Vortrag
"Overcoming Animosities, Creating New Inequalities: Humanitarian Relief after WWI and WWII"

Gemeinsam mit PD Dr. Maria Framke (Erfurt) bietet Frau PD Dr. Friederike Kind-Kovács (HAIT) auf der biennial conference der Society for the History of Children and Youth zwei thematisch zusammenhängende Panels zum Thema "The Transnationalization of Care: Humanitarian Child Relief in Central and Southeastern Europe and the Global South” an. Friederike Kovács hält im ersten Panel einen Vortrag über "Overcoming Animosities, Creating New Inequalities: Humanitarian Relief after WWI and WWII”.

Der nachfolgende Text ist ein Abstract des Vortrags von Frau PD Dr. Friederike Kind-Kovács.

 “To help the Jews of Hungary so that they may be able to help themselves!” was the final appeal of a 1946 publication on “The Tragedy of a People”, which was included in one of the reports by UNRRA that were meant to estimate if Hungary was worth of any humanitarian relief. While Hungary had fought in the war on the side of the Axis powers, initially the UNRRA did not plan to provide relief to this former enemy country.

Yet, as the need of Hungary and especially of its Jewish population became so striking, UNRRA finally stepped in to conduct an emergency aid mission. Hungary’s children were a prime object of this relief undertaking. The international community was not just in the post-WWII period reluctant to relieve the suffering of Hungary’s population; also, in the post-WWI period the newly established international relief agencies first hesitated but then later offered the needed relief to the children of this defeated nation.

On this basis, the paper examines how the notion of the ’innocent’ and ‘deserving’ child victim served in both postwar periods as a driving force to contain the recent animosities and enable transatlantic humanitarian child relief to Hungary. It juxtaposes the institutional discourse of international relief organizations (ARA, SCF/SCIU, ICRC) after the First World War, which then offered material and financial donations as well as institutional and educational support, with the arguments brought forward by the UNRRA that triggered relief to Hungary’s children in need after the Second World War and the Holocaust.

By engaging with child relief to one of East Central Europe’s war-affected countries, the paper hopes to contribute to a discussion about the ways in which ‘the child in need’ came to serve both as a central venue to resolve international conflicts and to manifest new power imbalances. In that way it aims to enable comparative explorations of children’s historical role in Central and Eastern role and the Global South.