War child

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

War child refers to a child who has been shaped, impaired or even damaged by war and the consequences of war in important areas of life - such as physical and mental integrity, social relationships with family and other people in the environment, in its living situation and other living conditions. This usually has an impact on its further development.

war

Korean War Child (1950)

Under war to host is understood an armed conflict between states, ethnic or social groups in general. The list of wars from the early days to the present is long. Children have always been affected. The Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research estimated the number of wars worldwide in 2015 at 19 and the number of armed conflicts at 223. "230 million children [...] live in war and crisis areas," according to Spiegel TV in a report in early 2016. “Everyday terror” is part of “their life”.

The term war child

Children are generally not the focus of attention when it comes to war victims and the consequences of war. They remain hidden behind the view of the political and material consequences of the war , even when the focus is on wounding , disabled people or war-related disability. With the term war child an almost unmanageable court of meaning is called up if it is used for all war children in the world and is related to all times.

In Germany, the concept of the war child developed around the early 1990s, when the generation that experienced World War II as a child began to break their silence about it. Since then, the concept of the war child has received wide media attention. At the same time, science and research have taken on the phenomenon of these war childhoods.

Internationally, the term war child has partly different meanings in other national languages. It can be associated with very different content. Differences can already be seen for the Second World War, for example when it comes to the war children in occupied Poland. The English term war children , like the French term enfant de la guerre , is used in some countries as a synonym for occupation child and thus in a different context, but also with reference to the Second World War. In France alone, the number of children of German occupation soldiers from the Second World War is estimated at 200,000. Although they, too, are children of war in the original sense of the word, the devaluations and humiliations associated with their origin, which both they and their mothers have experienced and which could lead to considerable impairments of identity and self-esteem, are usually in the foreground. Some of them find the possibility of dual citizenship liberating.

The term is filled with other content when the children of the war herd outside of Europe or in the 21st century come into focus. The dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 or the Vietnam War between 1955 and 1975 have special implications for the children of these wars, as well as the genocide of the Bengali as part of the Bangladesh war in 1971 or the civil war in Syria since 2011. In Japan, the children of the war at that time still suffer from radiation-induced mutations . Various consequences of the war must be considered for the Vietnam War, depending on whether napalm or the defoliant Agent Orange was used. And the long-term consequences for the children of war in Syria, Afghanistan or, since 2014, in eastern Ukraine cannot yet be foreseen - with the exception of the already numerous mutilations by mines.

Occasionally the public learns of symptoms observed in refugee children from war zones. In April 2017, for example, a peculiarity was reported in Sweden: "There children permanently faint if their families are threatened with deportation." Swedish doctors have been dealing with this phenomenon "for years" without it being possible to explain why it is in there does not appear to be any comparable cases in other countries.

Other impairments are invoked when talking about child soldiers , of whom there are an estimated 250,000 worldwide. An international day against the use of child soldiers does not change the fact that "tens of thousands of children and young people are recruited as soldiers" every year - "some of them are only eight years old". On September 2, 1990, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child came into force, which is intended not only to protect children from war, but also to protect them. It has been ratified by almost all member states and some non-member states. In 2002 an additional protocol came into force that outlaws the use of minors as child soldiers in armed conflicts. But many states do not adhere to it. In Germany, too, minors are still being recruited for military service.

It is the exception when individual war children receive media attention and thus bring the war children into the public eye as a whole. These exceptions include, for example, Malala Yousafzai from Pakistan or Phan Thị Kim Phúc from Vietnam. Malala received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014. Kim Phúc survived the use of napalm in the Vietnam War in June 1972, but suffered severe burns. She became known all over the world through a photo taken by press photographer Nick Út .

Themed articles on war children

Documentation

"Nobody wants to see children in war", claims Unicef, on the other hand they are always in danger of being instrumentalized for the most varied of purposes. Beyond such dubious endeavors, they can be seen on the news almost every day. In contrast, they rarely appear in art, even in times when, for example, painting created countless works about war.

But there are a few exceptions - in music, visual arts and literature. It is different with the documentary treatment of the topic. Numerous documentaries and reports have been made here that bear witness to past and present wars and the children affected by them. In addition, various contemporary witness projects have committed themselves to this topic in many places and are making documentary material available.

In 2017 Hatje Cantz Verlag published the bilingual book Kriegskinder , with which the portrait photographer Frederike Helwig and the journalist Anne Waak presented the result of their joint project on this topic using the example of the Second World War. It was prompted by the following questions: “What did my parents experience when they were as old as my son is today? What made them who they are today? ”In February 2018, an exhibition on the book and its genesis was opened in Berlin-Kreuzberg, providing the opportunity to talk to the authors and some of the contemporary witnesses they portrayed .

Documentaries and reports

ZDF: The children of Aleppo. Web story

Contemporary witness projects

The Evangelical Adult Education Thuringia operates a witness project, a place found in the war and children. In 2012, as part of the project, a touring exhibition by historian Iris Helbing was presented, which showed drawings by Polish war children from 1946. They were created after the Przekrój magazine, one year after its founding in 1945, and on the occasion of the anniversary of the liberation, called for a drawing competition, which was followed by children up to the age of 13:

“At that time, the drawings were considered to be important material for clearing up and documenting the National Socialist crimes against Polish children. The largest collection of these drawings is now in the Archiwum Akt Nowych in Warsaw. There are around 100 pictures in the Polish embassy in Copenhagen. "

- Iris Helbing : exhibitions

World Vision Germany has dedicated a traveling exhibition to the children of war, which is still up-to-date and has been presented under the title “Ich war dich” in New York, Brussels, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Bremen, Rostock and Münster, but also in 2015 in the small town of Tröglitz . Tröglitz is the place in Saxony-Anhalt whose mayor resigned in March 2015 to protect himself and his family from right-wing attacks. A month later there was an arson attack on a planned refugee shelter. And in June the exhibition took place. It documents the world of children in war zones and has four so-called thematic islands: home, everyday life, school and health. She wants to show "how violence, displacement and destruction" affect children and young people. The focus is on Syrian refugee children. Singer Kirk Smith and a six-member gospel choir from Florida had traveled to the exhibition for the benefit concert. World Vision has published two videos about the Tröglitz exhibition, one on the topic and one on the exhibition opening.

In 2009 the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum (HGM) in Vienna began to address the issue of childhood at war. The reason was the observation that some young people had started to glorify war and that even small children were using words about weapons of war without being able to understand what they mean. The video for the special exhibition Children at War - Focus: Syria , published in November 2016, tells the story of the project, the experiences of child and youth witnesses from Syria, and the reactions of the students and their teachers who visited the exhibition. They had the opportunity to speak to contemporary witnesses, to watch documentaries from Syria and to take in the drawings of the Syrian children, who had all brought cruelty into the picture with a childish stroke of the pen. In order to avoid trauma to the visitors, the exhibition was only approved for children aged 13 and over on the recommendation of army psychologists. In February 2017, the HGM organized an action week on the topic of children at war with a focus on South Sudan . The aim of this exhibition was again to "give young people an insight into the problems of the present and to locate the subject historically."

War Childhood Museum , Sarajevo (2017)

Collections

In January 2017, the War Childhood Museum, founded by Jasminko Halilović, opened in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo . The ambassador of the museum is the Bosnian tennis player Damir Džumhur , who, like Halilović, experienced the Bosnian war as a child. The museum brings together objects from the daily life of these war children, including clothes and toys, drawings and letters, but also photos and diaries. There are also audio and video documentaries with interviews with the childhood witnesses of the time. Part of the collection was exhibited in the History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2016 .

Unicef ​​estimates that of the 70,000 children living in Sarajevo at the time, around 40% lost their lives, another 40% had to watch family members being killed and almost 90% were forced to live in hiding to find protection from the bombing . Before the museum was founded in 2013, Halilović published a book that tells the stories of these war children. It has now been translated into six languages, and in German it was published by Mirno More , an association for socio-educational peace projects. The Center for Southeast European Studies presented the book in November 2013.

Halilović dedicated his project, which resulted in the book and the museum, to a friend who was killed in 1994: Mirela Pločić, eleven years old. In December 2015 he gave the Guernica magazine information about his further motives for getting involved with the children of this war.

Aid organizations

literature

  • Horst Schäfer: Children, War and Cinema. Films about children and young people in war situations and crisis areas . UVK-Verlagsgesellschaft, Konstanz 2008, ISBN 978-3-86764-032-9 . review
  • Barbara Gladysch : The Little Stars of Grozny. Children in the dirty war of Chechnya . Herder, Freiburg, Br. / Basel / Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-451-29004-6 .
  • Jan Ilhan Kizilhan : Between fear and aggression. Children at war . Horlemann, Bad Honnef 2000, ISBN 3-89502-118-0 .
  • Sabine Bode : The forgotten generation - the war children break their silence . Klett-Cotta, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-608-94797-7 (first edition: 2004, expanded and updated paperback edition).
  • Sabine Bode: grandson of war. The heirs of the forgotten generation . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2016, ISBN 978-3-608-94808-0 .
  • Ludwig Janus (ed.): Born in the war. Childhood experiences in World War II and their effects . Psychosocial, Giessen 2006, ISBN 3-89806-567-7 .
  • Jean-Paul Picaper , Ludwig Norz: The children of shame. The tragic fate of German occupation children in France . Piper, Munich, Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-492-04697-5 (French: Enfants maudits. Ils sont 200,000. On les appelait les 'enfants de Boches' . Paris 2004. Translated by Michael Bayer, first edition: Editions des Syrtes).
  • Heela Najibullah: Reconciliation and Social Healing in Afghanistan. A Transrational and Elicitive Analysis Towards Transformation . Springer Fachmedien, Wiesbaden 2017, ISBN 978-3-658-16931-2 (English).
  • Yury Winterberg , Sonya Winterberg : Children of War. A generation memories . Rotbuch, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86789-071-7 .
  • Detlef R. Mittag: Children of War. Childhood and youth around 1945. Ten survival stories . Ed .: International League for Human Rights. Berlin 1995.
  • Adriana Altaras : excursion to the land of poets and executioners . In: Zeit Online . May 19, 2016 ( zeit.de [accessed January 24, 2017]).
  • Bettina Alberti: Emotional ruins. Born in the 50s and 60s: The post-war generation in the shadow of the war trauma . Kösel, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-466-30866-8 .
  • Dietrich Bäuerle: Children of war. Suffering - help - perspectives . Von-Loeper, Karlsruhe 2011, ISBN 978-3-86059-433-9 .
  • Heike Möhlen: A psychosocial intervention program for traumatized refugee children. Study results and treatment manual . Psychosocial, Giessen 2005, ISBN 3-89806-413-1 .
  • Werner Remmers, Ludwig Norz (Hrsg.): Né maudit - Born cursed - Children of war (=  experience waste . Volume 2 ). C & N, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939953-02-9 .
  • Werner Remmers, Ludwig Norz: Kriegskinder - enfants de guerre - children born of war (=  Experienzawast . Band 3 ). C&N, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-939953-05-0 .
  • Winfried Behlau (ed.): Thistle flowers. Russian children in Germany . con-thor, Ganderkesee 2015, ISBN 978-3-944665-04-7 .

Web links

Wiktionary: war child  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Commons : Children at War  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Commons : Child Soldiers  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Commons : Children in the Iran-Iraq War  - Pictures, Videos and Audio Files Collection

References and comments

  1. ^ Based on Wiktionary: War
  2. ↑ chr / dpa: Hardly any part of the world is spared. Conflict researchers count 19 wars. In: n-tv. February 26, 2016. Retrieved January 20, 2017 .
  3. ↑ The War Children: Growing Up Between Terror and Escape on YouTube
  4. ↑ Sabine Bode: The forgotten generation - the war children break their silence . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-608-94800-7 .
  5. ↑ childhood at war. Research project at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. Department of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 2009, accessed January 20, 2017 .
  6. ^ Krzysztof Ruchniewicz, Jürgen Zinnecker (eds.): Between Forced Labor, Holocaust and Expulsion: Polish, Jewish and German Childhoods in Occupied Poland . Juventa, Weinheim, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-7799-1733-5 .
  7. ^ Canadian Roots UK. Retrieved on January 18, 2017 (English, Canadian Roots UK helps war children in the UK were born to find their Canadian fathers and to find Canadian fathers their possible children in the UK.).
  8. ^ Sascha Lehnartz : German citizenship for a 'bastard'. In: World N24. August 6, 2009. Retrieved January 20, 2017 . Jean-Paul Picaper, Ludwig Norz: The children of shame. The tragic fate of German occupation children in France . Piper, Munich, Zurich 2005, ISBN 978-3-492-04697-8 (French: Enfants maudits: Ils sont 200,000, On les appelait les 'enfants de Boches' . Paris 2004. Translated by Michael Bayer). Amicale Nationale des Enfants de la Guerre. Retrieved January 18, 2017 (French, Franco-German Association of Children of War).

  9. ^ Ariane Thomalla: Jean-Paul Picaper / Ludwig Norz: The children of shame. The tragic fate of German occupation children in France. Deutschlandfunk, June 6, 2005, accessed on January 1, 2017 : “There are supposed to be 200,000 so-called 'German children' in France. Today they are 59 to 64 years old. At an age when people like to take stock of their lives, they look for the other half of their identity. [...] Nevertheless, there would still be consequential damage such as a lack of self-confidence and tendencies towards self-hatred and self-destruction [...] "
  10. ↑ Thorsten Knuf: You grew up in France, Belgium or Scandinavia. Their mothers were locals, their fathers had fought for Hitler. Now, in old age, many descendants of Wehrmacht soldiers want to have clarity about their origins - and some even want a German passport. Children of war. In: Berliner Zeitung. May 5, 2010, accessed January 24, 2017 .
  11. ^ France: The German passport on YouTube
  12. ↑ Jarina Kajafa: War in Eastern Ukraine. With dolls against mines. In: taz. December 31, 2015, accessed January 24, 2017 . UNICEF: Landmines are deadly to children. In: Development Policy Online. November 29, 2004, accessed January 24, 2017 .
  13. ↑ In Sweden, refugee children fall into a coma-like state. In: World N24. April 3, 2017, accessed on April 9, 2017 : “The consensus among experts is that these symptoms should not be faked. However, there are no known cases outside the country, a fact that cannot be explained to this day. "
  14. ↑ The Fate of Child Soldiers on YouTube . ZDF (1:25)
  15. ↑ Minor fighters. There are 250,000 child soldiers worldwide. In: Stern. February 12, 2015, accessed on January 21, 2017 : “Every year tens of thousands of children and young people are recruited as soldiers and forced to fight. [...] 'Cheaper alternative to adult soldiers' "
  16. ↑ Unicef ​​indicts. IS, terrorists, African armies: Children are brutally abused as soldiers. In: Focus Online. February 12, 2015, accessed on January 21, 2017 : “In the civil wars in South Sudan and the Central African Republic last year, according to estimates by the international children's aid organization Unicef, 22,000 children and young people were deployed as soldiers. In Syria and Iraq, too, the Islamic State terrorist militia systematically recruits minors and trains them to fight - some of them are only eight years old. "
  17. ↑ Red hands from the Bundestag. Red Hand Day., Accessed on January 18, 2017 : “The Bundeswehr continues to recruit around 1,000 minors every year and train them to use weapons. According to the valid UN definition, these are child soldiers. "
  18. ↑ The photo and its story:
    Nick Út : Press photo by Phan Thị Kim Phúc. World Press Photo of the Year 1973. Word Press Photo, June 8, 1972, accessed January 20, 2017 . Horst Faas , Marianne Fulton: The survivor Phan Thị Kim Phúc and the photographer Nick Út. Pp. 1–7 , accessed on January 20, 2017 (English). NN: I've never escaped from that moment: Girl in napalm photograph that defined the Vietnam War 40 years on. In: Mail Online. June 1, 2012, accessed on January 20, 2017 (English): “But beneath the photo lies a lesser-known story. It's the tale of a dying child brought together by chance with a young photographer. "
  19. ↑ Nobody wants to see children in war. Unicef, 2010, accessed January 23, 2017 .
  20. ^ Charles Aznavour : Les enfants de la guerre. Reinhard Mey : The children of Izieu. Retrieved January 29, 2017 (lyrics).
  21. ↑ Andrea Müller: The fate of the war children. The Berlin artist Franek. In: The West. October 24, 2015, accessed January 22, 2017 .
  22. ↑ Imre Kertész : novel of a fateless . 24th edition. Rowohlt-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-499-22576-5 ( netz-gegen-nazis.de [accessed on January 24, 2017]). netz- gegen-nazis.de ( Memento from January 24, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Hans-Ulrich Treichel : The lost . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 978-3-518-39561-5 .
  23. ↑ Frederike Helwig, Anne Waak: Children of War . Hatje Cantz, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-7757-4393-8 (German, English).
  24. ↑ Jennifer Berndt: Memories of a Generation. War children. (PDF; 87 kB) November 23, 2017, accessed March 25, 2018 .
  25. ↑ Impressions. Opening of the exhibition for children of war. February 8, 2018, accessed March 25, 2018 .
  26. ↑ Children in War. Poland 1939 to 1945. A traveling exhibition by Iris Helbing. Contemporary witness projects, 2012, accessed on January 23, 2017 (with video of the opening speech and the children's drawings).
  27. ↑ Iris Helbing: Exhibitions. Children in the war in Poland 1939–1945. (No longer available online.) 2010, archived from the original on February 15, 2015 ; accessed on January 23, 2017 .
  28. ↑ a b "I'll get you" - children in armed conflict. Our exhibition for you. World Vision Germany, accessed on January 24, 2017 .
  29. ↑ Melanie Reinsch: Tröglitz just wants to be forgotten. In: Frankfurter Rundschau. April 4, 2016. Retrieved January 24, 2017 .
  30. ↑ Tröglitz sings for cosmopolitanism. In: World N24. June 2, 2015, accessed January 24, 2017 .
  31. ↑ Children in war - "I'll get you". World Vision exhibition in Tröglitz on YouTube
  32. ↑ Benefit concert and “I'll get you” - exhibition opening in Tröglitz on YouTube
  33. ↑ Children at War - Focus: Syria on YouTube
  34. ↑ Action week 'Children at War'. Main topic: 'South Sudan'. Army History Museum. Military History Institute, 2017, accessed January 23, 2017 .
  35. ^ War Childhood Museum. Retrieved on March 29, 2017 (English): “The War Childhood Museum opened in Sarajevo in January 2017. The Museum's collection contains a number of personal belongings, stories, audio and video testimonies, photographs, letters, drawings and other documents offering valuable insight into the unique experience of growing up in wartime. "
  36. ↑ Quoted in free translation from Dan Sheehan: Jasminko Halilović: Children of War. In: Guernica. December 15, 2015, accessed on March 29, 2017 (English): "UNICEF estimated that of the approximately 70,000 children living in the city during the period, 40 percent had been shot at, 39 percent had seen one or more family members killed, and 89 percent had been forced to live in underground shelters to escape the shelling. "
  37. ↑ a b War Childhood: Sarajevo 1992–1995. Jasminko Halilovic, 2013, accessed March 29, 2017 .
  38. ↑ Mirno More Peace Fleet. Retrieved March 29, 2017 .
  39. ↑ Book 'War Childhood: Sarajevo 1992-1995'. In: War Childhood Museum. Retrieved on March 29, 2017 (English): "After two and a half years of work on the project, the ultimate aim was achieved - illustrated book on 328 pages brings stories of generations that grew up during the war."
  40. ^ Was childhood. Sarajevo 1992–1995. (No longer available online.) Center for Southeast European Studies at the Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, November 20, 2013, archived from the original on March 30, 2017 ; accessed on March 29, 2017 : "The book is the result of an interactive project, the aim of which was to collect collective experiences and memories of children in Sarajevo."
  41. ↑ Child killed by serbian sniper - Mirela Pločić (1983-1994) on YouTube , December 3, 2011, accessed on June 4, 2018.
  42. ^ Dan Sheehan: Jasminko Halilović: Children of War. In: Guernica. December 15, 2015, accessed March 29, 2017 .