Swanstrom, Edward Ernest 1903-1985 creator Spellman, Francis 1889-1967 text utu 2026 monographic en 1 online resource : multiple file formats "Pilgrims of the night" by Edward Ernest Swanstrom is a humanitarian study written in the mid-20th century. Drawing on first-hand travels and Catholic relief work after World War II, it examines the plight of Europe’s expelled and displaced—especially the millions of German expellees—through moral argument, social analysis, and vivid case studies. The focus is on how men, women, children, clergy, and whole communities struggle to survive, keep faith, and rebuild dignity amid ruins and mass migration. The opening of the book frames the postwar crisis through a foreword invoking the Holy Year and a drive through bomb-shattered Cologne, leading to Cardinal Frings’s plea for the largely overlooked “Expellees.” Swanstrom distinguishes them from Displaced Persons, outlines the Allied-engineered mass transfers that pushed nearly 12 million into a wrecked Germany, and cites Catholic and Protestant protests against the doctrine of mass guilt. He then reports from Salzgitter’s former slave-labor barracks—now crammed with uprooted families—where men fear joblessness as dismantling proceeds, and from the Uelzen transit camp, where new fugitives from the Soviet zone are screened, many turned back, and a few help-seeking vignettes reveal raw desperation. He visits Camp Friedland to show the Red Cross search for families as POWs trickle home, recounting a transport’s wrenching scenes and the uncertainty over countless prisoners. Further chapters spotlight women’s resilience in turning barracks into makeshift homes, personal losses (dead or vanished relatives, husbands in forced labor), and the aged left to wait out their days; children missing by the tens of thousands, orphan tales, youth idleness and its dangers, and modest rescues through church-run homes and summer placements; and priests—thousands expelled—ministering in diaspora, including a harrowing Siberian-labor testimony and new parish life in Protestant regions with ecumenical help. The section concludes as an expelled priest’s Sunday rounds in Schleswig-Holstein begin to illustrate this strenuous, improvised pastoral care. (This is an automatically generated summary.) Release date is 2026-04-20 Bob Taylor, Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.) Originally published: New York: Sheed and Ward, 1950 Political refugees D731 New York: Sheed and Ward, 1950 50009380 https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uiug.30112056405639 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78506 https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uiug.30112056405639 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78506 UtSlPG 260607 20260610134824.0 78506