All tagged Child refugees
Casefiles are a common source for scholars in social history and related fields. They have, for instance, been crucial in the development of micro-historical approaches to the Holocaust. In recent years, they have been taken into consideration to examine humanitarian responses to and experiences of forced displacement. In this post, I would like briefly to discuss some of the potential, limitations, and challenges that this material entails. To do so, I will examine a specific set of sources: the casefiles of a group of more than 1,000 young Holocaust survivors who were resettled to Canada in the aftermath of the Second World War through a project sponsored by the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC). These young people were predominantly Eastern European teenage boys who, at the time of application for a visa, lived in Displaced Persons (DP) camps, children’s homes and with foster families across Europe.
Images of refugee children in cages, on capsizing boats, and in overpacked camps fill our news and social media; yet scholars know that none of this is new and that many liberal democracies continue to fail in the most basic task of acting humanely. Democracies prevent refugees’ entry, push back boats, isolate the displaced on small islands, and prevent people from the dignity of learning and working. Assimilating refugees to a new land often leads to “cleansing” them physically, culturally, and linguistically. However, one of the most brutal dictatorships in human history requestedshiploads of children and provided housing, food, education, and job training all while preserving their native tongue and much of their cultural heritage.
