2024

Due to international criticism of its economic cooperation with National Socialist Germany and its isolation in foreign policy, Switzerland endeavoured to improve its image with the Allied countries towards the end of the Second World War. One way of doing this was through various humanitarian campaigns. One of these was the idea of temporarily taking in 2,000 children from concentration camps for recuperation. Switzerland saw this action as part of its long tradition of helping children, but overlooked the fact that children only survived the concentration camps in exceptional cases. Instead of the desired children, around 370 adolescents and young adults came to Switzerland from Buchenwald. Among them were also sick young people who needed medical care. Ten of them were admitted to the Barmelweid Clinic, which was founded in 1912 as a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients and had a paediatric clinic financed by donations from 1932. The subject of the "Buchenwald children" has attracted a great deal of interest from the general public in recent years thanks to the TV series "Peace" by Petra Volpe and the documentary film «Die Buchenwald-Kinder – Eine Schweizer Hilfsaktion» («The Buchenwald Children - A Swiss Relief Operation»), which was released at the same time. Both the TV series and the documentary film are largely based on sources from the Archiv für Zeitgeschichte (Archives of Contemporary History), Madeleine Lerf's dissertation, which appeared in the publication series of the Archives of Contemporary History, and the publication by refugee counsellor Charlotte Weber.

The aim is to analyse the general and historical background of the Buchenwald children, and the specific individual fates of the nine/ten young people concerned, who were admitted to the Barmelweid Clinic, and to make this information accessible to the interested public. The background story of the Buchenwald children is thus given a place, conveyed in a vivid and generally understandable way and interwoven with the individual biographies of the people concerned.