10 February 2014
Trent A-19, 5pm
Alongside innumerable other war atrocities, the Second World War witnessed the largest number of refugees in the history. Out of many millions, almost 30 thousand Yugoslav, mostly Croatian, refugees fled to the Middle East where they joined by other Greek, Polish, Albanian and Jewish refugees. In the beginning a British organization MERRA (Middle East Relief and Refugee Administration) assumed responsibility for all these refugees, then in April of 1944 its staff and responsibilities were incorporated into a newly formed UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration). Yugoslav refugees were placed into three refugee camps in Egypt, the largest being El Shatt in Sinai Peninsula. The second camp was Khatatba on the brink of the Nile delta close to the road linking Cairo to Alexandria, which was in operation for a period of 4 months. Upon its closure a third camp, Tolumbat, was opened in the vicinity of Alexandria. With the support of the camp allied administration, the refugees were given vast internal autonomy headed by the Central Refugee Committee. The relations between this internal and allied external authority were extremely good, disregarding the initial differences deriving mostly from ideological points of view. While post-war historiography may point out the discord between them, the latest research concludes that these differences were far smaller than previously perceived.
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