The story of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) is the story of forty—eight nations, victorious in war, who banded together to win another victory in peace—it was with sentiments such as these that Muriel Knox Doherty set out to serve at Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp and then in Poland.
Australia was one of the forty-four countries which in November 1943 signed the initial agreement to form UNRRA, at a ceremony presided over by President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the White House in Washington. By 1946 there were forty-eight member governments and UNRRA had an international civil service of some 9000 persons recruited from these countries.
The agreement to establish UNRRA ‘…was not a spontaneous or hastily improvised document, belonging to any one nation. It began when the first home was destroyed, when the first people came under enemy occupation, when the first indication of human need became evident; it grew out of many minds seeking ways to relieve suffering…to aid in the eventual recovery of a war-torn world.’1
All recruits to UNRRA were highly specialised in areas such as supply, transport, health, welfare, industry, agriculture or administrative support for the extensive social welfare programs designed to assist people and countries devastated by war. Miss Doherty’s work at Bergen-Belsen was just one of UNRRA’s projects to provide health care and assistance to displaced persons and refugees, but it is interesting to note that more than half of the UNRRA personnel were recruited to deal with displaced persons in Germany and Austria.
The original UNRRA agreement stipulated a number of conditions, one of which was that the organisation could not work in any area where the military were operating, without military consent. This explains, in part, many of the administrative difficulties so graphically described by Miss Doherty.
The responsibilities of the Military and UNRAA teams at Belsen, as described in an internal memorandum dated 13 November 1945, were as follows:
UNRRA Responsibilities
A. Command and control of internal teams, including voluntary society teams.
B. Internal administration of assembly centres.
C. Medical, Nursing, Public Health, Dispensary (M.I. Rooms) Hospital aspects, Rehabilitation, Social Welfare, Immunisation.
D. Amenities, including Welfare, Recreation, Education.
Military Responsibilities
A. Overall control, without prejudice to UNRRA responsibilities above.
B. Maintenance of law, order and security in conjunction with Assembly centre direction.
C. Food, fuel, clothing, accommodation (housing and stores), bedding supplies, medical supplies.
D. Until UNRRA’s substitute supply of transport, POL, maintenance of vehicles.
E. Supplementary amenity supplies from German sources. The Army will supply suitable office accommodation for the work of UNRRA, and will provide the necessary payment for DPs who are employed. If UNRRA considers that its supply of materials from the Army is inadequate for the maintenance of an efficient service, it can withdraw from its obligations by giving one month’s notice. The Army can withdraw from the agreement if the C. in C. is of the opinion that UNRRA is not carrying out its responsibilities in such a way as to cover him for overall responsibility of DP operations. One month’s notice of termination of the Agreement will be given.2
By 1946 there were 1 675 000 displaced persons who could not, or did not wish to, be repatriated to their countries of origin. They were considered to be refugees, for whom new homes had to be found. UNRRA was disbanded in December 1946 but its work with displaced persons was continued by such organisations as the International Refugee Organisation, World Health Organization, and the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund. By early 1952 some one million displaced people had been resettled and a further 73 000 had been successfully repatriated.
Funding for the work of UNRRA was provided by member governments ‘whose countries had not been occupied by the enemy’. They contributed roughly one per cent of their national incomes for the year ending 30 June 1943, but the majority of the funding came from the United States of America, the United Kingdom, the British Commonwealth of Nations and the Latin American Republics. Invaded countries that would need relief, such as Russia and China were not assigned quotas.
The work of the UNRRA volunteers is not well documented, which makes Miss Doherty’s story an even more important contribution to our knowledge of the events which occurred during and after World War II.
Judith Cornell
Sydney, 1999
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1 UN Information Organisation (1944) Helping People to Help Themselves: The Story of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, United Nations, London. p. 3.
2 Doherty Collection, Yad Vashem Archives, Jerusalem, Israel, 0-70/36, volume 4, p. 578.