CHRISTIAN ACTIVITY

Chronicle (Levin), 14 March 1946, Page 4

CHRISTIAN ACTIVITY

EUROPE IN WAR YEARS MANY DIFFICULTIES FACED Some of the lesser known aetivities of Christians in Europe during the war years were referred to hy Mrs. Margaret Patrick, M.A., in an informal address on Tuesday evening to St. Andrew's Presbyterian senior young women's Bible Class. Mrs. Patrick has lived in Geneva for the past eight years. . When the lights were.going out in country after country, the speaker said, and a spiritual blackout had fallen on Europe, Switzerland, faced with the difificult task of sustaining her own population of 4,500,000, had given refuge to over 60,000 refugees, and had put into active operation a scheme for receiving children from ravaged countries and giving them three to six months of comparatively normal life in Swiss homes.

In France the Cimade, an organisation of young French protestant ihurchmen, had done courageous work for their fellow Frenchmen, who fled before the invading Germans to southern and western France, and for deported people who were later placed in camps like those at Gource, where thousands starved. The establishment of foyers where some fain't feeling of home could be felt in contrasc tcthe cruelty of the barrack conuioiona vvAti one oi tne achievements of the Cimade. Since V.E.Day Cimade had formed teams composed of a minister, a nurse, a doctor and sbme skilled tradesmen, and they were proving to be spearheads of reconstruction of devasoacea vinages. A team would work until reconstruction of a village was under way, and would then move to anothef village. Long portable wooden buildings,, which served as church, meeting hall, school, dispensary and maternity clinic, were oeing used. Switzerland was making and giving such-buildings.

In Germany through the worst times of persecution and anti-Semi-tism, Mrs. Patrick continued, there were some who risked their lives and the lives of their families by leaving parcels of food at the doors of Jewish friends and acquaintances. When the Allies began total bombing there were 40 German ministers who declared openly that it was God's judgment on their nation. They were promptly gaoled, but their actions represented the spirit of Christians caught up in an | appalling situation. j Collections were being made in the Swiss churches of everything from nails and pots to garden seeds and clothing. Young people of the church sorted tnings out and 'sent them off to specific devastated villages as a gift from the Swiss ; Church. ; Mrs. Patrick gave many instances > of cases known personally to her of families without a country. For j instance, of Polish families who had jlong resided in Belgium, but who had no rights of citizenship there.