During World War Two, people were moved en mass between national borders, creating tens of thousands of people with unspecific homes. Many of these people were children, who could not remember from where they came. This may have raised issues of citizenship, their proper home, and loyalties.
As countries wanted to expand their demographics and increase their populations, whether or not the person or child had a right to live where they were taken was called into question, as evidenced by the story of Lidice’s taken children, in Zahra’s article, “A Human Treasure’: Europe’s Displaced Children Between Nationalism and Internationalism”. Did countries care about the legalese of retaking or keeping displaced persons and children? Did international agreements such as returning citizens exist at the time?
I found your graphic to be very interesting and a great visualization of where some of the displaced persons went during the war.
I would like to say that as a visual learner and numbers person this map and graph shows a lot more than many words can explain. I also like how you ended your post with a questions which get us to think so I will just post what I think is the response I gathered from the reading. 1) I think yes, Poland and Czech went very far to regain their children to the point of steeling their children back during the middle of the night according to Zahra. 2) I believe there was to an extent, there were organizations set up to return children to their homes; however I think a lot of it was between nations, for example Germany tired to filibuster the Poles and Czechs from getting their children back in order to maintain their population and hope by dragging the process out they would keep the children, hence why the Poles started steeling children back. America and Germany thought it was best for emotional and stability reasons for the children to stay where they were, so in essence I don’t think the agreements put forth by the nations were accepted and as we learned it became more of a free for all.
I like the image you have included with your post. Even though it seems to just depict the movement of displaced persons from Germany, it is a good representation of the routes millions took to avoid the fighting. I do think that one of the few demographics these new international organizations were concerned about were the children. As Zahra explained, women and children were the heart of sovereignty of a nation, so I feel as though a lot of countries, mainly Eastern European, would want them back.