The politics of removing children : the International Tracing Service's German foster homes investigation of 1948

After the Second World War, the International Tracing Service's Child Search Brand (CBS) responded tot inquiries for missing children and, until 1950 when funding was stopped, searched for children 'in the field'. As the Cold War set in, the US military authorities restricted the opportunities for such children, mostly Eastern European, to be removed from their German foster parents and returned to their countries of origin. In the spring of 1948, when tensions between the CBS fieldworkers and the military authorities were at their height, ITS appointed an experienced fieldworker, Charlotte Babinski, to investigate cases of children in German foster homes with a view to streamlining policy regarding child removal. Despite her findings, as monetary and geopolitical pressures increased, the CBS had to accept that many children of Eastern European origin would remain in Germany. Children where thus a battleground in the early Cold War, in which politics triumphed over ethics. Met literatuuropgave.