The Children

At the age of four, hollow-eyed little Pessel Fachler weighed only 27 pounds. Born in Siberia, to which her Polish parents had fled to escape the Nazis, Pessel had been harried across Europe with her mother and grandmothers, ended up at war's end in a Berlin refugee camp. Half-starved and bloated with edema, her puny body had withstood pneumonia, whooping cough, heart disease and tuberculosis.

U.N.'s International Children's Emergency Fund was doing what it could to help Pessel herself, but there were millions like her for whom it could do nothing. Broadcast through many of the world's radio stations, a recorded wail from little Pessel's scarred lungs was sounding last week, an anguished plea for help to these others.

The United Nations Appeal for Children, the worldwide campaign which Pessel's cry served to open, was conceived by Norway's tall, blue-eyed, idealistic U.N. Staffer Aake Ording, to fill a gap left by the world's governments. A year and a half ago, when UNRRA had closed down, member nations of the U.N. created I.C.E.F to carry on its work for children. U.N. experts figured that it would need at least $450 million to care for an estimated 20 million semi-starved and rachitic waifs for a year. The money finally assigned to I.C.E.F. amounted to only $39 million, scarcely enough to feed 4,000,000 children for six months, and with no provision whatever for medical needs.

In cooperation with over 20 member organizations of American Overseas Aid, Ording's United Nations Appeal has turned to the citizens of 45 nations for extra funds. Throughout the world the campaign would reach a climax on Feb. 29 with a leap year appeal for every citizen to give the extra day's earnings. The committee, whose International Advisory Board is headed by former OPAster Chester Bowles, hopes to gather $60 million in the U.S. alone. A third of this would go directly to I.C.E.F. The rest would be divided among the Overseas Aid group agencies, including Quakers, Catholic Welfare Conference, A.F.L. and C.I.O. foreign relief programs.

Back from a European tour last week, Bowles boosted the impartial character of the U.N. drive, poked at U.S. (and Soviet) aid programs as "political": "[Recipients] are bitter at having to swallow the hammer & sickle or the American eagle. . . ." It was a bumbling beginning, but the American people, whose tax dollars had provided billions of unconditional foreign aid, could be expected to chip in again.

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