CHIBOW Researchers Presented Papers at the Society for the History of Children and Youth Ninth Bienn

Early Stage Researchers Jakub Gałęziowski (University Augsburg) and Lisa Haberkern (University of Silesia) and Michal Korhel (University of Jan Evangelista Purkyně in Ústí nad Labem), members of the European Union’s Marie Curie Initial Training Network “Children born of war – past, present and future” project, participated in this year’s conference of the Society for the History of Children and Youth that took place on June 21-23 at Rutgers University, Camden, New Jersey. Under the title “Transition, Transaction, and Transgression” the conference concentrated most of all on transformation processes that children and youth undergo, but simultaneously also stimulate in their environment in different geographical areas and time periods. A wide scope of childhood studies in the fields of history, sociology and beyond was presented during the conference.

Lisa, Jakub and Michal introduced the perspective of Central and Eastern Europe in the panel “War’s Vulnerable Legacy: Children of the Enemy in Central and Eastern Europe after WWII”. Based on the ESR’s projects the panel shed light on the experiences of growing up of Polish Children Born of War, Volksdeutsch-Polish children in Upper Silesia and Czech-German children in the aftermath of WWII. After the subsequent commentary by Professor Sonya Michel (University of Maryland) in the discussion the presented experiences of children were put in the context of post-WWII Europe. Moreover the methodology and potential ethical issues of research conducted on sensible topics were discussed.

Presented papers:

Jakub Gałęziowski : “Being a Child of the Enemy: Life Stories of Polish Children Born of Local Mothers and Occupiers”

Lisa Haberkern: “Children in Captivity: Growing Up in the Zone of Conflict between Volksliste and Rehabilitacja”

Michal Korhel: “Unwanted Future of the Nation: Czech-German Children in Czech Society after the Second World War”