SPANISH REFUGEES
believe that many of your readers may be in- terested in helping some Forgotten Refugees, especially during World Refugee Year. They are the exiles from Franco's Spain, who have been living for the past twenty-one years in France. Some 500,000 of them crossed the border in 1939 at the end of the Spanish Civil War, 150,000 arc still living there and about 5,000 exist miserably and are dying for lack of food, warmth and human care.
I am among the sponsors of Spanish Refugee Aid (at 80 East 11 Street, New York 3) which was organised seven years ago to help these people and is the only agency in the United States or England devoted to filling their needs. Pablo Casals and General Lazaro Cardenas of Mexico are the Honorary Chairmen and other sponsors include James T. Farrell, Christopher Isherwood, Sir Herbert Read, Ramon Sender, Ignazio Silone, Norman Thomas and the late Albert Camus.
Our greatest concern is for the old people. One quarter of our cases are over the age of sixty, many have no family living in France who can help them and they 'survive' on tiny pensions of eighty francs a month (the minimum cost of living is 250 francs a month). For World Refugee Year we plan to open a Foyer Pablo Casals (in Montauban, France), a centre for these old people, where they can go to keep warm, talk, find entertainment and friends. Coffee, tea, cocoa and cakes will be served every day and seventy-five individuals will receive gift parcels of food each week to supplement their tiny incomes. Movies and entertainments will be planned each month and there will be a piano, phonograph and records, books and games available.
The cost of opening and running the centre for one year will be £900. Our first grant of £500 came from the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief in England and an additional $2,600 has been raised in the United States. We are now raising the rest and hope to be able to open the centre by October 1, 1960. Contributions for the Foyer should be sent to our representative in. France, Mine. Suzanne Chatelet, Spanish Refugee Aid, 64 Rue de Richelieu, Paris 2.—Yours faithfully,
SALVADOR DE MADARTAGA for Spanish Refugee Aid Reform Club, Pal! Mall, SW 1
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