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A—The Lima News Sat., Feb. 16, 1963Mrs. Tropin And The Fugitive PavelkaNEW YORK — (NEA) — According to the tlusier, the Small, red-cheeked man blinking in the early morning sun was Janus Pa-velka (Czech, truck driver, age 39, married, two children). Tentatively he began to descend the steps from the giant transport plane toward the snowy U.S. soil of Idlewild Airport and the outstretched hand of Ruth Tropin.For almost all of the 800,000 refugees from European tyranny brought into this country under official U.S. auspices since the end of World War II, Mrs. Tropin has been the lady with the lamp. It is a by-product of her job as New York officer in charge of the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration that she can extend a welcome in almost every language spoken in this country today.“Good day,’* Pavelka said. “I speak a little English. I was in die RAF for part of the war.”While the great -crush of European migration is over and most of those leaving nowadays go either to Australia or Latin★ ★ ★★ ★ ★rAmerica, Mrs. Tropin still meets about 400 refugees here each month, people who still manage to escape the grinding cruelty of their homelands.'T tried to get out of Czechoslovakia in 1938,” Pavelka said. “Eleven of us were going to commandeer a plane. B u t somebody told. I was sentenced to work in the uranium mines for five years.”Until the war broke out in 1941, Mrs. Tropin was working with the Emergency Rescue Committee. When it could no longer operate, she went to work in the War Shipping Administration, And as soon as peace was proclaimed, she signed on with the U.N. Relief and Rehabilitation Agency, and on its dissolution with the Internationa! Refugee Organization. In 1948 she was sent to New York to greet the first ship of refugees, the General Black.“I don’t know how I survived work in those mines,” Pavelka said. “But in 1953 I was released and began again to plot an escape.”Ten years ago, when ICEM took the place of IRO, Mrs. Tropin was at work in New York greeting and processing refugees. On moderately busy days, she had five plane arrivals in New York, another five in New Jersey and very lilely a shipload as well.Ruth Tropin Welcomes Refugees‘Nothing seemed to work,” Pavelka said. “It looked as .though I could never get out. Then suddenly, two years ago I hit on a plan. 1 sent my brother-in-law, who was 13, tohang around the airfield in cur section of Bohemia to pose as being tremendously interestedin flying/’If Mrs. Tropin has missed meeting a few of the refugees, it has been for good reason. On the day that she gave birth to her first child, she was scheduled to meet two planes. On the ride to the hospital, she briefed her husband on what had to be done at the airfield. While she was taken to the maternity ward, he went to greet the refugee planes.“Actually,” Pavelka said, “the boy was getting to know the airfield guards and learning about what their routines were. Then, last autumn, we got our break. There was to be a big fair and all the guards were going, leaving only the local police to watch over the-field and the planes,”Actually, Mrs Tropin’s work only begins a* the airfield. Much of her time is taken with liaison work among church and civic refugee organizations checking on sponsors for migrants, conferring with U.N refugee officials, and making sure that the refugees themselves move easily to their new homes. It is not unusual for Mrs. Tropin to be awakened at 3 a.m by the police who have found an ICEM refugee lost and unable to remember the name of his hotel or sponsoring agency.“As soon as the guards were gone,” Pavelka said, “I took my wife, two children and brother-in -law to the airfield and put them in a single-engine, two - seat plane, startedthe engine and taxied down the runway, waving happily fa the police who had no idea of what was going on.”In the course of the years, Mrs. Tropin says, a few refugees have turned out to be trouble-makers. But she can count, she says, disillusionment like them on the fingers on one hand. The hundreds with whom she corresponds are without exception wonderful people.“I had not counted on cloudy weather,” Pavelka said. “But It was not mine to choose the day. I was forced to crash -land, injuring the baby's leg in doing so. But it did not matter. We were in Austria and safe.”Why has Mrs Tropin stayed so long with a job forgotten by the rest of the world? In part, obviously, because of the thrill in greeting people with an eagerness and enthusiasm for the U.S. In part, too, because of the renewing wonder of helping people discover they are free. But also in large part because Mrs. Tropin was herself orphaned at the age of four.“It is a wonderful thing to be here,” Pavelka said, “after having tried to come for so long.“No, I do not have any friends or relatives here, except for Mrs. Tropin. I once knew an American sergeant from Chicago during the wr. But I don’t think he would remember me. That was 20 years ago and he has probably been through a lot since then.
Newspaper Details
The Lima News
Lima, Ohio, US
Sat, Feb 16, 1963
Page 18
Full Page
Clipped by
Yannah P.
USA 19 Nov 2022
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