Plight of 1,100 Refugees on Spanish Freighter Described by JTA Correspondent

Conditions existing aboard the Spanish freighter Navemar, now lying in Lisbon harbor under a blazing sun with a human cargo of 1,100 refugees are so horrible as to almost unbelievable. Your correspondent spent the day aboard the ship with the staffs of the Joint Distribution Committee, and the HIAS-ICA Enigration Association who were laboring all day long preparing papers for 250 of the refugees whose United States visas expired while waiting in Spain for a month until the Navemar was ready to leave.

Special orders have been issued by the State Department instructing consulates to renew expired visas. The visa section of the American consulate in Lisbon started examining cases on Monday, and expects to complete the work on Friday. Portuguese police are cooperating by permitting refugees without visas to land to visit the consulate.

Half of the men, woman and children who have not been on the Navemer since Thursday when it left Sevile on the first stage of this nightmarish journey are bound for New York while the others are on route to Cuba.

When the ship arrived here on Friday it was without sufficient water for drinking, washing or toilet facilities. There was also a great scarcity of food. The operators of the ship in addition to not providing an adequate supply of food and water also apparently neglected to provide a sufficient crew to keep the vessal clean. As a result a passenger committee took up a collection to hire the sailors to do the work in their spare time.

Passengers even had to queue up for a half hour before obtaining any brackish drinking water, or buy bottled water at the ship’s bar at speculator’s prices. Improvised kitchens proved completely unable to provide meals for 1,100 people since the kitchen was originally designed to feed only the crew. The crew dining room although enlarged still scats only 250 people at one time, necessitating each meal being eaten in three shifts with several hundred obliged to line up at the galley to receive their food and then sat it standing on deck or seated on their unventilated bunks. A crew of five were assigned to feed the 1,100 people, but since that was obviously inadequate twenty of the younger passengers volunteered to aid.

There being little deck space on the freighter and no public rooms the majority of the passengers must remain below most of the time. The dormitories in which they spend most of the twenty-four hours each day must be seen to be believed. There are two huge dormitories in the hold composed of row upon row of double-tired bunks. Since the hold was designed for dead freight there are no portholes and absolutely no ventilation except that provided by the deck hatch which is kept open when the weather permits.

This correspondent sew hollow-eyed broken men and women and listless, feverish children lying in stifling heat. Some are unable even to rise for meals. Their bunks are provided with one shoddy blanket and straw-filled sacks as mattresses. The luckiest family on board is the one that appropriated a lifeboat and improvised a roof from the ours and a couple of blankets. Some of the women unable to stand the combination of heat and the surroundings became hysterical. The can unperturbed passenger on board is a three-months old infant who remained peacefully sleeping in his bassinet.

And those are the conditions under which 1,100 people, 400 of whom are men and women over 60 and more than 60 of whom are children, will spend the next twenty days. Although the passengers on board the Mavener have paid luxury fares this is certainly no luxury cruise.