Jews Fleeing Poland to Berlin Are Considered “illegal Immigrants” by Allied Authorities

The approximately 4,500 Jews fleeing from Poland who have reached Berlin in the past few months are still stranded in the American sector of the city, while the Kommandatura, composed of American, British, Russian and French military representatives, is engaged in “studying the problem” of what to do with them, it was revealed today by Ltd. Col. Harry S. Messec, executive officer of the Office of Military Government of the United States.

In a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency from his office in Berlin, over long distance telephone to Paris, Lt. Col. Messec disclosed that these Jews are not considered “displaced persons” but “illegal immigrants.” He emphasized that “the evacuation of these Jews from Berlin occupation sectors to places where they could be properly cared for in the four zones had not been halted for the very good reason that it had never begun.”

He explained that the Kommandatura made a distinction between persons displaced by war and those who had left their countries since the war ended. That distinction, he said, put the Jews who fled from anti-Semitic terror in Poland since V-E Day into the class of illegal immigrants not eligible for evacuation to a displaced persons camps in any of the occupied zones. These Jews, numbering almost 5,000, have been turned over to the Berlin Jewish Community, which has provided quarters for them.

GET NO ARMY ASSISTANCE; RECEIVE RATIONS FROM MUNICIPALITY

In the eyes of the occupation authorities, Lt. Col. Messec declared, they crossed the frontier without permission. They, therefore, get no army assistance of any kind. The mayor of Berlin provides food rations for them from the municipal stocks. At the same time, it is recognized that they cannot remain indefinitely in Berlin in care of the German municipal administration, and the Kommandatura is considering the question of where to send them.

(On Dec. 10, 1945, a State Department spokesman in Washington told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that while the Jewish refugees arriving from Poland are creating an additional burden for the U.S. occupying forces, and were therefore not being invited, the official policy is nevertheless to keep them once they have arrived, and not to return them against their will to the places from which they fled.)

Lt. Col. Messec was unable to state how far advanced the Kommandatura deliberations were. He said that evacuation of displaced persons is a continuing process quite apart from the problem of “illegal” immigrants. Groups of displaced persons leave Berlin every day, he pointed out, for camps in all four zones, and not to just the American and british zones.

The authorities governing the four sectors in Berlin, he added, are responsible for the evacuation of non-German nationals from their respective sectors to a camp in their occupation zone. However, he was not able to say how many Jews were involved in those daily evacuations, because figures are kept by nationality and not by religion. “There are virtually no Polish nationals left in the American sector in Berlin under the ‘displaced persons’ classification,” he stated, “but the 4,500 Jewish ‘illegal entrants’ are virtually all Polish nationals and are not eligible for evacuation to a displaced persons’ center for the reason outlined above,” he concluded.