Unrra Director in Germany Bars Admission of More Private Relief Workers

Lieut.-General Frederick Morgan, chief of UNRRA operations in Germany, has ordered that no additional workers of voluntary relief agencies be permitted to enter Germany, it was learned here today.

This order places a heavy burden on the relief organizations just when they require additional personnel to help with the influx of thousands of refugees who are coming into Germany from Poland and other areas.

Morgan’s order, which he hopes to push through the Geneva convention of UNRRA, opening tomorrow, apparently runs counter to Director-General LaGuardia’s recent comment in which he expressed the fear that there would be no interim group to handle the DP problem during the period when UNRRA ends its operations at the end of this year and the new International Relief Organization begins to function.

In order for the new organization to deal adequately with the DP problem, it is generally believed that the aid of UNRRA and the expansion of the various voluntary relief agencies’ services would be required.

Some officials believe Morgan may have issued his order to keep the voluntary agencies here weak so that the United Nations would be compelled to continue UNRRA, at least during the interim period. It is generally believed here, however, that the Army will act as the interim group.

The need for relief workers will grow greater as more refugees from Poland enter Germany, according to a report to Gen. Joseph T. McNarney by Rabbi Philip S. Bernstein, advisor on Jewish affairs, released yesterday. The report was based on a week’s survey of Jewish conditions in Poland. Rabbi Bernstein estimated that 60,000 Jews would leave Poland during the next three months, with the number going as high as 100,000 by the end of the year.

Rabbi Bernstein, who visited the survivors of the Kielce pogrom, said they described with “objective horror the bestiality and brutality with which they and their dead comrades were attacked by men, women and children.” This pogrom, he added, has shaken whatever security may have remained among the Jews of Poland.

(One hundred and ten Jews still remaining in Kielce are settling their personal affairs or waiting to be called as witnesses in further government trials before leaving Kielce forever, the Joint Distribution Committee has been advised by its director in Poland, William Bein. Seventy-nine Jews have already left Kielce since the pogrom on July 4.

(Eleven of the survivors still in the city are wounded, two critically, and are under the care of physicians and special nurses provided by the J.D.C. Reports from Lodz, to which twenty-six Jews wounded in the outbreaks have been evacuated, indicate that three patients are still in danger. Eight Jews have been released from the hospital and the balance are on the way to recovery, but some will be hospitalized for months.)