Refugee Children in England
- Auth:
Paul Plaut, M.D., D.Ph.
Problems arising from the evacuation of children have lately been discussed at length. This paper deals with a similar subject, an evacuation problem on the largest scale. Evacuation of schoolchildren means more than the separation of children from their parents and home environment for an indefinite time; it means also the abandonment of many factors which have been regarded as essential for their development. We are far from asserting that with evacuated children as contrasted with refugee children the problem of the ” broken home ” need arise.
On the contrary, we may assume that life under new sociological and psychological conditions may very often have a positive influence on many children who, otherwise, Would never have had the opportunity to live and grow up outside the narrow confines ?f their ” traditional ” atmosphere, and to make contact with a wider world. In the case of the refugee child we may find a parallel state of affairs, but with specific Problems added.
Refugees in Britain
There are at present about 9,000 children under the guardianship of the ” British Movement for the Care of Children from Germany In discussing this group (Castendyck, 1939) we must distinguish between children who came to England with their parents and those whose parents are still in Germany, Austria, etc. The first group may serve us as a control group. These children in the control group belong to families who managed to bring over part of their fortune, to start a new life in different professions and to settle down in due time, although under changed conditions and on a lower standard of life. The children themselves found a new country, a new and mostly unknown language, new customs, and a different people, etc. For the first time in their lives they have learned the significance of the word ” foreigner ” and have felt themselves as foreigners. On the other hand they could live with their parents, they had an unchanged home-life on the whole, and, at the same time, they got in touch with English boys or girls in their schools and easily learned the new language in a very short time. We have seen small children between the ages of 3 and 5 who after a few months spent in a kindergarten or a school have learned a fluent and accentless English, forgetting their own language rapidly. Even with older children we have always found the same thing. They have not found any difficulty in learning English because they imitate or adapt it differently from the adult for whom the foreign language is the greatest hindrance to settling down. We may, therefore, summarize observations on this control group thus:?that these children had only to face a change of place under relatively favourable conditions, and we may add that this change may well become a positive factor for their future life.
The ” Genuine Refugee ” presents a different picture. First of all we must point out that these children of different ages do not belong to a group which can be distinguished by certain uniform characteristics. They belong to different social classes, different psychological types, and they had not been selected for emigration according to their individual qualification for it, but because of a ery urgent need. This is a very important psychological point, which we always have to keep in mind. There are very young children who, of course, do not realize their present situation and change of life. Only when they are older will they learn that they have lost their fathers, killed in concentration camps or prisons, or that their parents have been deported to an unknown place with an unknown fate. The older children, on the other hand, came over with a more or less heavy burden according to their lifeexperiences during the last years in Germany, Austria, etc. They could not mix with children of other faith and race, they were excluded from common playing grounds, schools, etc. They have seen their parents-in great distress; they know what a concentration camp really means. Fortunately, young children possess the talent of forgetting very quickly, but there are events which they cannot easily forget. Loaded with this burden, these children came over not only separated from their parents but to find here strange people, a strange language, and strange surroundings. It is true they became absorbed in the early days by the kindness and human understanding which they have found here and which they had not known for years; they enjoyed the new life, they found it very interesting and they wrote letters to their parents abroad about it. We have often seen these letters from both sides but find a new and tragic situation developing for the youngsters. The parents abroad described their miserable and hopeless life in full detail, and they asked their ” happy” children here to do their very best to bring them over. For many of the young children this knowledge and claim became another heavy burden and a source of depression and unhappiness, because they could not find the way to begin. The outbreak of war and the total interruption of communication between these children and their parents abroad have not eased this situation; on the contrary, rumours and newspaper reports about ill-treatment, atrocities, deportations, have only heightened the whole tension.
Lodging of Refugees
Experiences with evacuated children have shown that the question of lodging is of the greatest importance for settlement and stabilization under the present conditions. Because of the facts we have mentioned above, it is obvious that various and often very complicated situations could not be avoided with regard to the refugees living with private families or in camps and hostels. Nevertheless, we may add that wartime conditions on the whole have cleared up the situation from many points of view.
Where the children could be lodged with private families they have mostly found there boys or girls of about the same age, with whom they could easily mix; on the other hand jealousy between the host’s own and refugee children, together with ordinary home troubles, could only have a bad effect on harmony and especially on the relations between his family and the refugee. Wartime conditions could only aggravate this situation and we have, therefore, often found refugees who have had to change their foster-homes several times and so found it difficult to settle down.
There are many people who regard the placing of refugees in camps as an ideal solution in the belief that this type of organization can be a substitute community for Young people, who are bound by the same fate, and that it is the best and easiest way to handle and educate the individual personalities. This is a mistake* except in those camps where there are boys or girls of about the same age who are being trained for the same work, for example, farming or other agricultural employment, with the definite object of going to Palestine or overseas where they will have to live in similar conditions. All the other camps only present the appearance of a community to the outside world, and experience has proved that it is extremely difficult to cater for children and adolescents of different ages, different abilities, and different projects for a future life, so far as they have any such projects. We must never forget that camps should only be regarded as an emergency solution and not as a special method t? educate and train these children. They await the freedom, for which they long: because they were deprived of it before and because they are young. We have seen many of these boys and girls living in camps, and they always have the same complaints and difficulties: they feel lonely, they do not know what to do with their spare time, they are longing for a small room ” where they could sometimes be on their own find a similar position in hostels, where there are boys and girls over fourteen. * We have the same problem and outlook with regard to the evacuated children.
Education of Refugees
There is another important point with which we have to deal. To return to our control group we may refer to the following facts : Even if the members of this group now live on a standard far below that to which they were accustomed in Germany, they all receive in England an education which will enable them to learn a trade or profession, which they like or in which they may find interest in course of time. They have, moreover, according to the profession of their parents, the opportunity of finding a place, where they may learn their future profession. This is in contrast to their position before they came to this country.
All these questions are more complicated when dealing with the group of the “Genuine Refugees”, and from our experience, we consider that it is from the problems of education that the most serious difficulties for the refugees and for the responsible organizations will arise. We have to remember that none of these boys and girls, without any exception, had a regular school life, in Germany, Austria, etc., for some years because of the restrictions on Jews. On the one hand, they had to leave their schools at an early stage, on the other, they had no opportunity to be * We have seen these cases in the East London Child Guidance Clinic and in the Institute for the Scientific Treatment of Delinquency.
trained in skilled work, with the exception of the agricultural group. In the midst of their miserable and hopeless life they lost any chance of planning for their future and for a profession they wished to take up. They do not know the meaning of a vocational profession. Now t{iey live here, they have to face labour restrictions for aliens and wartime conditions; it is very difficult for them to find places where they can be trained for any profession. But they all have the strongest desire to get any job that they can, and to become free and independent of hospitality and, not least, to be rid of the dullness and apathy from which they suffer to a great extent. It cannot be regarded as a proper way out of these troubles when very strong and healthy boys, not to speak of intelligent boys, are occupied with kitchenwork and housework in hostels where they live. They do it, but they may lose their tempers, behave badly and get into troubles of every kind. Young girls find it much easier to occupy themselves, as there are many jobs to be found which suit their abilities and normal tastes.
We do not intend to discuss the many problems arising from the fact that these refugees come from different countries with different standards of life, different mentalities and attitudes. They represent a variegated conglomerate of individuals, even if they are all refugees. The difficulties with which we have to deal will be very serious because of this, more especially as we have to face problems with which no other generation has ever been confronted.
It is of course not only a question of good organization to find the best solution, but from our experience we consider that it would be easier for the various organizations, institutions and personalities who are responsible for the refugee children, if there were a Central Organization, not only to supervise the various hostels, camps, foster-homes, etc., but to work out homogeneous plans based on the experiences of those who have been concerned with refugees. At present there is a lack of such a eentral organization, and we have often to face difficulties which could easily be avoided. First of all, a way should be found to occupy boys and girls who have left school. They cannot wait for an indefinite time to get a job ” some day In our opinion hostels should be used as training centres, not for special professions but for the purpose of continuing the education of these youngsters on a wider scale. Just as home security must be regarded as the background for young children, self-security and self-confidence based on real knowledge is the sine qua non for the happiness and stabilization of these uprooted refugee youngsters.
Castendyck, E., ” Refugee Children in EuropeThe Social Service Review, XIII, uecember, 1939.
Disclaimer
The historical material in this project falls into one of three categories for clearances and permissions:
Material currently under copyright, made available with a Creative Commons license chosen by the publisher.
Material that is in the public domain
Material identified by the Welcome Trust as an Orphan Work, made available with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
While we are in the process of adding metadata to the articles, please check the article at its original source for specific copyrights.