The first edition of the project A Child in the Labyrinth of 20th-Century History focuses on childhood in a Europe divided by war and ideology. It follows the lives of children growing up in the shadow of the Second World War and during the decades of the Cold War, exploring how political systems, state ideology and historical upheaval shaped their everyday experiences. From life under communist regimes and the pressures of ideological education to political persecution, divided families and the realities of exile and migration, the project uncovers the many ways in which children navigated a world beyond their control. Through their stories, it offers a new perspective on the history of twentieth-century Europe—one seen through the eyes of its youngest witnesses, participants and survivors.
The 2026 edition begins with the international conference Actors, Witnesses or Subjects? Children in Post-war Central and Eastern Europe, 1945–1989, to be held in Warsaw on 19-20 November 2026. Bringing together scholars from across disciplines, the conference inaugurates the project's long-term exploration of children's experiences in twentieth-century Europe and lays the foundation for its future research, publications and educational activities.
A Child in the Divided World
Actors, Witnesses or Subjects?
Children in Post-war Central and Eastern Europe, 1945–89
Warsaw, 19-20 November 2026
The Second World War did not end childhood's encounter with violence, loss and upheaval. Across Central and Eastern Europe, millions of children entered a post-war world marked by political division, forced migration, ideological conflict and the rise of communist regimes. For many, the years that followed brought not peace but new forms of uncertainty, state control and political repression. Others grew up separated from their families, in exile or diaspora communities, or under systems that sought to shape every aspect of their lives.
Yet despite their central place in these events, children have rarely occupied a central place in the historiography of post-war Europe. Too often, they have appeared only as victims, silent witnesses or objects of state policy, rather than as individuals with their own experiences, perspectives and capacity to act.
The international conference Actors, Witnesses or Subjects? Children in Post-war Central and Eastern Europe, 1945–1989 invites scholars to reconsider this history through children's eyes. Bringing together researchers from history, childhood studies, sociology, memory studies, literary and cultural studies, and related disciplines, it explores children not only as subjects shaped by political and social forces, but also as agents who interpreted, negotiated and responded to the realities around them.
Conference Programme
Day 1
8.00–9.00 Registration
09.00–09.30 WELCOME SPEECHES AND INTRODUCTION
- Jan Rydel, Long-standing Polish Coordinator, European Network Remembrance and Solidarity / University of the National Education Commission, Krakow
- Renata Bem, Executive Director and President of the Management Board, UNICEF Poland
- Ewelina Szpak, Initiator and Coordinator of the ‘Children in the Labyrinth of 20th-century History’ project, European Network Remembrance and Solidarity / Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences
9.30–10.30 Keynote Lecture:
- Friederike Kind-Kovács (Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarian Studies, Germany), Beyond Liberation: Hungarian Children and the Making of New Lives after 1945
Chair: Ewelina Szpak (ENRS/IH PAS)
10.30–10.45 Coffee break
10.45–12.30 Session 1: Children on the Move after 1945
Chair: Urszula Bijoś (ENRS)
- Martyna Płatek (Remembrance and Future Centre in Wrocław, Poland), ‘The Train Was also a Home’: Children’s Perspectives of Post-war Migration
- Ruth Leiserowitz (Klaipėda University, Lithuania / Humboldt University of Berlin), Child Migration in the Early Post-war Period: Some Reflections on the Role and Significance of Children during this Period
- Maija Krūmiņa (University of Latvia), Growing Up with Communism from Afar
- Luminița Dumănescu (Babeș-Bolyai University, Romania), Children of the Famine: Child Displacement and Humanitarian Relief in Post-war Romania
12.30–13.25 Lunch
13.25–14.50 Session 2: Negotiating Belonging in Post-war Childhood
Chair: Konrad Bielecki (ENRS)
- Agnieszka Ilwicka-Karuna (University of Florida, USA), In Between: Child Survivors and Jewish Childhood in the Recovered Territories of Poland
- Paulina Fronczak-Chruściel (Museum of Polish Children – Victims of Totalitarianism, Poland), Wartime Experiences and Their Consequences: The Case of Two Groups of Children in Post-war Rawicz
- Elisa Wasserer (University of Innsbruck, Austria), Displaced Girlhood: The Experiences of Jewish Teenage Girls between Orphanages, Illegal Refugee Routes and Displaced Persons Camps in the Aftermath of the Holocaust
14.50–15.05 Coffee break
15.05–16.50 Session 3: Born Guilty: Childhood and the Repressive State
Chair: Olga Dobrogowska (ENRS)
- Gentiana Sula (Independent Researcher, Albania), Childhood as a Security Contingent: State Security and Inherited Punishment in Communist Albania
- Cosmin Budeancă (Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile, Romania), Children of the ‘Enemies of the People’: Childhood, Memory and Adaptation in Communist Romania
- Christos Tsapanis (Independent Researcher, Greece), In the Shadow of Forced Absence: Emotional Survival, Stigma and Agency among Children of Non-ideological Exiles in Borderland Greek Thrace (1948–64)
- Iryna Derevchuk (Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukraine), In the Shadow of Their Parents’ Choices: Childhood, Surveillance and Ukrainian Identity in Soviet Galicia (online)
16.50– 17.20 Coffee break
17.10–18.30 Session 4: Echoes and Silences: Recovering Childhood Experience
Chair: Julia Stoll (ENRS)
- Sonia Knapczyk-Tomalka (Jagiellonian University, Poland), A Home, but Not Quite a Home: Children’s Experiences and Agency in Post-war Orphan Care in Krakow, 1945–52
- Eleftheria Koukoura (Independent Researcher, Greece), Reading the Child Survivor: A Paratextual Mapping of Holocaust Ego Documents from Post-war Greece (online)
- Lukas Schretter (University of Graz, Austria), From Bindermichl to ‘Kindermichl’: Childhood, Displacement and Jewish Community Reconstruction in Austria, 1945–49
19.00 Dinner
Day 2
9.00–10.00 Keynote Lecture:
- Barbara Klich-Kluczewska (Jagiellonian University, Poland), The Anatomy of Temporariness: Care Regimes and the Biographical Experiences of Children in Post-war Poland
Chair: Ewelina Szpak (ENRS/ IH PAS)
10.00–10.15 Coffee break
10.15–12.00 Session 5: Small Shoulders, Heavy Burdens: Children and the Making of Post-war Europe
Chair: Julia Stoll (ENRS)
- Outi Autti (University of Oulu, Finland), No Time for Playing: Children as Actors in the Reconstruction of Finnish Lapland after 1945
- Lorenzo Ferrazzano (University of Salerno, Italy), Remembering Childhood in a Changing Borderland: Italian Children in Rijeka/Fiume after the Yugoslav Takeover
- Kateřina Portmann (Technical University of Liberec, Czech Republic), Collective Guilt with a Child’s Face: Institutional Pressure and Survival Strategies among Children and Teenagers after 1945 in Czechoslovakia
- Justyna Jezierska (University of Wrocław, Poland), Children as a Boundary Case of Legal Responsibility after the Second World War
12.00–12.50 Lunch
12.50–14.15 Session 6: Behind the Walls of Care: Children in State Institutions
Chair: Urszula Bijoś (ENRS)
- Beata Chomątowska (University of Warsaw, Poland), ‘Let Him Forget He Has Parents’: Experiences of Treatment in Rabka-Zdrój Sanatoriums from Children’s Perspectives
- Tibisay Navarro Mañá (University of Minesota, USA), Children as Agents of Memory and Silence: The Case of the Victims of the Francoist Welfare System in Spain (1939–75)
- Sophia Pekowsky (Leiden University, The Netherlands), ‘An Object Can Go Further than Words’: The Museum of Abandonment as a Case Study for Child-centered Narratives of Romania’s Abandoned Children
14.15–14.30 Coffee break
14.30–16.00 Session 7: Carrying the Past: Childhood between Memory and Representation
Chair: Olga Dobrogowska (ENRS)
- Dalia Cidzikaitė (Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania), A Double Life: The Wartime and Post-war Experiences and Traumas of the Younger Generation of Lithuanian Displaced Persons
- Boris Stamenić (Retrovizor, Croatia), Adolescent Agency and Everyday Life in Socialist Yugoslavia
- Maria Axinte (Pitești Prison Memorial Foundation, Romania), From Historical Actors to Collective Memory: Children and Communist Repression in Romania
16.00–16.20 From Research to the Classroom:
- Urszula Bijoś (ENRS), Indoctrination of Children: Resources for Teachers and Educators – presentation of educational materials developed within the ENRS Hi-story Lessons project
16:20–16:35 Closing Remarks
Keynote Speakers
Dr Friederike Kind-Kovács
PD Dr Friederike Kind-Kovács is a Senior Researcher at the Hannah Arendt Institute at TU Dresden. Her research focuses on the history of childhood, transnational and transatlantic history, the aftermath of the two World Wars, the Cold War and the post-socialist transformation. She is the author of Budapest’s Children: Humanitarian Relief in the Aftermath of the Great War (IUP, 2022), The Wireless World: Global Histories of International Radio Broadcasting (OUP, 2022) and Written Here, Published There: How Underground Literature Crossed the Iron Curtain (2014). In 2026, she co-edited the German-language handbook on the history of childhood, Kindheitsgeschichte: Ein Handbuch. She has previously held fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study in Budapest and the Imre Kertész Kolleg in Jena. Her work on childhood examines children’s experiences of war, humanitarianism and political transformation in twentieth-century Europe. She is currently working on the history of maternity in Budapest, as well as on Swedish efforts to rescue and rehabilitate Hungarian child survivors of the Holocaust and its aftermath.
Prof. Barbara Klich-Kluczewska
Professor Barbara Klich-Kluczewska specialises in the social and cultural history of twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europe, with particular interests in the history of the family, women and gender, and childhood. She is a member of the Committee of Historical Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the board of the Kraków branch of the Polish Historical Society, and the Academic Advisory Board of the Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Research in Dresden. She has held research fellowships in Jena, Prague and Berlin and has been a visiting professor at the University of Rochester and Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg.
Academic Committee
Prof. Ewelina Szpak
Professor Ewelina Szpak is a member of the Academic Department at the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity (ENRS) and a historian of postwar Poland, with expertise in the history of everyday life, the social history of medicine, environmental history, memory studies, and the history of biopolitics. She received her Ph.D. in History from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków (2010) and her habilitation from the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences (2020), where she works as an associate professor. She was a participant in CLIOHRES.net, a Sixth Framework Programme Network of Excellence bringing together 45 European universities, and a member of the Department for the Permanent Exhibition at the Polish History Museum (2016–2017). Since 2012, she has been Principal Investigator on three research grants on the social history of communist Poland, awarded by the Polish National Science Centre. She is the author and co-author of several books in the field of social and cultural history of postwar Poland.
Prof. Martina Winkler
Professor Martina Winkler has been Professor of Eastern European History at Kiel University since 2017. She previously held academic positions at universities including Leipzig, Berlin, Münster, Loughborough, Stanford and Bremen. Her research spans the modern history of East-Central Europe and the early modern history of Russia, with particular interests in childhood, socialism, the Russian Empire and visual history. Her publications include studies on the Prague Spring, Peter the Great and the history of childhood. She is currently developing projects on the role of childhood in concepts of the socialist city and on a global history of childhood.
Organisers
Honorary Patronage
