Month: September 2016

  http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa25807 Reisele Kirkel was only two months old when Germany invaded Lithuania. Her mother and siblings died in concentration camps, but she survived due to her mother’s efforts to hide her. In this photograph, she posed with her doll… Continue Reading →

“They Called Me Leni,” a book about a kidnapped Czech girl, sent to be raised in Germany.

Leni Freiwald is a fictional character from Czech writer Zdenka Bezdekova’s book entitled, “They Called me Leni.” She was born in Czechoslovakia in 1946 and named Alena Sykorova. Kidnapped from her home in Czech, she was taken […]

Following the conclusion of World War II, the individual statuses of European states were called into question. Almost immediately, sovereignty became a primary concern on all fronts, fostering reconstructive and innovative thinking with one common goal in mind: present and future national security. To achieve such a sought after political condition, all eyes turned to […]

Following the Second World War, Europe was in shambles. Major cities were destroyed, economies were degraded, and millions of people were either dead or displaced. Ironically, however, the German population had actually grown by the time the war was over … Continue reading →

    During and after World War 2, millions of Europeans were pushed from their homes and countries for a vast array of reasons. Some simply wanted to avoid the fighting, ethnic Germans in Eastern Europe were fleeing the advancing … Continue reading →

World War II left Europe in shambles physically and biologically.  While whole towns and cities were physically destroyed so were families, children were the largest group displaced or without homes due to the death of their parents.  Eugene Kilischner estimated that “more than thirty million of the inhabitants of the continent of Europe have been transplanted … Continue reading “Populationism and The Value of Displaced or Orphaned Children”

Following the  mass destruction and loss of life caused by the Second World War Europe was faced again with another problem,the displacement of millions of Jews, Ukrainians, Yugoslavs,Poles, Czechoslovakians and other groups of European citizens. The reasons behind these citizens displacements were various. Some of the major reasons people fled their homelands were because of  religious, ethnic, … Continue reading “Dealing with Displacment”

Depicted as happy settlers, DPs were subject to relocation at the hands of the Allied powers

With millions of displaced persons aimlessly being relocated, ignored, or treated as test subjects, the question of nationalism’s importance post WWII was as important as ever. Jewish Holocaust survivors, children products of Germanization, and emigrants searching for a home free

Hello everyone! My name is Kendall Romaine and I am a junior at Virginia Tech studying History. I am from North Carolina and love all things about America, especially the history aspect.