Childhood in war
Wars affect all areas of involved persons' life, including physical and mental-emotional integrity, social relations with the family and the community, as well as housing.
[1] According to a Spiegel TV documentary in early 2016, estimated 230 million children live in war and crisis areas, experiencing everyday terror.
[7] While these experiences may lead to considerable impairment of identity and self-esteem, some of these children perceive the option of dual nationality as liberating.
The long-term effect on the war children in Syria, in Afghanistan or in Eastern Ukraine since 2014 are not yet foreseeable – with the exception of the numerous mutilations caused by land mines.
In April 2017, for example, unusual reactions were reported in Sweden: "Children fall into permanent unconsciousness when their families are threatened with deportation.
[15] On September 2, 1990, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child came into effect which is intended to provide protection to children, including during times of war.
Numerous documentary films and reports have emerged which bear witness to past and present wars and the children affected by them.
The Protestant Adult Education center in Thuringia, Germany (Evangelische Erwachsenenbildung Thüringen) created a contemporary witness project in which war children have also found recognition.
As part of the project, a traveling exhibition by historian Iris Helbing shows drawings by Polish war children from 1946.
The contest was arranged by the magazine Przekrój one year after its founding in 1945 and on the occasion of the anniversary of the liberation of Poland: At that time, the drawings were regarded as important material in the investigation and documentation of crimes against Polish children by the National Socialists.
The exhibition, called "ich krieg dich" – "children affected by war"[25] – has so far been shown in New York, Brussels, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Bremen, Rostock and Münster.
In 2015 it was shown in Tröglitz,[26] a small town in Saxony-Anhalt (Germany) whose mayor had resigned in March 2015 to protect himself and his family from right-wing Neo-Nazi attacks.
The singer Kirk Smith and a six-person gospel choir from Florida gave a benefit concert at the opening of the exhibition.
It tells the story of the project, the experiences of the witnesses – children and adolescents – from Syria, as well as the reactions of the students and their teachers who had attended the exhibition.
[33][34] The "Brauner" Collection of children's drawings was considered as being part of the common heritage of mankind, in a previous UNESCO touring exhibition held in 1999 and entitled "I've drawn the war.
One century of children's drawings in the wars (1900-1999)", under the patronage of Simone Veil, which was shown in Paris, Hiroshima, Jerusalem, Vienna and more than 40 cities in Germany.
The museum collects every-day items of these war children, including clothes and toys, drawings and letters, but also photographs and diaries.
