UNRRA and UNRWA

The Europe of 1945 was in ruins. It might be a trivial statement but that was a bitter truth for those who lived in Europe at the time. 

In Eastern Europe and Germany devastation was most significant. In Poland on average 30% buildings were destroyed with major cities destroyed sometimes between 80-90% (Warsaw, Gdańsk - German Danzig,  Wrocław - German Breslau). Even worse if possible was destruction in Western Soviet Union - today's Ukraine, White Russia and occupied Baltic States. Germany was no different with Berlin, Dresden, Lipzig, Hamburg virtually non-existent. One could not even say where the streets were before the war.

Still, also London was hurt, so were cities of France, Netherlands, Belgium.

Infrastructure was just as devastated as the buildings with railway, water system, wast management hardly present if at all.

Famine reduced Dutch in 1945 to eating tulip bulbs. In Germany a kilogram of sugar was worth golden necklace or a fur coat. Fields were full of mines, Dutch dams destroyed allowing salt, sea water into the fields lying below sea level (it will take next 40 years to fully regain them).

Many countries lost significant percent of their citizens, up to 20-30%. European Jewry was reduced by 90% due to genocide and even up to today, 80 years later, there are less Jews worldwide than in 1939 due to Shoah.

Women were seen as a kind of loot or embodiment of nations. Rapes were predominant and very brutal, especially in Eastern Europe under Soviet occupation. In some places hardly a girl or a woman was not raped, usually multiple times (East Prussia, Hungary, German cities).

Survivors were trying to return home, usually on foot, defending themselves, starving.

As Keith Lowe writes in his brilliant Savage Continent: "Imagine a world without institutions. No governments. No school or universities. No access to any information. No banks. Money no longer has any worth. There are no shops, because no one has anything to sell. Law and order are virtually non-existent because there is no police force and no judiciary. Men with weapons roam the streets taking what they want. Women of all classes and ages prostitute themselves for food and protection."

Something needed to be done. Into this wasteland came UNRRA -  United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. UNRRA was created in November of 1943 from the USA's initiative in anticipation of need to help struggling peoples and nations of Europe and Asia after the war. The primary benefactors were: the USA and Great Britain; the primary recipients were Poland and China, but for a long time many European countries relied on UNRRA's help. UNRRA provided food, clothes, medicines, cod-liver-oil etc. Few songs were referring to UNRRA's help. In 1945 UNRRA was included in United Nations structure becoming later UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees). The crucial time when much of devastated Europe depended on UNRRA was between 1945 and 1947. In 1947 UNRRA almost or totally (depending on the country) finished its activities in Europe.

In 1947, a day after the UN resolution dividing the remaining (after diminishing by 80% in 1921 to create Transjordan) British mandate in Palestine, a civil war between Jews and Arabs started. It transformed into an international war in May 1948 when, a day after it was created, the new State of Israel was attacked by 6 Arab armies. The ceasefire came in early 1949. This war, however bloody (Israel lost approximately 1% of its Jewish population) was not as devastating as II World War for Eastern Europe (and Europe and Asia in general). Nevertheless it created crisis among both Jews and Arabs and produced - as I have written before - some 750,000 Arab refugees and some 900,000 Jewish refugees. The first group became known some 20 years later as Palestinians, whereas the other were Mizrahi Jews from Arab countries removed from their home countries.

Having a valid experience from Europe United Nations in 1949 created UNRWA (United Nations  Relief and Works Agency). Initially UNRWA was helping both refugees' populations. In 1952 Israel diminished and subsequently resigned from the help by UNRWA. The worst was over (though still there ware food rations and terrible lack of housing). Palestinian population was dispersed in Egypt (kept in Gaza without possibility of resettling to other parts of Egypt or way to citizenship), Lebanon (refugee camps, no legal right to work in many professions, no possibilities to study, no way to citizenship), Syria (same as Lebanon) and Jordan (the only country that tried to help Arab refugees but finally had to remove them after Arafat's PLO tried to assassinate the king and take power in Jordan forcefully). We are talking about time before Six Days War when neither Gaza nor the West Bank were under Israeli administration, but respectively under the Egyptian, Lebanese, Syrian and Jordanian ones.

UNRRA was operational for 5 years (most actively 3 postwar ones). Later the nations of devastated Europe (including those under harsh, Stalinist occupation) started coping on their own. 

The international help for Pakistani or Indian refugees after the division of the former Raj was virtually non-existent. 

Japan, with its main cities of Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki destroyed to the ground used American assistance to start  Japanese economical miracle.

Jewish refugees in Israel, many of whom were former prisoners of concentration camps or escapees from pogroms in Iran, Iraq, Libya and so on were busily building their dream-country. Their reliance on international help of UNRWA finished in 1952.

In 1950-ies Germany was recreated and started building its economy (today 3rd or 4th in the world), European Communities were created, London wounds healed. Europe started helping others. 

Fast forward 80 years: of the nations relying on international help in sustaining elementary needs as an effect of wars in 1940-ies there is but one: Palestinians. They receive the highest international help per capita, UNRWA is dedicated to their needs exclusively, their educational system, health system, social system are funded by other countries (including Israel they ceaselessly try to destroy). Palestinian authorities have created tunnel network more vast than London's tube. They are experts in money laundering, drug trafficking, weaponry creation, terrorism development and few other branches of activities. However they never even tried to create sustainable state institutions. And countries that used to - in similar time period - rely on UNRRA's help see nothing wrong with eternal refugees (some with French, British, American, Dutch etc. passports).