« Droits des enfants au XXe siècle », Yves Denéchère et David Niget (dir.) ISBN 978-2-7535-4131-3 Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2015, www.pur-editions.fr

During the first year of Nazi occupation in Belgium, the German authorities consented to send thousands of hungry children to neutral Switzerland for three-month periods of recuperation by means of a Swiss-operated evacuation scheme. After Nazi officials in Berlin learned of these unusual evacuations, the German occupation authorities in Belgium became embroiled in defending and justifying their actions. This article argues that while such contradictions and paradoxes in occupation policies epitomized the Nazi leadership, both the value and agency of children – and the perception of saving them – became unconventional Nazi weapons of exploitation and control.

This article provides details of a relatively little-known Swiss initiative during the Second World War. From 1940, Swiss charities provided large-scale humanitarian aid to war-stricken children, offering short-stay evacuations of over 60,000 French, Belgian and Yugoslav children to Swiss families, including at least some French Jewish children. In summer 1942, however, when French authorities began the round-ups of Jews, this approach faltered. That September, when many French Jewish children were stranded after their parents' deportation, a meeting took place between the Swiss ambassador and the French Premier, Pierre Laval. A deal might have been struck to protect these French Jewish children from deportation and extermination, but was not the preferred policy. This article analyses that meeting, concluding that Swiss officials were bound by the view that their own self-mandated neutrality might be compromised, despite a pre-existing evacuation infrastructure and strong Swiss public support, and to the fatal detriment of thousands of French Jewish children.

No abstract

Today’s Russian-Chechen conflict is based upon a long history of colonization and domination. Although the historic conflict relies upon an underlying mentality of “us” versus “them,” this assumption does not serve as the core identity marker of Chechen identity. Instead, the 1944 deportations, in which Stalinist Russia deported and exiled half a million Chechens, has become the primary national identity marker. This suggests that when an ethnic group has experienced deportations, their historic memories will serve a greater role in collective identity construction than any other relationship they have with that adversary.