Unaccompanied Children’s Access to Healthcare (1945-1950)

Unaccompanied Children’s Access to Healthcare (1945-1950) (UCARE1945) is a Marie Sklodowska Curie funded research project. It examines issues relating to access to healthcare and financial compensation for medical harm done during the Second World War and explores how such practices have shaped ways of understanding care for refugees. UCARE1945 will consider how discrimination based on age, statehood and gender played a role in pathways to healthcare in the immediate postwar era and will focus on the life narratives of child survivors of the Holocaust. It will be the first project to identify and analyse the life narratives of child survivors in relation to access to healthcare, combining research with archival sources, medical data, and lived experiences.This study will identify and analyse a selection of this archival material in order to chart the life histories of some of these young survivors. This project aims to expand knowledge of the complex issues child refugees faced in the immediate aftermath of World War II and will investigate how antisemitism and other forms of racism affected health care. These issues remain relevant today in the light of the resurgence of antisemitism and xenophobia in Europe and this project aims to contribute to the EU strategy on combating antisemitism and other forms of racism, with links to sustainable development goals SDG5 and 10. 

Aims and Questions of Unaccompanied Children’s Access to Healthcare (1945-1950) (UCARE1945)

UCARE1945 aims to investigate how issues of gender, age, and language impacted medical care for unaccompanied minors during the years 1945 to 1950.

1. The central research question asks: what factors influenced medical care for unaccompanied children in the immediate postwar era, and to what extent did these factors affect the care they received? Rather than approaching the history of medical care in the aftermath of the Holocaust solely through statistics and medical records, I draw on life narratives and read them alongside these other forms of archival materials to consider how children’s life experiences were documented or erased in the archive. In understanding these impacts, this research will expand our knowledge about healthcare crises in the past.

2. The project will conduct a comprehensive literature review which will shape further questions, and will help to determine the impacts of the war on the individuals life experience and memory.

3. Information will be gathered from institutional records and from personal testimony, so we can ascertain the different variables that impacted medical care over time. This will be compared between occupation zones to determine concrete policies that affected change. 

Get involved and Contact

email: ashalvey@ucc.ie