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rI* THE SHEiOreAN PRESS, W.Aituf.y, M.reb'13, I M36. •Fugitive Janus PavelkaGreeted By Mrs. TropinBy WARD CANNEL Newspaper Enterprise Assn.NEW YORK (NEA) - Accord-ing to the dossier, the small, red-cheeked man blinking in the early morning sun was Janus Pavel1 sent my brother-in-law, who was J3, to hang around the airfield in our section of Bohemia to pose as being tremendously interested in flying.”If Mrs. Tropin has missed meet-to £ ^ ^ntat‘v* keen for good it^un. On the dayf ? ,e s,teps that she gave birth to her firsttSrH^82l5r??0,1: H“JchlW» she was scheduled to meet ?7?rL 11 ®f two planes. On the ride to the hos-ISLthJ “dTthe.out' PJtal, she briefed her husband onstretched hand of Ruth Tropin. what had to be done at the air-JSL T i °f the 800,000 field Whlle she wa* taken to thehmSS ^omt,Europeaf tyranny maternity ward, he went to greetthls.country under the refugees planes, official U.S. auspices since the v. „end of World War II, Mrs. Tropin Lv ,1 yV, I ^ tl the has been the lady with the lamp. fKd p.® 51 i3ir'It is a by-product of her job as X, f™*5 ad Iearning about New York officer in charge of the J?’Intergovernmental Committee for I Z f f°^ bT$rEuropean Migration that she can fh on_ a g and allextend a welcome in almost every i g.. T . pomg; having Wage spoken ,n this country LJ fte fieW ^t^p/ane™“Good day,” Pavelka said. “I ^ctaa}Iy» Mrs. Tropin’s work speak a little English. I was in T? be§ins at airfield. Muchjt t. . .. nr Hoi* fimn frtirnu tit^L 1..! RUTH TROPIN meets some of the 800,000the RAF for part of the war.” of ber 15,136 is take» with liaison1UU 1U1 fJCUL UL Uic Wfli - I t ---While the great crush of Euro- ^ among church and civic re-pean migration is over, and most fugee organizations, checking onf « t ... cnnncnrc Fnt- __of those leaving nowadays go either to Australia or Latin America, Mrs. Tropin still meets about 400 refugees here each month, people who still manage to escape the grinding cruelty of their homelands.”1 tried to get out of Czechoslovakia in 1948,” Pavelka said. “Eleven of us were going to commandeer a plane. But 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 Striping 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 International 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 3953 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 n New Jersey and very likely a shipload as well.“Nothing seemed to work,” Pav-ilka said. “It looked as though I *uid never get out. Then sudden-y, two years ago I hit on a plan.sponsors for migrants, conferring with UN. 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, started the engine and taxied down the runway, waving happily to 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, dis-illusionments like them on the fingers of 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, injur-ing the baby’s leg in doing so. Butit 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 t h r i 11 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 war. But I don’t think he would remember me. That was 20 years ago and he has probably been through a lot since then.”plead in prayer and closing remarks and prayer will be made by Mrs. Chester TenHaken.A trio comprised of the Mines. Donald Voesch, Carl TenDolle and Donald Rauwerdink will appear and a play, “A Husband’s Nightmare,” will be presented.Moles have been known to tunnel as much as 300 feet in onenight.Church WomenPlan Progra:GIBBSVJLLE — The annual spring banquet of the Bethany Circle will be held at 7 pm. Friday at the Gibbsvilie Reformed Church.Mrs. Wayne Brasser is the chairman in charge of the program and the Rev, Thurman Rynbrandt will act as songleader and toastmaster.Mrs. Melvin Wensink, vice president, will read the scripture and3 BIG•Industrial •Residential •CommercialWiring Of All Types POWER — LIGHT — CONTROLSACE ELECTRIC CO., Inc.JOE CONRAD, Prop.Electrical ContractinqON RED OWL SQUARE - N. 16th at Saematm Phones: Office GL 2-6425. Residence GL 7-7433Firestone nylFARM A COM MBl
Newspaper Details
Sheboygan Press
Sheboygan, Wisconsin, US
Wed, Mar 13, 1963
Page 25
Full Page
Clipped by
Yannah P.
USA 19 Nov 2022
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