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Record Nr.

UNISA996248339903316

Autore

Zahra Tara

Titolo

The lost children : reconstructing Europe's families after World War II / / Tara Zahra

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge, Mass., : Harvard University Press, 2011

ISBN

0-674-06137-3

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (320 p.)

Disciplina

362.87083/094

Soggetti

Refugee children - Europe - History

War victims - Europe - History

Families - Europe - History

World War, 1939-1945 - Social aspects

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

The quintessential victims of war -- Saving the children -- A "psychological Marshall Plan" -- Renationalizing displaced children -- Children as spoils of war in France -- Ethnic cleansing and the family in Czechoslovakia -- Repatriation and the Cold War -- From divided families to a divided Europe.

Sommario/riassunto

During the Second World War, an unprecedented number of families were torn apart. As the Nazi empire crumbled, millions roamed the continent in search of their loved ones. The Lost Children tells the story of these families, and of the struggle to determine their fate. We see how the reconstruction of families quickly became synonymous with the survival of European civilization itself. Even as Allied officials and humanitarian organizations proclaimed a new era of individualist and internationalist values, Tara Zahra demonstrates that they defined the "best interests" of children in nationalist terms. Sovereign nations and families were seen as the key to the psychological rehabilitation of traumatized individuals and the peace and stability of Europe.Based on original research in German, French, Czech, Polish, and American archives, The Lost Children is a heartbreaking and mesmerizing story. It brings together the histories of eastern and western Europe, and traces the efforts of everyone-from Jewish Holocaust survivors to



German refugees, from Communist officials to American social workers-to rebuild the lives of displaced children. It reveals that many seemingly timeless ideals of the family were actually conceived in the concentration camps, orphanages, and refugee camps of the Second World War, and shows how the process of reconstruction shaped Cold War ideologies and ideas about childhood and national identity. This riveting tale of families destroyed by war reverberates in the lost children of today's wars and in the compelling issues of international adoption, human rights and humanitarianism, and refugee policies.