The forgotten generation

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The forgotten generation - The war children break their silence is a book by Sabine Bode from 2004. On the basis of conversations it describes the memories and experiences of the generation of war and refugee children at the end of the Second World War . The author sums up that there is a discrepancy between public and private memory, which has shaped Federal Republican reality.

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War children

Sabine Bode is primarily concerned with the children who grew up immediately during the war, whether they were shaped by bomb attacks or by the impressions of a seemingly eternal displacement and flight . In doing so, she touches on some of the problems which, in her opinion, have led to the fact that the now old war children would suddenly be confronted as pensioners with their traumatic events, which are not only due to a poor health situation, but also to depression , memory loss or other post-traumatic stress disorders made a voice heard. One of the problems with the mainly psychiatrists of the postwar period were confronted by their patients, have been that the treatment of German war victims to the victims of Nazism had receded into the background. As a result, those affected often carried their trauma with them for years until it unexpectedly reappeared - sometimes after 40 to 50 years.

Silence and discipline

According to the author, other experiences of the children of war helped them to name the “silent generation”, which did not complain about their fate, but on the contrary, tacitly rebuilt Germany with learned discipline and out of the need for secure living conditions. The children who have been displaced and refugees stand out in particular; if they survived displacement and flight together with their families, they were encouraged to adapt and perform. You should avoid mistakes at all costs and meet expectations so as not to endanger the family's honor , sometimes the only thing left; also for reasons of constant fear of being driven out again. Often “sunshine” developed, children who could not help their parents other than to make life easier for them with their own good mood. These children were then often the joy of their parents. But internally they too had to digest the horrors of the war. When these children then suffered from psychological pressure, parents and relatives often only commented: "But you used to be so happy ...".

Educational method

Another wrong attitude, as Sabine Bode describes it, is the assumption that children who were much too small at the time to notice anything of their surroundings and the events around them could not suffer any damage from that time. The fact is, however, that even small children can unconsciously be conveyed to fear or insecurity through their parents. Many children were raised by their parents to obey the Nazi ideology . There was an educational guide for this, The German Mother and Her First Child by Johanna Haarer , to which Sabine Bode devotes a separate chapter. This section illustrates how many mothers have been called upon to be cold and dismissive of their children, to raise them to obedience to their parents with the given measures, from an early age. Brutal behavior, slaps and slaps are not explicitly encouraged, but are accepted as ways of bringing up children, which has not made life easier for children in their families. The educational methods could even have led to a deepening of the war trauma . For example, if the parents felt “locking up in the dark broom closet” as a “good” educational measure, without thinking of the children's distressing memories of air raid shelters as a parallel .

Conversations with war children

Sabine Bode does not only deal with this topic theoretically, but also searches specifically for contact with contemporary witnesses, whereby she repeatedly comes across a phenomenon: The war children are not or hardly aware of the horrors they experienced or, on the contrary, play them down. On the other hand, she also comes across attempts to come to terms with her own past, often with the help of the next generation who are interested in the experiences of their parents or grandparents.

War grandson

The war grandchildren who were born in the 1960s / 1970s were also traumatized by the silence of their parents. Parents and children often remained strangers.

Reviews

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sabine Bode: The forgotten generation - the war children break their silence . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-608-94800-7 .
  2. ↑ Sabine Bode: war grandson. The heirs of the forgotten generation . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-608-94550-8 .