Professor Paul Monroe and Dr. R. H. Reeder inspected the refugee camps used during the population exchange. They reported that of half a million refugees in Macedonia, the 112,000 at Salonika were undernourished and malaria-prone, living in crowded barracks and shacks. Their assessment set NER’s priorities for 1924.
Context
The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne mandated a compulsory exchange of populations that moved roughly 1.2 million Greeks into Greece. Near East Relief’s work shifted from wartime rescue to the long aftermath — feeding and sheltering the exchange’s widows and orphans in the refugee camps of Macedonia, Salonika, and Syria. These 1924 cables report those conditions and press the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial to fund the winter’s care.
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