Looted Food Stores Gave Disease Long Start In War-Scarred Europe

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 57, 18 June 1948, Page 5

Looted Food Stores Gave Disease Long Start In War-Scarred Europe

In all the former occupied countries where the enemy looted the food stores and underfed the young, malnutrition and disease had a sixyear start before the end of the war. This was the children’s problem facing the Allies as their liberating armies went into Europe—a problem which they met with imagination, trained workers, and bodybuilding foods and medicines from welfare agencies and from UNRRA. To the occupied countries, UNRRA became a holy word and often meant the difference between life and death. It was never enough, but it did reach part of the children, and it did stave off epidemics. Now UNRRA is closed down; but the need is greater than ever. Perhaps the most crucial areas are Italy and those which were marked for death by the Nazis—Greece, Poland and Byelorussia. Most of 'their children can never remember what milk looks like. Hundreds of thousands are orphans who never had a chance. In Italy,, children are dying because they lack a few drops of cod liver oil, milk and a minimum of nourishing food. Thousands of babies live in old, battle-scarred barracks, easy prey for T. 8., rickets and scurvy. In Poland, nearly five million children, 200,000 of them orphans, lack every basic necessity of life. They live in many areas in dark, subterranean dwellings under the rubble of the cities, crucially dependent on outside help, their “potato fat” stomachs signifying the lack of milk, eggs, fresh fruit and bread.