Defining the ‘best interests’ of children during the post-1945 transformations in Europe

Abstract

After World War II, the welfare workers of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and International Refugee Organization took care of refugee children in post-war Germany and assisted them in returning to their home countries. This article analyses the changes in welfare workers’ decisions about the future of unaccompanied displaced children of presumably Ukrainian origin in the light of the post-1945 transformations. It explores the relationship of transformations in the humanitarian approach to child resettlement with geopolitical ruptures between the former Allies after 1945. It aims to demonstrate that by 1947, welfare workers’ preconceived notion that the ‘best interests’ of Ukrainian children were served by reconnecting them with family and homeland, wherever possible, had given way in the face of political transformations that welfare workers confronted on the ground during the transition from war to peace. Despite their deep commitment to restoring children to their national and familial roots, they soon began to consider that allowing Ukrainian refugee children to emigrate was better for them than their repatriation to Soviet Ukraine.