugees, and now, some four years later, most of our children are self- supporting. One girl was taken over by a famous orthopaedic hospital, and, as she showed great promise, was trained as a radiographer. She is now fully qualified and is doing invaluable work in a Midland hospital. A second girl, when she got to this country, was very shaken and for a long spell had to be most carefully managed. Slowly she got confidence, took a very good school certificate, qualified in our local technical school s a typist, and is now doing splendid work as typist to our Area Agri- cultural Committee. A third girl, of a different type, works in a bakery• here, while two strong lads are happily at work on farms, where they have settled down as part of the family.
Outside this "official" work for child refugees we have had to do with two Jewish refugee doctors, one a Czech, the other a German, one with qwte literally no funds and the other with pathetically little. In each case a job was found by the same orthopaedic hospital—what was prac- tically labouring work. Today, both these highly skilled men are resident physicians, one at a hospital in the North, another in the Midlands.
In addition to these cases where financial help has been given, there have been two families of Jews who managed to get away and be self-supporting. In each case the father of the family spent weeks of hell in one of Hitler's concentration camps before getting out of Germany. Both men are in the Pioneer Corps, quite happily and uncomplainingly doing heavy labouring jobs, though they are quite definitely intellectuals, one holding the doctor's degree of a famous German university. Their families, which live together, take a full share in the life of the place and are by now everywhere received with friendliness and understanding.
That is an unvarnished record of facts, and to those of us who have
seen the whole thing from inside two vastly important conclusions are obvious. This typical country town area is absolutely in sympathy with the work, the substantial sums of money needed having been raised with the greatest ease. There is no least doubt that it has lessened what little anti-Semitic feeling ever existed. Typical of the sympathy and interest of the ordinary business man is the fact that the local Rotary Club is a generous subscriber—and is always good for an extra bit of money when specially needed. The second comment is that our Jewish refugees have " fitted in" at least as well as the best of our evacuees1
E. MOORE DARLING.
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