The catalysts of 1938: European child evacuations as humanitarian innovation

Citation

Sambells C (2022) The catalysts of 1938: European child evacuations as humanitarian innovation. In: Willems B & Palacz MA (eds.) A Transnational History of Forced Migrants in Europe: Unwilling Nomads in the Age of the Two World Wars. Bloomsbury Academic. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350281110.0018

Abstract
The year 1938 was a watershed in terms of how European nations addressed and defined their positions towards persecuted refugees. Germany’s Anschluss of Austria in mid-March, the failures of the Evian Conference in July, the Munich Agreement and subsequent occupation of the Sudetenland in September and October, and finally, the violent pogrom against German and Austrian Jews (Kristallnacht) in November 1938 created an unprecedented number of new ‘stateless’ refugees who could not rely on international laws for protection. As a result, individual nations were forced to confront and, importantly, balance four critical factors: restrictive federal legislation and policies towards refugees, the urgent needs of the persecuted individuals, the realistic capacity of local charities to support vulnerable groups upon resettlement, and the public pressure (often conveyed in the press and media) to ensure swift, comprehensive action.