Alien Migrants Fugitive From Europe

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 31, 6 February 1937, Page 5

Alien Migrants Fugitive From Europe

PERSECUTION AND WAR FEARS. Fugitives from troubled days in Europe, many foreign immigrants land at Wellington from almost every overseas passenger ship that calls. The Maunganui, which arrived at Wellington on Wednesday from Sydney, carried as her quota four German Jews escaping from the persecution of the Nazi regime and a large party of Dalmatians driven from their own country by economic unrest and dread of war. The German migrants would say nothing of the conditions which had forced them to abandon the land of their birth. “They are afraid for their friends, relatives and for themselves if ever they should want to go back there,” explained a prominent member of tho Wellington Jewish community who met tho strangers at the wharf. Apparently' even into peaceful New Zealand extended the long arm * t the Nazi intelligence service. “If it wore thought that they had said auything against Herr Hitler their families, and they themselves, if ever they fell into Nazi hands, would bo taken to concentration camps and tortured,” he said. “Even we of their own race cannot get any specific information from them.”

Tho Dalmatians, however, were more than willing to say why they had come away from home. "It is much better in New Zealand,” said one. “I was out here five or six years ago, so I know that here you can live. It is not so in Dalmatia. There the wages of workers have fallen by half and you can buy practically nothing for the money. Food is very dear. It costs a lot to live, and now everywhere everyone is saying there will be war.

"When our friends here in New Zealand wrote us letters saying thero was a Labour Governmeut hero which was making it a good place for working people, wo decided to come.”

This man mentioned that there was already in New Zealand a Dalmatian population of about 3000. They did not restrict themselves to restaurant keeping, as did the Greeks, or to fishing, as did the Italians, but were willing to try their hand at anything. It was difficult for them to take up farming ou to embark on any largescale enterprise on arrival, because their Government restricted the export of capital; indeed, one man had found such obstacles to his migration that he had been obliged to come away without bringing his wife or family, who, however, he hoped would be able to join him in the not-too-distant future.