Figure 1.-- This post-World War II scene in Italy show orphaned children being cared for in a facitity supported by a Swedish charity. The orphanage was located in Bovalino Mare in Calabria near the toe of the Italian boot. . .

We know most about refugees in Europe. We suspect that this may be because we are most familiar with European history. Whether Europe has more of a history of refugees at least until after World War II we are not sure. But we know more about them. The Germans as well as the Celts before them appear to have been driven west by war-like Steppe tribes. The Jews expelled by the Romans from Palestine were refugees settling mostly in the Roman Empire (1st century AD). Bzantines fleeing the Ottomans brought with them classical works and help park the Renaisance (14th century). The Jews and Muslims expelled by Spain and Portugal settled within the Ottoman Emppire, escpecially Morocco, loosely controlled by the Ottomans (1490s). The first great wave emigration in modern Europe occurred during the Religious wars (16th century). The French expelled the Hugnoughts. The Germans expelled the anabaptists. And the Pilgrims escaped from England and the grasp of the established church. The Scotts and Irish might be considered refugees from Britain. The Jews were driven by the Tsars from their empire, many seeking refuge in America. European emigrants to America were nostly economic refugees, but their were political refugees, especially after the 1848 reviolutions. The real refugee wave came in the 20th century with various groups fleeing genocide and totalurarian oppression. Some Russiana were able to flee the Soviet Union in the early years, but generally totalitarian powers created barriers to refugees, seeking to restrict details on their ipresive refimes from leaking out. Many Russians after the Bolshevik Revolution were unable to flee or Poles after the NAZIs and Soviets invaded and occupied their country. There were refugees as a result of World War II, but World War II created the greatest rfugee crisis in European history. In the Cold War there were only limited refugee crises. The first Cold war refugeecrisis was the Greek Civil War. Only when the Soviet Iron Curtin was pierced suvh s the Hungarian Rvolution did refugees appear. Another was West Brlin until the Berlin Wall webt up. After the Cold War a major efugee crisis occured in the former Yugoslavia, but was in effect a Cold War artifact. Europe experienced a major refugee crisis as a result crisis as a result of their failure to confront Islamic extremism and President Obama's ineffectul forign policy. Combined with the ongoing migration crisis fed by economis failure in the Middle East and Africa. It is causing a major crisis in the Europan Union beginning with the 2016 Brexit vote.

Created: 6:26 AM 1/7/2017
Last updated: 6:26 AM 1/7/2017