Refugees on Their Way to Sweden

Last year, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, the late Dr. van Heuven Goedhart, made an appeal to European governments for the acceptance of refugee families with one or more members barred from normal emigration because of physical handicaps. Sweden answered by sending a selection mission to camps in Austria and in Trieste and 500 families were selected, most of whom had one or more members ill with tuberculosis or were too old to receive an overseas travel visa. The two criteria of the mission were security from a criminal record point of view and the possibility of one member of the family to earn the living of the whole group. This resettlement program has been so successful that a new mission is about to leave for camps in Australia, Italy and Greece to select a further 1,000 families.
Some of the refugees who went to Sweden are shown arriving by train in Copenhagen. Seen from left to right, at the two windows are: Vaclav and Frieda Suchanek; Anneliese and Stefan Sebler; Waltraud Werner, Katharina and Walter Harich. Held in the man's arms is Liane Stein.
[July, 1956]