The Daily Alaska Empire

18-YEAR-OLD REFUGEE HERE

"My thoughts are still with the thousands in the refugee camps in Europe who have no homes, no relatives, and no future," said Heine Wilde, 18-year-old refugee from Bergen-Belsen, Germany, who has arrived here to live with his uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Gudman Jensen.

"The problem of the refugee must be understood and solved if we are to have world peace. Sweden has set the example for helping thousands of homeless refugees, but they can not handle any more. It is now up to the big nations to do something."

After the occupation by the Germans of Prague, Czechoslovakia, young Wilde was deported to a concentration camp in Germany where he remained until the liberation by the English. Many of the people in the camp were stricken with typhus and were sent to a Swedish hospital maintained by the Red Cross in Lubec. From there approximately 1,000 internees went to Sweden.

The Swedish government was very kind to us. We had the best doctors, and the best of care. While in Sweden many of the internees died. Thirty to forty per cent of the people there have tuberculosis."

It was in Sweden that he first learned that his mother and father were alive. His mother, who was in a concentration camp in Theresienstadt is now working for the government in a Russian-occupied sector of Germany.

When asked how he liked Alaska, Wilde smiled gratefully. "I like it very much—it reminds me a little of Sweden."

Wilde, who was born in Prague, speaks Czech, Russian, Swedish, and English. He expressed the hope that he will be able to attend an American university soon.