UMass Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press

The Dispossessed
An Anatomy of Exile

Edited by Peter I. Rose
Foreword by Liv Ullmann

FOREWORD

This volume, aptly named "The Dispossessed," is about refugees and those who helped them during the turbulent twentieth century. Peter Rose and his colleagues, representing a number of academic disciplines, offer special insights into perhaps the most tragic and iconic figures of the period: the exiles, those torn from their homes because of their faith or their race or their politics or just because they were in the way of some dictator—a Stalin, a Mussolini, a Franco, a Hitler, a Mao, an Idi Amin, a Milosevic, a Duvalier, a Pinochet.

An era of inventiveness and creativity unmatched in human history, the twentieth century was also indelibly marred by wars, atrocities, gulags, and "ethnic cleansing," by the massacres of Armenians and Jews, Cambodians and Bosnians; by the transfer of populations, as between Greece and Turkey, India and Pakistan; by hundreds of thousands of refugees forced to escape from the Soviet Union and its satellites, from Nazi-dominated Europe, and, after World War II, from China and Hungary and Cuba and Chile and Haiti and South Africa and, more recently, from the various states of the former Yugoslavia. There were and continue to be conflicts in Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka, the Middle East, and many parts of Africa.

More often than not the victims of despots and demagogues, of the captains of political cadres and tribal chieftains, and of terrorists of various stripes were—and are—innocent civilians, men, women, and children. While some are fortunate enough to escape the wrath of their persecutors, finding safe havens across the border, only a relative few are able to get to a third country to start life over again. The vast majority of uprooted people are unable to escape. They, the internally displaced, are perhaps the most wretched sufferers of all.

In my experience seeing refugees at firsthand—and talking to hundreds of refugee workers (and to those who have studied both)—I have been struck not only by their often desperate situations but also by the critical roles played by those who are involved in providing relief to the dispossessed, those my friend Peter Rose has referred to as the "advocates," "caretakers," "gatekeepers," "guides," and "go-betweens," all key players in offering assistance.

Since I declare myself an advocate, it should not be surprising when I say that one of the most impressive things about the plan for this volume—and for the Smith College project, "The Anatomy of Exile," which was its incubator—was the emphasis placed on those special people who were engaged in the rescue and resettlement of refugees, especially in the dark days marked by the rise of fascism and Nazism. Not least among the groups cited is the International Rescue Committee, an organization that was created from the merging of two citizen groups, the International Relief Association, established in 1933 , and the Emergency Rescue Committee, founded in 1940 by a small group of concerned citizens, writers, publicists, and six university presidents, one of whom was Smith's William Allan Neilson.

That period is especially meaningful to me because my grandfather, Professor Halfdan Ullmann, was one who gave his life trying to save Jews in Norway—and died alongside those he had helped in the first concentration camp to be opened (and the last to be closed) in Germany: Dachau. But even this special connection has not made me, my former colleagues in UNICEF, or my present ones in the International Rescue Committee immune to the suffering of others. Indeed, reflections on my own loss, the courage of those closest to me, and the proactive men and women who work in the field or behind the scenes have only heightened my resolve to continue the campaign against bigotry and injustice and to do whatever can be done to aid the dispossessed. In my travels with UNICEF and the IRC to Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and various parts of Africa , I have seen the faces of those Peter Rose calls the "Madonnas of the Refugee Camps"; in my life in the arts, I have also been privileged to know and work with those he calls the "Maestros in Exile." Whether abjectly poor or illustrious, whether northern or southern, Western, Eastern, or Middle Eastern, they have in common a desperate need for someone to give voice to their plight. This book is a fine example of responding to that desire. It is also a tribute to those who aided the dispossessed in the years from 1900 to 2000.

Those mentored by them are continuing the good work. But they need help. My help. Your help, too.

LIV ULLMANN

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