Letter from President Harry S. Truman to General Dwight D. Eisenhower with Attached Memorandum from Secretary of the Treasury Fred Vinson

127 from 126 Legal Case August 31, 1945 My dear General Eisenhower: I have received and considered the report of Mr. Earl G. Harrison, our representative on the Intergovern- x 106 montal Committee on Refugees, upon his mission to inquire into the condition and needs of displaced persons in x76-lo Germany who may bo stateless or non-ropatriable, particularly Jews. I am sending you a copy of that report. I have also had a long conference with him on the same subject matter. while Mr. Harrison makes due allowance for the fact that during the early days of liberation the huge task of mass repatriation required main attention, he reports con- ditions which now exist and which require prompt renedy. These conditions, I know, are not in conformity with policies promulgated by SHAEF, now Combined Displaced Persons Execu- tive. But they are what actually exists in the field. In other words, the policies are not being carried out by some of your subordinate officers. For example, military government officers have been authorized and even directed to requisition billeting facil- ities from the German population for the benefit of dis- placed persons. Yet, from this report, this has not been done on any wide scale. Apparently it is being taken for granted that all displaced persons, irrespective of their former persecution or the likelihood that their repatriation or resettlement will be delayed, must remain in camps - many of which are overcrowded and heavily guarded. Some of these camps are the very ones where these people were herded together, starved, tortured and made to witness the death of their fellow-inmates and friends and relatives. The announced policy has been to give such persons preference over the German civilian population in housing. But the practice seems to be quite another thing. We must intensify our efforts to get these people out of camps and into decent houses until they can be x63 repatriated or evacuated. These houses should be requisitioned from the German civilian population. That is one way to X 166 X 190-8