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Children and War: Past and Present
Salzburg, 10 - 12 July 2013
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Abstracts
Friday, 12 July 2013
PANEL 31: Columbia
Ximena Pachón Castrillon (Colombian Institute of Anthropology, Columbia)
Children in war: The Colombian case
The involvement of children in armed conflict is not a new issue in history, much less in
Colombian past, where since the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, have been
observed performing the role of soldiers or “guerrilleros” in the various civil wars that have
been and continue to be fought throughout these years. They have been called "small bells" in
the paramilitary forces for its use as sentinels, "beehive" on the guerrillas because they "sting"
their enemies before they know they are under attack, or "carts" by urban militias as can
sneak weapons through checkpoints without suspicion. At the beginning of the XXI century,
the child soldiers continue to play an important role at the scene of the Colombian armed
conflict. We found them among the multiplicity of childhoods that have existed in the history
of the country, forming one of the most complex and difficult categories in the analysis of
Colombian children. The childhood of high proportion of the Colombian population has
developed in a violent environment where “machismo”, the power of weapons and the use of
force is the accepted and valued way to face life and solve all conflicts. Thus, the high rate of
children linked to illegal armed groups, as well as street gangs, should not be surprising. This
paper seeks to explore the theme throughout the twentieth century and early twenty-first
approaching to the reality of these children whose presence in the armed conflict have been a
constant throughout Colombian history.
Ximena Pachón Castrillon: Anthropologist, professor and researcher at the Colombian
Institute of Anthropology. Former director of Anthropology Department, National University
of Colombia. Researcher on the history of childhood in Colombia, has published several
books and articles on the subject, including: - 2012 “Los niños en la Guerra. El caso
Colombiano”. Ponencia presentada al Simposio La infancia en la historia de las Américas y
el Caribe. Congreso de Americanistas. Viena. - 2010 “¿Donde están los niños?. Rastreando la
antropología de la infancia”. Revista Maguaré, Departamento de Antropología, Universidad
Nacional, Bogotá. - 2010 “La delincuencia infantil a principios del siglo XX”. 15 Congreso
de Historia. Bogotá. (Próximo a aparecer en publicación que recoge las ponencias
presentadas al simposio). - 2008 “Los niños soldados en Colombia. Una aproximación
histórica”. Georgetown University, Center for Latin American Studies. Working Paper Series
No. 15. Washington, Agosto 2000. - 2002 Requiem por los Niños Muertos. Bogotá siglo XX
CEREC-Club Michín, Bogota. – 1996 La aventura infantil a mediados de siglo. Bogotá 1930
-1959. Editorial Planeta. - 1991 Infancia en el Siglo XX. Bogotá, 1900 - 1929. Editorial
Planeta. Bogotá.
Ana Maria Jimenez (University of Essex, UK)
‘We need to move on’: Challenges for the protection of child victims of use and
recruitment in an era of complex armed conflicts – The Colombian case
My paper analyzes to what extent the international legal framework on Use and Recruitment
of Children (URC) is applicable to the situation of the child victims of the so called “new
groups” in Colombia. To do so, first I explain the changes of the dynamics of organization
and operation of armed groups in the past decade in the context of non-international armed
conflicts. I base my analysis on the study written by Graça Machel in 1996 on the impact of
war on children and its following reviews. Second, I set out the international legal framework
applicable to the URC to identify the main elements that characterize this crime. I identify the
main gaps in the application of the legal standards to new conflict dynamics targeting
children. In particular, I analyze the situation in Colombia in which different forms of
violence take place in the context of the internal armed conflict. I explain the changes of the
dynamics of URC by paramilitaries after the demobilization, as well as the situation of
victims of URC by these groups. I argue that the debate on the characterization of the “new
groups” has legal and political implications that make the protection of the victims of URC
more difficult. I conclude that, according to the dynamic and characteristics of the “new
groups”, some of them are party to the internal armed conflict, so that therefore the
International Humanitarian Law (IHL) applies to them. I finally conclude that the legal
standards of Colombia on URC require revision to ensure the rights of all the victims of this
crime.
Ana Maria Jimenez, is a human rights lawyer with 8 years’ experience on children and
armed conflict in Colombia. Currently she is studying for an MSc in Human Rights and
Research Methods at the University of Essex. She is an adviser for the Master in the Defense
of IHL and International Humanitarian Law at the Santo Tomas University in Colombia. She
is former coordinator of the Coalition against the involvement of boys, girls and youths in the
armed conflict in Colombia. Her publications include, among others: Easier said than done:
The debate surrounding the “characterization” of paramilitary groups in Colombia in view of
the situation of children victims of illicit recruitment (Coalico, 2012); The invisible crime:
guidelines for the investigation of the crime of illegal recruitment of children in Colombia
(Coalico, 2009). She is currently researching the issue of the application of international legal
standards to URC in Colombia.
Charlotte Reed (Scuola Supeiore Sant’anna, Italy)
Learning from the past and looking towards the future: The situation of children
associated with armed forces in Colombia
Colombia, with nearly 50 years of ongoing fighting, is a setting particularly ripe for the
exploitation of children. Currently it is believed that between 11,000 to 14,000 minors are
associated with armed forces and an estimated 13 million Colombian children are at risk of
recruitment by armed groups. In recent years, the average age of recruitment into the illegal
armed forces has decreased from 14 to 12. In light of the current peace negotiations between
the FARC and Colombian government there is the potential for thousands of children to be
demobilized in the upcoming year(s). While this is promising, a telling example of what can
happen if children are not adequately included in the peace process can be seen when, during
the formal demobilization of the paramilitary group, United Self-Defense Force of Colombia
(AUC), between 2003 and 2006, the government failed to enforce the handover of children as
a condition to the agreement. Only 300, of potentially thousands of children, were formally
released during the process. The majority of the minors associated with the AUC left the
group informally and consequentially failed to meet the requirements for the demobilization
process. It is believed this caused many of them to be re-recruited by neo paramilitary groups
and the BACRIMs. Via key informant interviews and an in-depth literature review this paper
will explore the current situation of children associated with illegal armed groups in
Colombia, the challenges facing their reintegration and the lessons learnt from the failure of
the AUC all with a lenses towards improving the potential demobilization following a
successful peace process between the FARC and Colombian government.
Charlotte Reed is a doctorate student in Politics, Human Rights and Sustainability at Scuola
Supeiore Sant’anna. She received her Masters in Public Policy and International
Development from Georgetown University. Her dissertation investigates the reintegration
process of former child soldiers with a particular focus on the individual experiences of the
youth and the role they play in the process. She is interested in addressing whether the needs
of former child soldiers, as expressed by them, are actively included in reintegration
programs. Her dissertation will include an in-depth case study of Colombia and she begins 6
months of fieldwork there in February 2013.
Niousha Roshani (University of London, UK)
Beyond child soldiering: Understanding children and violence in Colombia
In situations of armed conflict or violence, a significant number of young people below the
age of eighteen join armed groups on their own decision, challenging conventional ideas of
children as vulnerable and passive victims and presenting evidence that they are also creative
resilient actors aiming to improve their lives (Rosen, 2005; Honwana, 2005, Hart, 2006;
Rosen, 2008; Poretti, 2008). To date, relatively little research has sought to explore the lives
of children, especially those in situations of extreme violence from their own perspective, and
the majority of research on children and war has focused on trauma and pathology leaving
out the greater societal dimensions of violence (Hart, 2006; Boyden & de Berry, 1997; Hilker
& Fraser, 2009). This research focuses on the mobile trajectories of children’s lives under
conditions of political violence and economic uncertainty in Colombia and examines how
children maintain everyday life in zones of violent conflict, and how customariness to daily
aggression hides the structural violence of poverty, social exclusion, and domestic abuse. By
focusing on children navigating the everyday, shouldering care-giving responsibilities, and
devising strategies of survival, this project acknowledges research methodologies to mirror
children as active makers of their worlds through arts‐based methods. Employing film and
photography workshops, this paper examines the dynamics of the use of children in the
armed conflict in Colombia, demonstrating the relationship between child soldiering, child
displacement and child trafficking and understanding the definition of childhood in various
environmental and societal conditions of children.
Niousha Roshani is PhD student at the Institute of Education, University of London. Her
research examines the definition of a child soldier and the ideological and political
manipulation of the concept of childhood while questioning the politics of age that shapes
childhood in international law and its use concerning children in armed conflict in Colombia.
She is also the founder of the Nukanti Foundation for Children, an independent international
non‐profit organization, devoted to investing in education, empowerment and leadership
skills, and hope for children, particularly in communities devastated by violence, poverty and
armed conflict (www.nukantifoundation.org).
PANEL 32: Psychological approaches
Ohad Green (Bar Ilan University, Israel)
‘Home and away’: Contribution of forced evacuation and non-direct types of war
exposure to long-term psychological distress of young adolescents
During the month-long fighting in the Second Lebanon War of 2006, the civilians of northern
Israel were exposed to heavy missile attacks. This research examined, one year after the end
of the war, the consequences of both forced evacuation and other types of non-direct war
exposure on long-term distress of students, as manifested in post-traumatic stress disorder
(PTSD) and psychiatric symptoms (BSI). The sample of participants comprised of 2994
students from the seventh and eighth grade, who lived in northern Israel. It was found that
subjective and non-direct types of war exposure - such as exposure to the media, familiarity
with someone who was wounded or died in the war, and especially fear during the war contribute to long-term distress. With regard to forced evacuation – moderate and severe
PTSD rates were lower among those who left their homes for the whole month of the War as
compared to those who alternately left and returned. PTSD and BSI rates were highest among
those who were evacuated with only part of their family members, while leaving the other
part vulnerable to missile attacks. Conclusion: One year after a collective trauma, some
young adolescents still suffer from trauma-related distress. Although evacuation prevents
physical casualties, as it defends from direct exposure, it does not prevent psychological
distress since civilians are still vulnerable to non-direct types of war-exposure and, at the
same time, feel separated and worry about their families. Therefore, emergency mass
evacuation plans should focus on evacuation of the whole family.
Ohad Green, a PhD student at the school of Social Work, Bar Ilan University, Israel.
Graduated Cum Laude both B.A and M.A.Won the Bar-Ilan University president's fellowship
for Outstanding PhD Students and the “Inbar fund” special prize for contribution to terrorism
research. Main research interests: (1) Immediate and long term adjustment following
traumatic events (2) Human rights violations & psychological distress of migrant workers.
Emina Hadziosmanovic (University of Nottingham, UK)
Early displacement and traumatic experience: The children of Yugoslavia in the 1990s
The present study investigates the long-term psychological, social, and environmental effects
of external displacement in refugees from former Yugoslavia, more specifically children of
war, who came to the United Kingdom to escape the Bosnian war 1992-1995. This group is
examined alongside children of war who became internally displaced and remained in Bosnia
during the war years and in present day. Thirty-three semi-structured interviews were
conducted in April-June 2012 across the United Kingdom and Bosnia & Herzegovina, with
questions targeted at eliciting information about trauma suffered through displacement during
the war years, subsequent life as a refugee, their historical perceptions of the causes of war,
their sense of identity and belonging, attachment to Bosnia, and social relations with Serbs
both pre and post war. All interviews were transcribed in the English language and thematic
analysis was used to develop nine key themes. Comparisons were made across the internally
and externally displaced individuals. Indications and explanations of trauma were inherent in
every one of the 33 interviews, ranging from direct physical injury, concentration camp
experiences of close family members, surviving the Srebrenica genocide, to experiences of
bullying and racism as displaced individuals in a new community. Participants were aged
between 2 and 17 at the start of the war. Memories of the war was a dominant theme in all
transcripts, with individual’s subsequent interpretations of war shaped by personal memories
and involvement in the war. Implications for service development and treating trauma in
displaced populations many years later will be made.
Emina Hadziosmanovic: I’m a second year PhD in Clinical Psychology student at
Nottingham University. My thesis (supervised by Dr Nigel Hunt) looks at the long-term
psychological, social, and environmental effects of war in Bosnian war survivors. I am
making comparisons across internally displaced groups in Bosnia, non-displaced, and
externally displaced groups to the United Kingdom. I have completed the first 3 studies of my
PhD and am in the planning phases for the final study, which will include running a new type
of trauma therapy for war refugees in the UK for the first time. I was awarded the Rayne
Fellowship for refugees in July 2012 to fund this project.
Sarah Meyer (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, USA)
Refugee children and long-term refugee situations: A qualitative study
Children who live in long-term refugee camps are exposed to multiple and overlapping
threats to their mental health and psychosocial well-being. Literature exploring the impact of
war on children has primarily focused on exposure to war-related violence as a risk factor for
mental disorders. However, in the context of prolonged displacement in camps, other
stressors could also significantly impact mental health, including living conditions, familylevel interactions, and social environments of refugee camp contexts. This paper presents data
from a rapid qualitative study in Ban Mai Nai Soi camp, Thailand, amongst refugees from
Burma. Using free-listing and key informant interviews, results showed that children’s
symptoms of distress were linked to problems within the household and associated with
relationships with caregivers. Impacts of these exposures were described as varied
internalizing symptoms – including crying, sadness and “feeling low,” and externalizing
symptoms – including fighting and alcohol use. Symptoms were described as consequences
of stressors at the family-level, including physical abuse, primarily beating, and neglect.
Community members described adults’ behaviors that negatively affect children – including
drinking and fighting – may be due to adults’ frustration, lack of opportunity and difficulties
surviving associated with the economic and social conditions in the camp. Using a socialecological framework for exploring children’s wellbeing in the context of long-term
displacement, this paper situates these findings in the broader field of psychosocial and
mental health responses to refugee children, discussing implications for policy and practice.
Sarah Meyer is a PhD Candidate in International Health at Johns Hopkins School of Public
Health, where she focuses on mental health and psychosocial issues in humanitarian settings.
She has conducted field research on mental health and well-being of refugees and migrants in
Cambodia, Uganda, Thailand and Australia. In 2012, she evaluated UNHCR’s mental health
and psychosocial programs for refugees.
PANEL 33: Holocaust: Testimonies and narratives
Gulie Ne’eman Arad (Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel)
Forever facing wars: Holocaust child survivors in Israel
As common sense would have it, those who have experienced war would seek a peaceful
environment in which to live their lives thereafter. However, this was not always a matter of
free will, particularly not for those who have survived a war as young children. For some of
them, the future was decided by the larger forces of history. Such was the case of orphaned
child survivors of the Holocaust who were brought to Palestine by the Youth Aliya
Movement and lived to grow old in Israel. However, in total negation to the Zionist creed that
promoted Israel as the only safe place for Jews, these survivors were to face a life-long
existence of wars or threats of wars to themselves, their children and their grandchildren. In
my presentation, I wish to consider how, when and why memories of war among child
survivors affected the attitudes they adopted and life choices they have made as citizens of
Israel, a country that is shaped by the memory of the Holocaust and other wars it fought since
its establishment. Paying close attention to the role that life cycles and life stages play in
determining the survivors’ response, I shall probe the personal narratives of two child
survivors (corresponding to the two “major types” of survivors) as case studies. I will attempt
to uncover how their primal war experience came to bear upon their political, social and
moral stands with regard to the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the wars Israel fought
with its Arab neighbors, and Israel’s forty-five years of military occupation over more than
two million Palestinians and their territory. More generally, why we cannot count on
survivors of war to be our future ambassadors of peace?
Gulie Ne’eman Arad, Senior Lecturer, Department of Jewish History, Ben Gurion
University, Beer Sheva, Israel. Major research interests: Holocaust Survivors, History and
Memory, Historical Methodology. Selected Publications: America, Its Jews, and the Rise of
Nazism, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001. (Ed.), Passing into History: Nazism
and the Holocaust Beyond Memory, Indiana University Press, 1997. ‘Israel and the Shoah: A
Tale of Multifarious Taboos,’ New German Critique, No. 90 (Fall 2003), 5-26. ‘The
American Jewish Bystanders: Rethinking Strategies of Understanding,‘ Jahrbuch, Zentrum
für Antisemitismusforschung, Technische Universität Berlin (June 2000) 253-296. 19902001: Co Editor of the international journal History & Memory: Studies in Representations of
the Past. Published by Indiana University Press.
Lia Deromedi (Royal Holloway, University of London, UK)
Barbed wire and lead soldiers: The child’s viewpoint in survivor Holocaust literature
This paper will examine several literary works that use the child’s perspective to narrate the
Holocaust. Written retrospectively by authors who were child Holocaust survivors, they bring
their personal experiences to their writing. I believe that literature can be a form of testimony,
the child’s view forces readers to consider anew that which they think they already know, and
the contrast of innocence with suffering highlights the brutality of the Nazi genocide and the
horrors of war. I argue that children are separate from adults by relegation to the world of
‘childhood’ and yet exist in the adult world as evidence by the inescapability of their
victimhood within adult wars. This intimate separateness provides literarily both an insider
and outsider view of the War and Holocaust. The belatedness of many survivors’ works in
reaching an audience – for reasons such as post-traumatic silence or works from the former
Soviet Bloc reaching translation and global recognition only in recent years – brings the
historical Holocaust child’s narrative into contemporary readership and current events.
The narratives depict displacement from homes, deficiencies in necessities, and separation
from families from military engagements or Nazi racial programmes, which necessitated
resettlement into ghettos, camps, or hiding places. The children are all Jewish; but they come
from assimilated and religious backgrounds, range in age from four to fourteen, are in hiding,
camps, and ghettos, and scattered geographically. In other words, these characters can signify
the varied ways Jewish children were victims of the Holocaust and World War II.
Lia Deromedi is a PhD candidate in English at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her
research focuses on the use of child perspective in survivor Holocaust literature. She received
her BA in Literature/Writing from the University of California-San Diego and MA in English
from the City University of New York-Brooklyn.
Michaela Raggam-Blesch (Karl-Franzens University of Graz, Austria)
The fate of children of Jewish descent during the Nazi-regime in Austria, 1938-1945
This paper will focus on the living conditions of children of “half-Jewish” descent during the
time of the Nazi regime in Austria. Their mere existence and how to categorize them
challenged National Socialist race ideology. The fact that the regime ultimately had to revert
to religious denomination criteria in order to secure assumptions of race ideology illustrates
the absurdities of National Socialist ideology. The infamous Nuremberg Laws defined people
with one Jewish and one non-Jewish parent – depending on their denomination – either as socalled “Mischlinge of the first degree” or as “Geltungsjuden”. “Mischlinge” had either been
baptized in a Christian religion or were without denomination. Even though they were
excluded from most of the anti-Jewish legislation, they still faced severe discrimination. The
fact, that their status of being “in between” had also a lasting impact on their identity, should
not be left unmentioned. “Geltungsjuden” were defined as individuals of “half-Jewish”
descent who were registered with the Jewish Community. They were considered Jewish and
were consequently subjected to the same discriminatory regulations as the rest of the Jewish
population. Even though they were – temporary – deferred from deportation, their daily lives
were marked by persecution and an uncertain fate. This paper will focus on the narratives of
children who survived the NS-regime under these circumstances in order to examine the
impact of an increasingly hostile society on the personal lives and identities of these children.
Michaela Raggam-Blesch, PhD at the Karl-Franzens University of Graz (Austria), is an
associate at the Institute of Culture Studies and the History of Theater (IKT) at the Austrian
Academy of Sciences with an APART post-doc scholarship on “Everyday life and
persecution of women and men of “half-Jewish” descent in Vienna, 1938-1945”. From 19992003 she worked for the Leo Baeck Institute in New York and was among the first fellows of
the Center for Jewish History Fellowship in 2002.
PANEL 34: War and National Socialism as experienced by children of the war
generation and becoming research objects as historians
Margit Reiter (University of Vienna, Austria)
Between knowledge and emotion: Professional and individual approaches to National
Socialism by the Austrian postwar generation
National Socialism and World War II in Austria are part of every family history because
many Austrians were deeply involved in the Nazi regime. The paper shows how members of
the postwar generation (the descendants of the "war generation") deal with National
Socialism in general and their families' role in it in particular. On one hand, the so-called
"children of the perpetrators" have their own early childhood experiences and memories; they
were confronted with various "family legends" (e.g. victim narratives) and have to cope with
ambivalent feelings about their (grand)parents (e.g. love and respect, anger and fears, feelings
of guilt...). On the other hand, they were also confronted with more and more knowledge of
the historical facts of National Socialism and WW II (at schools and universities, in literature,
etc.), which might have served to confirm or correct the "family memory" (M. Halbwachs).
The members of the postwar generation are not only passive products of familial and social
backgrounds, but also active creators of historical images and producers of the collective
memory. Some of them took a professional approach to National Socialism (e.g. as
historians, journalists, teachers, etc.) and have succeeded in distancing themselves from their
burdened family background. However, they frequently deal with National Socialism only on
a rational and even abstract level, and only in rare cases do sons and daughters also address
their fathers’ and mothers’ concrete involvement and "guilt". Many of them remain entangled
in a web of cognitive knowledge about Nazi crimes and contradictory feelings about their
(grand)parents. Perhaps this striking gap between cognitive and emotional knowledge can
explain to some extent why, even to this day and even for professional historians, it is still not
easy to confront and deal with National Socialism in one’s own family history.
Ernst Hanisch (University of Salzburg, Austria)
Childhood in a Nazi family
Educated (born in 1940) in a Nazi family, I want to answer two questions in my paper:
1. How did I - as a child - notice war and Nazi ideology?
2. How did this fact impact my research as a contemporary historian?
Gerhard Botz (University of Vienna, Austria)
"War children" as historians of the Nazi past in Austria
Generations - perceived not as a rigid function of a certain birth cohort but as the outcome of
a social process of (self) definition as part of a specific age group - have turned out to be a
fruitful historical concept developed already by the sociologist Karl Mannheim in the
1920ies. Certainly, there is often a set of shared experiences deriving from particular events,
particularly during formative age years, (as war, evolution, violence, persecution, family
ruptures, personal catastrophees etc.) which made prone for specific views on one owns life
and history. At the same time, equally important are aquired styles to read and make a
meaning of personal and politico-social experiences which constitute - often in retrospect the feeling of having participated in a common fate. Usually such a
"Schicksalsgemeinschaft" is not determinated by an exerience of similar events but only
somehow pre-conditioned. Thus there are often divergent generational experiences and styles
of explanation of the world as the aftermath of World War One has demonstrated through the
rise of militaristic and pre-fascist politics or of pacifism and antifascism. Thus the
experiences of the age cohorts born roughly between 1939 and 1945, the "generation(s) of
1945", could also have drawn contradicting conclusions in the contexts of different social,
regional, political or family "Erinnerungsgemeinschaften" (communities of memory) and
changing "collective memories". In post War Austria - besides other generational formations
- for the "1945ers" either silencing and excusing the behaviour of their parents during the
Nazi period or critisising and attacking their deeds have been typical. How strongly the later
ones became involved in the student revolte should be left open here, but often they were put
into such a "box" (68er or "Waldheim chasers") either by themselves or by the political right.
On the other hand, there lies a cause for the occurrence of a totally diferent generational unit,
i.e. the younger sympathisers with the Nazi past and their parents around Jörg Haider mostly
in the realm of the late "German national camp". These generation specific experiences and
styles of "Weltanschauung" in every-day life influence also the work, the motivation,
selection of topics and modes of interpretation of professional historians as Georges Duby,
Eric Hobsbawm and other 20th century historians have observed (see also Barbara Stambolis,
"Leben mit der geschichte",2010). The subjective and often unconscious bases of scholarly
historical research is demonstrated in this paper using my own experience (born 1941) as an
example for the "1945 generation" of Austrian scholars of contemporary history and their
view.
Gerhard Botz, Emeritus Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Vienna;
since 1982 director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Historical Social Science, Vienna;
visiting professor at the University of Minneapolis, MN, Stanford University, EHESS, Paris;
director of ‘Mauthausen Survivors Research Project’, Vienna, since 2007. Publications
include: Gewalt in der Politik, 2nd ed., Munich 1984; Nationalsozialismus in Wien, 4th ed.,
Vienna 2008; Reden und Schweigen einer Generation (ed.), 2nd ed., Vienna 2008;
Kontroversen um Österreichs Zeitgeschichte (co-ed.), 2nd ed., Frankfurt/M 2008.
Ernst Hanisch, Emeritus Professor of Modern Austrian History at the University of
Salzburg. Main areas of research: Austrian History and National Socialism. Selected books:
1890–1990: Der lange Schatten des Staates. Österreichische Gesellschaftsgeschichte im 20.
Jahrhundert. Ueberreuter, Wien 1994; Gau der guten Nerven: Die nationalsozialistische
Herrschaft in Salzburg 1938–1945, Salzburg 1997; Männlichkeiten: eine andere Geschichte
des 20. Jahrhunderts, Vienna 2005; Der große Illusionist: Otto Bauer (1881–1938), Vienna
2011.
PD Dr. Margit Reiter, Contemporary History at the University of Vienna. Main research
interests: Relationship Israel-Austria, anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism, postwar history of
National Socialism, Generation and Memory/Family memories. Selected books: Unter
Antisemitismus-Verdacht. Die österreichische Linke und Israel nach der Shoah, Innsbruck
2001; Die Generation danach. Der Nationalsozialismus im Familiengedächtnis, Innsbruck
2006; Europa und der 11. September 2001, (co-edited with Helga Embacher), Vienna 2011.
PANEL 35: Contemporary: Release and reintegration
Rachel Anderson (University of Aberdeen, UK)
The reintegration of former child soldiers in Sierra Leone: A critical examination
Since the late 1980s Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) programmes
have been an integral part of post-conflict reconstruction. This was especially true of Sierra
Leone’s post-conflict reconstruction which has frequently been hailed a ‘multilateral success
story’ by the international community. Nevertheless, within Western-authored DDR literature
there is a widespread but little interrogated assertion that, in post-conflict contexts, resettling
former child soldiers with their families is always the best option for social reintegration.
Family members, it is argued, are most able to provide the psychosocial support that former
child soldiers require in order to successfully make the transition to civilian life in the
aftermath of war. Drawing on recent empirical research undertaken in Sierra Leone, this
paper will question the universality of this assumption. Using an interdisciplinary and multimethod approach, the paper will analyse issues relating to family reintegration in child soldier
DDR and seek to determine whether the current approach is indeed always ‘in the best
interests of the child’. The findings suggest that whilst this approach has a number of
benefits, it may also lay the foundations for renewed conflict in the future by reifying certain
contentious pre-war power structures.
Rachel Anderson is a doctoral researcher in the Department of Sociology at the University
of Aberdeen. Her research focuses on family involvement in the reintegration of former child
soldiers in Sierra Leone and forms part of the Leverhulme-funded 'Compromise after
Conflict' project at the university. Rachel completed an MSc in International Relations at the
University of Aberdeen in 2010 and graduated from the University of St Andrews with an
M.A. (Hons) in Modern Languages with International Relations in 2008. Prior to
commencing her studies at the University of Aberdeen, Rachel worked for the Office for
Criminal Justice Reform in London.
Eamonn Hanson (War Child Holland / Sierra Leone)
Reintegration of war affected children in five conflict and post-conflict countries
The current paper provides an analysis of the reintegration work by War Child in
Afghanistan, Colombia, Lebanon, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and South Sudan.
In each country we intervene through psychosocial, educational or child protection programs.
Each of our programs is implemented slightly differently depending on the type of conflict,
community needs, available resources and accessibility. This paper provides an overview of
what works and what does not. In typical Afghan society, CYP are marginalized and barely
empowered to contribute to community life. A youth video-project bringing elders and young
people together proved successful in promoting social integration. In Putumayo and Cauca in
Colombia, recruitment into armed forces is an important issue. We work with CYP to restore
their cultural and social heritage reducing risk factors of recruitment and building on
protective factors. In Lebanon, we are confronted with low school attendance, sexual
exploitation and forced labour of children in camps. There we are currently implementing a
theatre workshop with CYP to “speak out the truth” to advocate for improvement.
Communities in DRC and South Sudan are dealing with a high illiteracy rate, very weak
government, food crises and refugee situation. In these countries, violence towards children
(in particular girls) dominates the rights situation of children. It is important to secure their
safety and health before advancing the program. Therefore, War Child creates safe learning
spaces in returnee centres and provides referrals and access to health as basic steps in
community reintegration.
Eamonn Hanson (Sierra Leonean/ Netherlands dual nationality) started work with War
Child Holland in Sierra Leone in August 2008 as “project manager advocacy and
communications”. He has worked in post-conflict Sierra Leone for 7 years, as a human rights
advisor and communications specialist and currently is coordinating in War Child Holland's
Global Advocacy Programme. Eamonn has a PhD in Psychology and is specialized in
international as well as community based child led advocacy in post conflict situations.
Elizabeta Jevtic-Somlai (CTBTO Preparatory Commission, Vienna, Austria)
Developing a comprehensive list of rehabilitation and reintegration working guidelines
Many NGOs working in the field of child rehabilitation and reintegration tackle the daunting
task of conducting all of the activities that they deem needed to ensure proper rehabilitation
of the children in their care. This often leads to exhaustion due to the lack of resources and
skill set to address the programmatic challenges and issues arising. This article examines the
guidelines provided in the main documents drafted for the protection of children’s rights
during an armed conflict, identifying five main documents (Machel Report, Cape Town
Principles, Paris Principles, Integrated Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration
Standards and the Machel +10 Report), which provide specific guidance and
recommendations to address rehabilitation and reintegration of child soldiers. The article
aims to highlight recommendations’ specific strengths and weaknesses, and to confirm their
applicability to assist rehabilitation and reintegration of child soldiers. It further proposes
that, when structured in a certain manner, the guidelines could be utilized towards
development of a comprehensive RR guidelines working list and distributed among various
stakeholders, to ease and to coordinate the rehabilitation and reintegration efforts, thereby
providing a more holistic, long-term rehabilitation and reintegration of children. Finally, the
article suggests that while the international guidelines can assist the programmatic
implementation, if they are to be adopted as a comprehensive working list, additional
research and work is needed to create platforms for successful support of the rehabilitation
and reintegration that takes place within child’s family and community.
Born in ex-Yugoslavia, Dr Elizabeta Jevtic-Somlai took a particular interest in protection of
children and minority rights during an armed conflict. Her Masters discussed the persecution
of the Roma during the World War II in the Balkans, while her PhD focused on the
rehabilitation and reintegration challenges of the children associated with armed groups in the
context of the children’s rights during an armed conflict. Currently, Dr Jevtic-Somlai
researches ways that local communities can be empowered to assist the long-term
reintegration of their most vulnerable community members – the children.
Layal T. E. Sarrouh (Watchlist for Children and Armed Conflict, New York, USA)
Recruitment and use of children in Mali
Since the conflict began in January 2012, armed groups in Mali have committed grave
violations against children, including recruitment and use. Ansar Dine, Al-Qaida in the
Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), and
the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) all recruited and used
children, some as young as seven years old. An accurate figure on the number of children
associated with armed groups cannot be drawn, but based on estimates and witness reports on
recruitment, training, and use, by the end of 2012 there were many; likely hundreds.
Witnesses described three recruitment modalities: “voluntary” recruitment, recruitment
through association with family or guardians, and forced recruitment and retention. Armed
groups used children for all manner of activities; Ansar Dine, AQIM, and MUJAO used
children to enforce their interpretation of Sharia. Armed groups also trained children in the
use of weapons and used them in hostilities in 2013. Community members repeatedly
expressed their fears, with urgency and worry, that Ansar Dine, AQIM, and MUJAO were
brainwashing children into practicing and enforcing an interpretation of Islam and Sharia that
is rejected by the majority of Malians. Indoctrinated children require particular and sensitive
care for their rehabilitation and reintegration, including attention to cultural and religious
factors to counter the extreme thoughts and belief patterns instilled in them. Findings are
based on research undertaken in November and December 2012 and February and March
2013.
Layal T. E. Sarrouh is the Research and Reports Officer at Watchlist for Children and
Armed Conflict. Layal has a broad range of experience in child protection, health, and
education in humanitarian settings. She has worked and consulted for numerous organization
including UNICEF, the UNHCR, Plan International, Right to Play, and the International
NGO Council on Violence against Children. Layal holds a Master in Public Health from the
Program on Forced Migration and Health at Columbia University.
PANEL 36: Trauma and transgenerational transmission
Lindsey Dodd (University of Huddersfield, UK)
‘It didn’t traumatise me at all’: The problem of ‘trauma’ in French narratives of
children’s wartime bombing experiences
In oral histories of the Allied bombing of France, in which 60,000 civilians were killed and
many thousands more affected, ‘trauma’ is a word used with great circumspection. This paper
will examine the rejection of ‘trauma’, suggesting that these former war children’s
relationship with their own wartime suffering is highly complex. The paper begins by
commenting on contemporary and current research on the impact of bombing on children,
and then turns to my interviews, noting instances of experience and narrative structure which
suggest possible traumatisation. It notes that interviewees hesitate to use the word ‘trauma’,
even when describing what appear to be traumatic responses – flashbacks, nightmares, etc. It
then explores the rejection of ‘trauma’ in narratives of bombing. First, as most nationally
accepted stories of the Second World War in France ignore not only bombing but also
children, and there are very few commemorative practices that bring bombing into public
discourse, these narrators have no shared cultural scripts to use to help understand their
experiences. Second, disowning trauma may be a way for male interviewees to deal with their
own actions towards civilian populations in France’s later wars of decolonisation. Finally,
narrators situate their own childhood experiences in a hierarchy of wartime hardship where
their own suffering is pushed down the scale in relation to victims of bombing elsewhere and,
particularly, victims of anti-Semitic persecution in France. The idea of civilian war trauma in
France has thus become a toxic concept which many reject. Academics and other must be
careful of attributing ‘trauma’ to those who reject it, as the integrity of composed versions of
past and present selves may be damaged.
Lindsey Dodd: I completed my PhD entitled ‘Children under the Allied bombs, France 19401945’ in 2011 as part of an AHRC-funded project on bombing in World War II in France,
Italy, Germany and the UK. I am currently a Lecturer in Modern History at the University of
Huddersfield, UK.
Eva M. Eppler (Roehampton University, UK)
How to eat Würstel?
This proposed paper analyses the trans-generational impact of World War II on children of
Holocaust refugees. It focuses on the conflict that has arisen out of displacement (from
Austria) and re-settlement (in the UK) between two generations of women, mother and
daughter, over issues of language, culture and (individual and collective) memory loss, e.g.
“how to eat Würstel”. It demonstrates the long-lasting effect of war on children by showing
how not only the first, but also the second post-war generation gets caught up in this conflict.
The proposed sociolinguistic study of three generations of Austrian Jews living in Great
Britain is an investigation into how language use reflects the concepts of home, culture,
memory, and identity. As part of a larger project establishing the socio-linguistic profile of
the Austrian-Jewish Refugee community in London, I will use excerpts of an interview with
DOR, her daughter VIV, and her grandson NIVC to analyse the underlying tensions between
the family members. These are visible in their choice of words and their choice of English
and/or German. DOR fled Austria in 1938, and has since been living in London without
calling it her home. VIV, who is bilingual and bicultural, feels very much at home in London,
and attempts to bring up her son NIC as a “proper Englishman.” DOR’s attempts to pass on
her Austrian memories and culture to the following generations, interfere with VIV’s goal of
educating her son about “English culture.” Their conflict between mother and daughter is
emblematic of immigrant families coping with issues relating to alienation, integration and
assimilation on a daily basis.
Eva M. Eppler is Reader in English Language and Linguistics at Roehampton University,
London and convenes the MRes in Sociolinguistics there. She has been working on the
Austrian Jewish refugee community in London since 1993 and has published extensively on
cultural, linguistic, literary, gender and trans-generational aspects of the Holocaust: she
contributed to the volumes Female Exiles in Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Europe
(2007), Writing after Hitler. The work of Jakov Lind (2001), The Unifying Aspects of
Cultures (2003) and edited Gender and Spoken Interaction (with Pia Pichler, 2009). The
monograph Emigranto has been published in the ‘Austrian Studies in English’ Series of
Braumüller, Vienna in 2010.
Cori Wielenga (University of Pretoria, South Africa)
Some preliminary thoughts on the transgenerational transmission of trauma and the
role of memorialization after violent conflict in Rwanda and South Africa
Recent studies in the area of trauma after violent conflict has found that second generation
survivors may carry memories of trauma that occurred prior to their birth. In addition to this,
the effects of collective trauma that remains unresolved within a society may become
symptomatic amongst the second and third generation. Exploring individual and collective
memory in the Rwandan and South African contexts, this article argues that how we
remember is more important than what we remember if the process of remembering is to
contribute positively to the post-conflict recovery process. Some preliminary thoughts related
to memory after violent conflict through comparisons between how South Africa and Rwanda
have remembered their violent pasts will be considered, particularly in terms of their impact
on second and third generations. A significant difference between these two countries is that
South Africa has allowed for contending narratives about the past to be in dialogue with one
another, whereas Rwanda has chosen the route of preferring one narrative over others. Some
possible implications of this will be explored in this article.
Dr Cori Wielenga is a research fellow in the Department of Political Sciences at the
University of Pretoria. Her research interests include reconciliation and post conflict recovery
on the African continent. She has undertaken extensive ethnographic research in Rwanda and
Burundi.
PANEL 37: Children in post-WWII Europe
Anke Kalkbrenner (Technical University of Dresden, Germany)
‘A refugee child for your home’: A close-up on childcare for unaccompanied Jewish
children in postwar Germany
After the end of World War Two the future of the thousands of unaccompanied Jewish
children (children either orphaned or separated from their families through persecution and
war) located in Germany became a pressing matter. Most of them were gathered by UNRRA
(the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) welfare workers and were
placed under UNRRA committee’s guardianship in specific Children’s Centers. Other
children became charges of the German government or local Jewish communities. The vast
majority of these children were returned to a surviving family member or stayed in foster care
within a Jewish organization. Archival records show that only a very small percentage of
children were put up for adoption. But a large number of people from all over the Jewish
world had a longing to adopt a child survivor of the Holocaust. This paper explores the
situation and plight of unaccompanied Jewish children survivors and their first steps back
into life and community. Beyond rights, who cares? Focusing on the humanitarian and
political transitions the paper also juxtaposes related aspects as ethical and legal issues in
childcare and adoption practice in postwar Germany.
Anke Kalkbrenner obtained her M.Ed. in Social Studies Education at the Technical
University of Dresden. Her research interests include the History of childhood, Jewish
welfare and aspects of immigration and travel in the late 19th century. She is author of „Das
Henriettenstift. Zwischen Asylheim und Alten-Damenstift – Die Geschichte eines jüdischen
Altenheimes“, a study about organized Jewish welfare activities in Dresden (1848–1942).
Currently she writes her dissertation on Growing Up Jewish in Postwar (East) Germany.
Jessica R. Lenz (University of Heidelberg, Germany)
Displaced unaccompanied children in Germany after Second World War: How was
UNRRA to deal with?
At the end of the Second World War there were hundreds of children in the German Allied
Occupation Zones who had been orphaned in the course of the war or had got lost in the
turmoil of the after war days. The necessity of giving them shelter, food and intense
psychological care was obvious. It was promoted and supported by the United Nations Relief
and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). Less obvious were the origins of many of the
children. The question arises, which analytical tools, strategies and techniques the UNRRA
officials and social workers developed to differentiate between genuine orphans and those
children who had simply got lost. How were they to distinguish between Jewish and nonJewish or different national groups of children and how would they subsequently
accommodate their special needs anywhere from religious education to repatriation or
emigration? This paper will, in a second part, examine how the interactions between the
supposedly new safe UNRRA homes of these mostly traumatized children and the German
population of their neighbourhood influenced their childhood, as many of the children had to
stay in the country of the perpetrators much longer than they had expected. Thirdly, the paper
will analyze to what extent personal networks were used to recruit social workers with the
special skills necessary for working with unaccompanied children. UNRRA was the first
international organization to meet the urgent needs of displaced children. The merging of
structure by e.g. the recruitment of staff needs further research.
Jessica R. Lenz: Since 10/2010: PhD scholarship by Evangelisches Studienwerk Villigst e.V.
03/2008-09/2010: Assistant of Prof. Madeleine Herren-Oesch, Professor for Modern History,
Department of History, University of Heidelberg, PhD project. 07/2003-07/2006: Graduate
student research assistant for the editing of the miscellany “Die Universität Heidelberg im
Nationalsozialismus”, published by Wolfgang U. Eckart, Volker Sellin and Eike Wolgast.
2001: State examination (1. Staatsexamen). 1993-2001: Studies of History and German
Language and Literature at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität of Heidelberg, Germany, and the
Università degli Studi di Bologna, Italy (Erasmus-Programm)
Susanne Mayr (University of Salzburg, Austria)
An act of boundless hospitality: Austrian children in Portugal after World War II
This master thesis tackles the issue of Austrian children who were sent to Portugal between
the years of 1948 and 1954 to recover from war traumata, diseases and short weight. The
main resource of research has been qualitative interviews with former “Portugal children”
and one Caritas train guard. Moreover personal belongings, such as letters from the children
to their parents, letters from the Caritas to the parents are being taken into consideration. The
main research questions are: How have those transports in general and especially those to
Portugal started? Which organisation(s) was/were involved? How were those transports
conducted? How do the former children remember their time in Portugal? The first country
after WW II to host children was Switzerland. These transports already started in 1946 and
were conducted by the International Red Cross. In 1948 the Caritas Austria and Caritas
Portugal in joint action started to conduct transports of Austrian children. The first transport
route was via train to Switzerland and then via plane to Portugal; however, only one transport
was conducted this way, as it was financially not feasible. From then on transports were
conducted by train and ship via Genève or via train on the land route. Approximately 5000
children were sent to Portugal. Some of them then got invitations to come back to their host
families, thus they could go twice. While there has been research on the transports to
Switzerland, so far there has been no research on the situation in Portugal.
Susanne Mayr, Teacher’s programme in History and English, University of Salzburg.
Erasmus (EU exchange programme for Higher Education students) at the University of Leeds
(UK), 2011 – Jan 2012.
Ina Schulz (International Tracing Service (ITS), Bad Arolsen, Germany)
Unaccompanied Jewish children in Germany after the Second World War
The Israeli memorial Yad Vashem assumes that approximately 1.5 million Jewish children
were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust They died after months and years of social
discrimination and persecution in the Nazi ghettos, concentration and extermination camps or
on death marches. Those children and youths, who had survived the National Socialists’
crimes often ended up on foreign soil – in the country of the perpetrators – without the
company of their family. The so-called „Unaccompanied Children” (a group, which has
included also those children and youths, who had been exploited by forced labor) fell into the
responsibility of a separate section of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation
Administration (UNRRA), the Child Search Branch (CSB), a search and information service,
who acted as part of the future International Tracing Service (ITS). Jewish organisations, like
the Agency for Palestine or the Children- and Youth-Aliyah, as well as the countries of origin
also have claimed onto the Jewish child survivors. As a consequence, this specific group of
“Unaccompanied Children” got in – because of the care and education of Jewish
organisations, the universalistic and idealistic goals of the Child Welfare Officers of the CSB
and the efforts of the countries of origin on repatriation – between different interests and
ideals. The paper will focus on those different interests and ideals. It will clearly clarify, if
and how far those different interest groups helped the welfare of the children.
Ina Schulz is a graduate history student currently working as a research assistant at the
International Tracing Service (ITS) in Bad Arolsen. She received her M.A. at the University
of Trier where she defended her thesis “Life and Survive of Jewish children and youths in
Nazi concentration camps” in July 2010. Her research interests are: children and youth as
victims of National Socialism and child survivors. Her recent research focuses on the
situation of “Unaccompanied Children” in Germany in the immediate post-WWII years.
PANEL 38: Concepts of relief
Panayiotis Diamadis (University of Technology, Sydney, Australia)
Save the Children: The origins of international humanitarian relief efforts
The Save the Children Fund (STCF), today an organisation with global reach, was first
formed out of the devastation of World War One. It was quickly recognised that children
coming out of wartime had particular needs that required attention. In cooperation with the
more established Near East Relief (NER) organisation, STCF developed some of the basic
techniques now associated with fundraising for humanitarian relief. The use of celebrities to
promote donations was pioneered by the Near East Relief in the early 1920s, recruiting the
services of personalities such as Jackie Coogan (later famous as Uncle Fester in The Addams
Family). Other techniques included creating fliers and folded pamphlets showing the impact
of STCF/NER work on children’s lives across the Near East, and the organisation of special
days focussed on donation of money and essential supplies such as food and clothing. With
names such as ‘Golden Rule Sunday’ and ‘Bundle Day’, the STCF and NER were highly
successful in securing desperately needed emergency supplies for the child survivors of the
Armenian, Hellenic and Assyrian Genocides. Taking into consideration the desperate needs
for reconstruction within Europe after the Great War, the story of the Save the Children Fund
and the Near East Relief becomes even more remarkable. This fully illustrated presentation
will examine the forces that drove the formation of the world’s first international
humanitarian relief agencies, the techniques they pioneered during, and subsequent to, the
Genocides, as well as the impact of these efforts on ‘modern’ humanitarian relief work.
Dr Panayiotis Diamadis lectures in Genocide Studies at the University of Technology,
Sydney, and serves as Vice-President of the Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide
Studies. The experiences of children during, and subsequent to, genocide are the key research
interest, in particular Armenian, Assyrian and Hellene child survivors. Amongst his
publications are ‘Rafael Lemkin and the Children of Anatolia’ (Genocide Perspectives IV,
2012), a study of the inclusion of point ‘(e) forcible transfer of children’ in the United
Nations’ definition of the crime of genocide.
Rosaria Franco (University of Nottingham Ningbo, China)
Save the Chinese children: Chinese and Western humanitarianism in comparison in
1950s’ Hong Kong
After the Chinese were forced to give it up to the British, under colonial rule Hong Kong
developed essentially as a migrant society. However, it was mainly after the Chinese
Communist revolution and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 that
Hong Kong received its greatest number of immigrants. One million Chinese refugees,
including families with children, are estimated to have entered the island between the late
1940s and early 1950s alone. In the latter decade, as the colonial administration was badlyequipped to provide welfare for all, Hong Kong attracted a variety of external international
and British nongovernmental religious and humanitarian organizations, in addition to the
mobilization of the long established local branches of Western churches. Overwhelmed by
the sheer number of refugees, the colonial administration even suspended its distrust in local
civic organizations and encouraged the Chinese community to mobilize to help the new
immigrants. With specific reference to the assistance to children, the paper aims at outlining
similarities and differences in child-saving ideas and practices in delivering relief. It will also
discuss to what extent Confucian ideas of childhood and welfare held by the Chinese
community challenged the ones held by the Western / Christian organizations. This paper will
present preliminary findings of a new research project on humanitarian assistance to Chinese
child refugees in Hong Kong in 1945-1962 based on research carried out in Hong Kong and
British archives.
Rosaria Franco (PhD) is Assistant Professor in Modern European History at the Division of
International Studies of the University of Nottingham Ningbo China (China PRC). She is an
expert of history of childhood with training in social policy and is mainly interested in
policies to address the impact of migration and forced migration on children. Her past
research includes a study of the Soviet social policies to tackle mass child homelessness.
More recently, she has become interested in the history of migration in East Asia and is
working on a project to study Eastern and Western humanitarian cultures and practices in
comparison.
Christopher Lash (Lazarski University, Warsaw, Poland)
Child relief in times of mass displacement: Poland's ‘Recovered Lands’ in the aftermath
of World War II – The case of Zielona Góra
In the aftermath of the Second World Poland experienced displacement on a mass scale, with
approximately 20% of the population taken up by migration of some sort. The epicentre of
these displacements was the Polish 'recovered lands', territories Poland gained from Germany
as a result of the Yalta and Potsdam conferences. Between 1944-1948 millions of Germans
were expelled and Poles were settled in these lands. Poles who settled here required support
in the wake of a disastrous war in which many had lost homes, wealth, loved ones and in the
case of children, their parents. As a result a host of relief bodies approached the problems of
the destitute, including that of the Polish state, Polish private relief organisations and
international agencies such as UNRRA. The issue of child relief was crucial in post-war
Poland, with over one million Polish children losing at least one parent as a result of the war.
My paper will show how relief organisations dealt with the issue of children in the years
1945-8 with a special focus on efforts in the small Lower Silesian town of Zielona Góra.
Using archival sources and drawing on new literature on children in post-war Europe it will
illustrate how the Polish state accomodated children in the immediate postwar years. It argues
firstly that in these years attitudes towards child relief were closely linked to worries of moral
decay and secondly that aid to children helps us to understand the strength or weakness of the
nascent Polish state.
Christopher Lash: I currently lecture in International Relations at Lazarski University,
Warsaw, Poland where I run courses in Ethnic Cleansing and Displacement and the History
of International Relations. My PhD thesis ‘Moving West: The Transfer of Eastern Poles to
Post-Yalta Poland, Urban Reconstruction and Post-war Relief, 1944-8.’ was completed and
defended in December 2010 at the University of Manchester under the supervision of
Professor Peter Gatrell. I specialise in the modern history of Europe, with a specific focus on
Poland and Central Europe. My research interests extend into the social and cultural history
of war, nationalism, ethnic cleansing, migration and memory studies.
Nicholas Ibeawuchi Omenka (Abia State University, Uturu, Nigeria)
Encircled and starved: Children in the Nigeria-Biafra war
The Nigeria-Biafra War was arguably the most horrendous armed conflict of the twentieth
century in Africa. News of the Biafran child reached saturation point for most part of the
1960s when the word ‘Biafra’ was synonymous with hunger. Indeed, the plight of civilians,
especially women and children, in that civil war gave rise to modern humanitarianism with its
various san frontier trappings. Utilizing newly available documents and photographs, this
paper sheds light on the unique humanitarian efforts of the international relief agencies,
especially of the Christian churches, not only to feed millions of malnourished children inside
Biafra, but also to evacuate mortally sick ones to neighbouring African countries for
treatment and rehabilitation. It was a pioneer lesson on ecumenical brotherhood which is yet
to be fully appreciated and internationalized.
Nicholas Ibeawuchi Omenka is professor of church history at Abia State University, Uturu,
Nigeria. He obtained his M.A. honours in theology at the University of Innsbruck in 1979 and
a combined M.A. honours in History and English at the University of Regensburg in 1984.
He received his PhD in theology in 1987 also at the University of Regensburg with
specialization in church history. He has written extensively on the mission history of Nigeria
and in recent times has focused interest on the Nigeria-Biafra war. His forth-coming book is
on the Catholic Church and the Nigeria-Biafran war.
PANEL 39: Israel and Palestine
Francesca Bombi (War Child Holland, Israel and occupied Palestinian Territory) and
Waed Ayash (Madaa Centre, East Jerusalem, occupied Palestinian Territories)
Arrest and detention of Palestinian children in Silwan, East Jerusalem: Hitting the
community at its heart as a new powerful method of conflict
The present paper describes the arrest and detention of Palestinian children in Silwan, a
neighbourhood of East Jerusalem. While the prolonged Israeli Palestinian conflict has a wide
range of severe implications for children, Silwan neighbourhood has been in the last years
one of the development sites of a ‘untraditional’ method of warfare, namely the regular arrest
and detention of children on suspicion of stone throwing or ‘incitement to violence’.
According to the Silwan based Wadi Hilweh Information Centre between January and May
2012 56 children were arrested in Silwan, with children constituting the majority of arrested
persons in the area. Many of the arrested children reported being mistreated while in the
custody of Israeli authorities including children being arrested in the middle of the night,
being physically and verbally abused, interrogated in the absence of their parents, forced to
sign confessions in Hebrew that they do not understand, being held in solitary confinement or
with adults and being put under house arrest without the possibility of attending school.
Furthermore, as many organizations have pointed out, officers committing these violations
appear to act in complete impunity. The present paper contends that the practice of arrests
and detention of Palestinian children in East Jerusalem violates the safeguards established by
international human rights law and humanitarian law, has severe psychological effects on the
children and cannot be justified by security concerns.
Francesca Bombi is the Child Rights Monitoring & Advocacy Coordinator for War Child
Holland, based in Jerusalem.
Waed Ayash is Occupational Therapist at the Madaa Centre.
Martin Ottovay Jørgensen (Aalborg University, Denmark)
Being young in contested lands not at war and not at peace: Experiences and imagined
futures of Palestinian, Negev Bedouin and Israeli children and youth in and near the
Gaza Strip, 1956-1967
This paper combines the themes of displacement and refugees and victims in armed conflict.
Specifically, it examines glimpses of the everyday life situations, agency and coping of
Palestinian, Negev Bedouin and Israeli children and youth in and near the Gaza Strip from
1956 to 1967 with the UN peacekeeping operation on the Egyptian-Israeli Armistice
Demarcation Line serving as both prism and area of interaction. The principal aim is by way
of an interdisciplinary approach sensitive to agency, place and time to remedy the blind spot
in research on the youth in and near the Gaza Strip in the years the United Nations
Emergency Force was operational in the Gaza Strip from 1956 to 1967 as a distinct period as
well as part of the longer period from the expulsions from Palestine in 1949/1949 with the
establishment of the Jewish state of Israel to the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip in 1967.
On this basis, it will additionally be argued that the changes seen in and brought about by the
‘new wars’ are very much real, but less a rupture than argued. The paper will build on a
unique material in form of UN records obtained in the UN archives in New York and a
broader contextual literature on Palestinian and Israeli history.
Martin Ottovay Jørgensen, Ph.D. Student with the History Programme at the Department of
Culture and Global Studies, Aalborg University, is looking into Cold War UN Peacekeeping
and seeks to provide a more than hitherto localised and critical frame for the encounters
between locals and incoming troops in the overlapping spaces of ‘home’ and ‘mission area in
the Gaza Strip and Cyprus.
Yvonne Kozlovsky Golan (University of Haifa, Israel)
The movie ‘Arna's Children’: Education or indoctrination?
Arna Mar Hammis (Jewish human rights activist, married to an Arab), started during the first
Intifada the "Stone Theater", which was part of the alternative education system in the
Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin, after the collapse of the formal system under the Israeli
occupation. Arna's son, Juliano Mar, a well-known Israeli actor and a human rights activist
himself, joined his mother and became the house director of the theater. He focused in his
movie on young Youssuf, Ashraf and A'la, who found a creative outlet in Arna's theater.
Seven years later (2002), after a series of bloody terrorist attacks against Israel, the IDF
returns to Jenin and grazes part of the refugee camp in order to flush out the terrorists who
were hiding behind the camp civilians. Mar Hammis returns in his movie to the ruins of Jenin
in order to look at the tragic fate of the theater children who turned into "warriors". The
movie "Arna's Children" won many reviews in Israel and the world. In the wake of Arna's
action, and after her death her son Juliano became the manager of the "Freedom Theater" in
Jenin. On April 4, 2011, Mar Hemmis was murdered in front of his theater by Palestinian
"freedom fighters". Today, 10 years after the movie was screened and two years after his
murder, and with the events of the Arab Spring, it is interesting to look at the movie with a
new perspective and raise questions with regard to the personal and collective responsibility
of the civil society to its children under occupation. - What are the lessons we have learnt
from Arna's action that can give us a clear picture on Palestinian children as their country's
future. - What is the role of private and international aid organizations in the empowerment of
children and training then to a better world? What is their responsibility? - Are children to
become warriors for political causes, or society has the responsibility to educate them and
give them knowledge, security and a safe life in the future Palestinian state. In the lecture we
will screen scenes from the movie: "Arna's Children". Dir: Juliano Mar Hammis, Israel, 2003
Yvonne Kozlovsky Golan, Ph.D., Head of the Graduate Program for Culture and Film
Studies, Humanities Faculty, University of Haifa, Israel.
Heidi Morrison (University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, USA)
Remembering strength, forgetting fear: Interviews with Palestinians who grew up
during the second intifada
My paper explores how violence that Palestinian children experienced in the second
intifada/uprising (2000-2004) lingers in the victims’ memories today. The second intifada
presided over the collapse of the Oslo Accords and was more violent than the first intifada,
which initially spurred the Oslo Accords. During the second Palestinian intifada, children
constituted nearly half of the Palestinian population and endured violence of many different
forms on almost a daily basis. One-third of those lost in the second intifada were less than 15
years of age. Scholars who study the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have conducted quantitative
studies on the impact of political violence on Palestinian children. Such studies are not
specific to the second intifada, nor are they qualitative in nature. Typical studies on political
violence and Palestinian children focus on measuring instances of bedwetting and
nightmares. Typical studies on Palestinian children of the second intifada also make
generalized statements about symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome and they make
predictions that such stress will engender more violence. In the oral histories I collected,
memories of helplessness and vulnerability are always accompanied by memories of strength
and fortitude. While it is true that children have a strong ability to understand politics when
they are young (Coles, 1986) and these memories of strength may very well have been what
the subjects experienced as children, there is clearly a genre of discourse in which they talk
about the second intifada. My paper explores how the intifada lives in my subjects’ memories
as an empowering experience. This is most clearly evidenced by the way in which many
subjects leave out of their narratives the incidents of bedwetting and crying which their
parents clearly remember. In conclusion, I ask what sense can we make of Palestinian
children who grew up in war remembering their experiences in (somewhat) empowering
terms?
Heidi Morrison is Assistant Professor of Middle East History at the University of
Wisconsin, La Crosse. She received her PhD in 2009 from the University of California, Santa
Barbara. She is the editor of The Global History of Childhood Reader (Routledge, 2012) and
author of the forthcoming book Modernizing Childhood in Early Twentieth Century Egypt
(American University in Cairo Press, 2013).
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