Figure 1.--Save the Children here is finding Swedish homes for these Austrian and Germn orphans. The Swedush press caption read, "Nio tyska och österrikiska s. k. ensamstående barn under sex årkom på torsdagskvällen till Stockholm för att omhändertas av Rädda barnen. Därmed har sammanlagt 44 barn av denna kategori överförts till Sverige sedan i höstas för adoption av svenska familjer. Hela aktionen har genomförts i samarbete med Venezuelas minister i Stockholm. dr José Herrera. På bilden den tyska vårdarinnan Eili Schulz och fr Eira Stedt med fyra små skydo? lingar." That means somethin like, "Nine German and Austrian S. K. orphan children during six Årkom on Thursday evening to Stockholm to be cared for by Save the Children. In this way, a total of 44 orphan have been transferred to Sweden since last autumn for adoption by Swedish families. The whole action has been carried out in cooperation with the Minister of Venezuela in Stockholm. Dr. José Herrera. In the picture the German nurse Eili Schulz and Mrs. Eira Stedt with four small ????? ??????." The photograph was dated July 3, 1952.

Save the Children (STC), with the NAZI surrender (May 1945), was able to aid refugee children and displaced persons in UNRAA camps. Among those assisted were the Jewish Holocaust survivors and other survivors of NAZI concentration camps--tragically very few child survivors. Europe was awash with refugees and displaced persons including many children. Europe began to recover in the 1950s. We notice Swedish STC helping to find homes for German and Austrian orphans in Sweden into the early-1950s. We are not enirely sure why the orphans could not be found German adoptive parents and the caption does not explain why. The German Economic Mracle was underway by the early-50s. We assume that conditions were still not sufficently recovered in Germany to deal with all the orphan children. The children we see in the 1950s were not war orphans, given their age they would have been born after the War (figure 1). As Europe revovered, Save the Children began to take on its modern role and operations. Crisis-driven work continued with efforts to help refugees resulting from the Arab attempt to destroy Israel (1948-49). Here most of Save the Children's work was with Palestinian refugees rather than Jewish refugees. This was because Israel assigned a priority to integrateg Jewish refugees. The Arab states which invaded Israel on the other hand refused to integrate the Palestinian refugees and forced them to live in desolate tent camps, in part to create a propaganda tool. Other crises were the Communist North Korean invasion of South Korea (1950) and the Soviet supression of the Hungarian Revolution (1956).

Created: 9:42 AM 1/14/2017
Last updated: 9:43 AM 1/14/2017