A Humanitarian Dilemma: Child Evacuation in the Twentieth Century

The term ‘Kindertransport’ refers to the rescue of more than 10,000 mostly Jewish children and their evacuation to the United Kingdom during the Holocaust. However, this was not the first children's temporary relocation program. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, local initiatives sought to temporarily remove children from urban slums. The aftermath of the First World War paved the way towards the internationalist idea of saving children from hunger, epidemics, and neglect through their temporary relocation to more rural areas or foreign countries. This relief and rescue strategy was subsequently employed throughout the twentieth century to shield children from war, ethnic persecution, conflict, malnutrition, violence, or natural disasters. Engaging with selected historical moments that triggered children's evacuation or relocation, the article argues that this humanitarian practice has long posed a dilemma: while it was employed to prevent children's suffering, it often had problematic psychological repercussions on children's emotional well-being. Researching this dilemma demands scrutinizing how major upheavals of the twentieth century altered both the practice of and public attitude towards the practice of children's evacuation and why it continues to be employed up to today. Considering children's challenging experiences allows for a critical evaluation of child evacuations as a humanitarian practice of ‘saving’ children

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