It was late in the summer of 1944. my companion was Gilbert Simond. the International Red Cross representative in Turkey and we were on our way to the tiny island of Biuyacada to see Msgr. Angelo Roncalli. the Apostolic Delegate of the Vatican in the Middle East. At that time I was serving as a special envoy for the War Refugee Board. which had been established by President Roosevelt with the express purpose of saving lives wherever and whenever possible. My personal mission was to extricate refugees from the Balkans. In the months that I had been in Turkey. we had been able to force the closing of the concentration camp at Transnstria in Rumania. Ships of all sizes and descriptions were leaving the Black Sea port of Costanza. loaded with people fleeing to escape the fate suffered by so many others--being driven. in turn. into ghettos. concentration camps. and finally the extermination centers. Andthe flow of these refugees across Turkey and Syria to safety in Palestine had grown to sizable proportions. But all of us concerned with saving the remnants of European Jewry were horrified A2714 and frustrated by the news that was leaking out of Hungary. The reports that came to us from underground sources would have been unbelievable if we had not by that time learned at first hand of the actual existence of the gas chambers. the crematoria and the other implements of Hitlers savage and unrelenting war against the Jews.
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Refugee refugees