Speech #870013860

Ninas English was good enough to qualify her for her regular class in the fall and her fathers lung showed sufficient improvement to allow that first visit home with the promise that the separation would soon be ended. This was June 29. an historic day on Mountain Avenue. At the immigration center in Austria. the boy had asked: "When we get to Canada. will we have to live in a camp?" "No." said the lady. "you will live in a house." There is a considerable gulf between Nina Naumov playing "Home on the Range." the only song she knows. to the Hungarian refugee orchestra in Marl playing the Beethoven Egmont Overture. but the two events are riveted together by the tragedies that produced their wanderings. So the Naumov family and the musicians from Budapest are home at last. But what of the millions of others? What of the 11.000 DPs still left in Austria and the 1.200 persons at that same camp our family left? They still wait. They wait in Greece where one out of eight can be called a refugee. They wait in Italysome 10.000mostly from the Communist countries to the north. They wait In Germany. where more than 30.000 refugees are still stateless. a third of them still in camps. There are also 300.000 Germansmostly from East Germany and the Baltic States in camps here. They wait in Tunisia and Morocco with more than 200.000 from Algeria. barely surviving in tents and mud huts against the bitter north African winters. They wait in northern India and Nepal where the daily stream of refugees from Communistruled Tibet have brought their total close to 40.000and in Calcutta. which is so swollen with the poverty stricken masses that an accurate count is impossible. estimates are from 800.000 to 3 million. In west Pakistan. 21 million are still rootless. They wait in South Korea where a million are still unsettled and in South Vietnam. where many thousands more must still be integrated. They wait in Hong Kong. the refugee capital of the world. where authorities admit they dont know how many refugees there are. They do know that the population. little more than a million and a half in 1948. is now over 3 million. They continue to pour into the tiny colony from Red China at the rate of 80.000 a year. and in the area of 12 square miles. tens of thousands try to exist in tin and jute and hemp huts. on roof tops and in back alleys. And they waitabout a million of them in the Middle East. If the refugees problem in Europe and Asia is one of humanity and common decency. the crisis in the Middle East is riddled with politics and is a common danger to every nation. It has been said for years. now. that the situation in the Middle East could trigger war and that is no overstatement. Immediately after a brief message from our sponsor. this report will continue from the Mandelbaum GateNo Mans LandJerusalem.