De wieg van de Tweede Wereldoorlog (The Cradle of the Second World War)

In 2009 Gerlinda Swillen, as CegeSoma associate researcher, published ‘Koekoekskind’, a work mainly composed of interviews with witnesses who told their story as German-Belgian war children. In this new publication, she looks further into the subject, turning it into a full-fledged scientific analysis.

During the Second World War, children were born from relations between Belgian women and German soldiers, both in occupied Belgium and in the “Eastern Cantons” annexed to the Reich or also in Germany. They are war children in the strict sense of the term: without the conflict, their parents would (probably) never have met.

Who were these parents? How did they get to know each other? What was their relationship like and how were they able to experience it (or not) in a very complex social and ideological context? This publication pays particular attention to the legal status and social consequences of the relationships from which these war children were ultimately born.

These Belgian-German children found themselves from birth in a most uncertain social and material situation. And their legal status has sometimes rested on very precarious foundations. This is still the case with children born today in the many conflict regions.

A scientific analysis which examines the legal and social hazards experienced by war children