International Refugee Organization Press Release No. 209

United States Office INTERNATIONAL REFUGEE ORGANIZATION Room 819 - 1346 Connecticut Avenue Washington, D.C. TRUMAN MIchigan 8000 MARRY NATIONAL LIBRARY Ruth Safran, Ext. 7, 17 IRO PRESS RELEASE No. 209 U.S. FOR RELEASE A.M. PAPERS TUESDAY, AUGUST 29, 1950 Washington, D. C., August 29 A cousin of the former Queen of Italy and an ex-Minister of Public Affairs in Latvia were among the 1296 Displaced Persons who arrived today in Boston aboard an International Refugee Or- ganization-chartered ship. Nadja Rheinwein, 24-year old Jugoslavian DP, first saw her mother's cousin, Queen Helen, when the family found their way to Italy after the liberation. Nadja, her parents and her brother had spent the war years in- terned in a Nazi concentration camp in Germany. As relatives of the Queen, they were then accommodated in an outbuilding of Villa Savoia in Rome until 1946 when the Queen had to leave Italy with her husband. The family later applied to IRO for status as "out-of- camp" refugees and assistance in emigration. Meanwhile, Nadja and her brother kept studying--Voislaw, at the University of Rome where he obtained his medical degree two years ago, and Nadja, at the musical academy of Santa Cecilia, where she obtained a degree as a concert pianist. Nadja's brother, Voislaw, left for the United States last May and is now attached to the Edgewater Hospital in Chicago. The girl's parents were also scheduled for departure to the United States when her mother became ill. Her father, Prof. Michael Rheinwein, stayed behind with his wife. The girl was sponsored for immigration by Church World Service. Alfreds Berzins, journalist and former Minister of Public A ffairs in Latvia, is en route to Newark, New Jersey where work has been found for him in a factory. Berzins had studied journalism in his native Latvia, then was elected to Parliament in 1930 as a representative of the Farmer Union party. From 1934 to 1940 he served as Minister of Public Affairs. When the Russians occupied Latvia in 1940, Berzins fled to Finland and subsequently to Sweden. Later in the year, he attended an Interna- tional Labor conference in Geneva, but was seized by the Gestapo while returning to Scandinavia through Germany. He was imprisoned in Schsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin for 33 months. Since 1945, Berzins has lived in IRO-administered camps in Germany, working on Latvian-language newspapers and writing pamphlets. His wife and two children were taken to Siberia in 1941, he said, and he has had no word from them since that time. The Latvian refugee was sponsored by the National Catholic Welfare Conference, one of the voluntary agencies working with the IRO on the re- settlement of DPs.