REFLECTIONS ON ITALY
63
That particular morning I found my office crowded with several
families of White Russian refugees. They had escaped into Italy from
southern Germany, where they had been put to work in German fac–
tories, and they were now in state of panic fear that they would be
turned over to the Russian officials and sent back to Russia. This had
already happened, they said, against their will to one or two of the
people in the camp where they were held.
I tried to reassure them: they were letting their fear run away
with them, the NKVD couldn't operate to pick people out of camps run
by the Americans and British. There was nothing else I could do. These
people weren't my problem, another office had jurisdiction over them.
(Ah.
it's not so easy to be a small bureaucrat!)
Besides, I believed what I'd said: the Allies couldn't be allowing
such things.
That afternoon, however, happening to be in the Allied Commission
building, out of curiosity I went in to see the officers in charge of
Displaced Persons.
A big bouncy Briton, Colonel F., spoke to me with that casual and
easy Engiish politeness that has only to turn the merest shade or nuance
to become patronizing and insolent:
ccAs you probably well know) under the terms of the Yalta agree–
ment the Russian government is entitled to take back all Russians who
left Russia after 1927. They)re simply considered Russian prisoners of,
war."
No,
I
didn't know that, but did he know that the political purges
developed during the 30's, and the principle would seem to be exactly
equivalent to allowing Hitler, while he was still in power, to take back
political refugees who left Germany after '33?
Well, he didn't know whether there were any refugees in the camp
who had left during the '30's, but Major
S,
who was handling that
particular camp and was familiar with the situation, could probably
tell me.
The major turned out to be, as we say, a character. Hungry to put
his mouth to an ear, he spent half the time I was with
him
telling me
about his years and troubles in the service of the British Empire.
The information about the Yalta Agreement was repeated. Since
the directive from Yalta was clear-what's more definite than the number
1927?-no question about
it
had ever come up; it wasn't the business
of the AC to raise such questions. As for refugees after '27, or during
the '30's, he thought there were only "one or two" such.
Meanwhile he kept hopping up and down nervously to answer tele–
phones and buzzers. When he returned, the excitement seemed suddenly
to have left him relaxed and confiding:
"You don't have to tell me what those refugees are up against. I
