Ukrainian children in DP camps in Western Germany and Austria (the second half of the 1940s – early 1950s)

Abstract

The paper aims to study the situation of Ukrainian refugee children in post-war Western Germany and Austria. In particular, the author highlights the issue of children’s food, provision of clothing and school supplies, medical care, education, upbringing and leisure of Ukrainian children in refugee camps.

The approximate number of children of postwar Ukrainian emigration to Western Germany and Austria was 20%. Some had an experience of being a refugee or Ostarbeiter children during World War II, while others were born in the first postwar years in Western Germany and Austria in Ukrainian immigrant families unwilling to return to Soviet Ukraine. Despite the different reasons of joining the camps and different social backgrounds, their childhood took place in the first difficult postwar years, outside their home, with the typical difficulties of camp life, which greatly affected the physical and psychological health of children, their education, upbringing, and self-identification. The daily life of Ukrainian refugee children was determined by the difficulties that were peculiar of all Ukrainian post-war emigration. They were associated primarily with insufficient provision of basic needs (lack of healthy and balanced food, lack of homes, unsatisfactory living and accommodation conditions), frequent relocations, separation from family, illnesses, etc. At the same time, it was in the camps that the physical and psychological rehabilitation of children from the war consequences began, the educational process continued, and children’s leisure and upbringing peculiarities were organized.

Preservation and development of Ukrainian identity, language, national educational traditions, and the system of bringing up children outside Ukraine were the vital tasks for the Ukrainian community abroad, as it greatly contributed to the formation of national consciousness of Ukrainian children in exile. The shared childhood experience spent in the refugee camps united and grouped them in a foreign ethnic societies and promoted active participation in the public life of the Ukrainian diaspora in the later period of life.