The relocation of displaced persons, especially children, after World War II, was a major issue. Tara Zahra said, “Children were at the symbolic heart of efforts to reconstruct Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War” (p. 332). With so many dead there was a need for many countries to repopulate. By some countries, children were considered the ideal candidates.
The French believed they had a right to displaced children. They claimed there were many French children born to German mothers due to the war. The French would take children from their mothers because “they depicted German mothers as immoral or negligent” (p. 339). The French believed children would assimilate into society better than adult DP’s. The French believed that the Nazi regime had stolen children through starvation, bombing, deportations, etc. and considered half French children retribution from the Germans. Making these children French citizens combatted German overpopulation which the French believed was a direct threat to French sovereignty (Zahra p. 336).
Many other countries believed the Nazis had stolen their children from them. There was a huge push to return lost children, such as the children of Lidice, who were “kidnapped” by the Nazis. While some were forcibly taken there were many Eastern Europeans who applied for German citizenship and others who abandoned their children, which did not support the narrative of the time.
Adult DP’s were not considered as valuable since they had a lower chance of assimilation. There also was great fear that DP’s would bring fascist values into their new countries, which would lead to another world war. There were great debates on where these DP’s belonged especially between the Soviet Union and the United States. These differences of opinion would lead to the outbreak of the Cold War, and eventually end it as well.
Bibliography:
file:///Users/ellenalles/Downloads/T%20Zahra,%20’A%20Human%20Treasure’%20-%20Europe’s%20Displaced%20Children%20Between%20Nationalism%20and%20Internationalism,%20Past%20and%20Present%20210,%20supp.%206,%20(2011)%20(2).pdf
file:///Users/ellenalles/Downloads/In%20Wars%20Wake%20Into%20+%20Ch1%20(1).pdf
https://www.destinationaustralia.gov.au/stories/motivations/refugees-displaced-world-war-ii
I really enjoyed this post about the perspective of the DPs who were children and as we discovered, the most widely affected. You mention the French and their beliefs that they could displace groups of people as a form of nationalism as described by Cohen and Zahra, do you believe that there is any correlation between the French doing this to the efforts raised by the U.S. and the Soviet Union as a fight for power/ control?
It is an ugly image that children were stolen from their mothers, but the French were certainly owed retribution of some kind for how Germany treated them during the war. It goes to show that the postwar era was not the end of the tragedy of WWII– it was not a swift and steady march upward back to the pinnacle of what society could be.
The French struggle for displaced persons was fascinating to research, especially how they were trying to aim for younger DPs in order to assimilate and rebuild French nationalism. What intrigued me was how the French searched for DPs with certain skills and trades, just to temporarily replace their overall loss of labor-power. It definitely makes one think about how people are viewed by their governments.