their lodgings. Soon, a local officialtold them that it might be better if theyleft the country altogether. After all, hesaid, they were Germans , not Aus-trians. Why didn't they go home?

Herr Koeppler had a relative in Ger­ many , too a prosperous grandunclein Stuttgart . So, the two families againpicked up their few belongings, andtrudged over the hills into Upper Ba­ varia , dodging the border police be-cause, like most of the refugees, theyhad no entry permits.

When they finally arrived in Stutt­ gart , another blow fell. The grand-uncle and his house had both vanishedduring the war. The Abusches andKoepplers had no choice but to reportto the local refugee authorities. Theywere sent to the camp at Ludwigsburg ,after hearing a violent tirade abouttheir illegal entry into the country.There were nearly three- quarters of amillion refugees in Württemberg- Ba­ den already, an official told them. Howdid these migratory idiots think thecitizens of Germany could continue tosupport this never- ending influx?These Flüchtlinge were not real Ger­ mans ; they were just troublemakers .Why didn't they go somewhere else?

The Koepplers and Abusches tookthe abuse, and they took the single.room in a stone barracks which wasmade available to them. There theyhave been ever since.

Uprooted, penniless, almost hopeless,these eleven people now have twodriving compulsions: to find, oncemore, enough to eat and a place inwhich they may have some privacy;and to get revenge on the Yugoslavsand all the others who deprived their

lives of stability, aim, and security.

In fairness to the state governmentsin the western zones, it must be re-ported that most have made genuineefforts to do something about the prob-lem of the Flüchtlinge . Although manyrefugee officials, in the tradition ofGerman bureaucracy, have been moreconcerned with their dignity than theirresponsibilities, government policy hasbeen to do everything possible to proc-ess and rehabilitate the expellees.

Practically every state has either aMinistry or a State Secretariat for Ref-ugees. In some cases, the administra-tion has been entrusted to men who arethemselves expellees. Their principaltask, after the initial processing, hasbeen to settle the new arrivals wherethey will cause the least social and eco-nomic dislocation, and where there is

most room.

This has been enormously difficult.Even in Bavaria , the richest state inwestern Germany , two persons are as-signed to every habitable room. Theresimply is not enough space to absorbthe expellees.

The refugee offices try to place ex-pellees on an equal footing with therest of the population in allocation ofhousing space, but they rarely succeed.In the spring of 1949, there were esti-mated to be nearly four refugees to aroom in western Germany - and thatdid not include those in the camps,where the figures were far higher.

The second major task of the refugeeadministrations has been to find workfor the new arrivals. Again, the theoryhas been that job allocation would bemade equally and without discrimina-tion against the expellees. Again, inpractice, that has failed.

Local hostility has made the work ofrefugee officials enormously difficultfrom the beginning. However Hitler regarded the Volksdeutsche- the racialGermans whom he once ordered tostand by the Fatherland- most of theGerman people regarded them afterthe war as squatters, aliens, and asno responsibility of theirs in any case.

On the heels of the economic boombrought about by ECA aid and currencyreform, western Germany has recentlybeen cursed with its largest- scale un-employment since the war. The totalof jobless at the end of the summer of1949 was nearly a million and a half.An estimated one- third of the unem-ployed were refugees. Hundreds ofthousands of others found only casualor part- time labor, and had to be par-tially supported by the German state

governments.

Even among those lucky enough tohave found jobs, the wage standardsare much lower than among the localpopulation. At the end of 1948, thirty-seven per cent of the refugees quizzedin a military government survey re-ported incomes ranging downwardfrom a hundred Deutsche Mark month-ly a wage barely adequate to keepbody and soul together. Only aboutnineteen per cent, or about half thismany, of the indigenous Germans re-ported a wage as low.

Furthermore, millions of refugees arestill separated from their families.Many more are too old or too sick everto be rehabilitated.

A recent survey showed that, whilenearly three quarters of the marriedGerman population had finally beenreunited with their families, only slight-ly over half of the married Flüchtlinge were together with their husbands,wives, or children. Homes for the agedand sick are already jammed as a resultof wartime dislocations.

The politicians of western Germany are struggling to relieve the situation,and not only out of civic and humani-tarian motives. They realize just howpotent a political force is this bloc ofnine million persons- more than a fifththe total population of the Bonn Re-public. Men like Eugen Gerstenmaier ,the shrewd, tough head of the Evan-gelical Relief Organization for Ger­ many , who has virtually made a careerof caring for the refugees, are knownto believe that he who can swing theexpellee vote can rule west Germany .

18