On June 21, 1941, Nazi Germany broke a non-aggression pact with the USSR and invaded along a broad front. The massive attack was named Operation Barbarossa. Such was the surprise that many children were abruptly separated from their parents. They might be at a summer camp or visiting another town. Some children had to flee their homes as dive bombers attacked their villages or infantry swept into their neighborhoods. Civilians were not spared. If they could return to their homes, they often found only smoldering ruins. Some children witnessed the executions of neighbors or a parent. Some children spent years in orphanages before reunion with a parent. Other children were folded into adoptive families. Some children spent the war-years living in forests with partisans.
These stories are gathered in "Last Witnesses: An Oral History of the Children of World War II" by Svetlana Alexievich, a Belarusian writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2015. In 1985, she published, without editorial commentary, the reminiscences of the now-grown survivors. "Last Witnesses" was translated into English in 2019. It is a profound testimony of the resilience of children and of the tenderness of adults who gave them shelter. This is a painful but necessary narrative.
One account by a 6-year-old child began: "I remember it. I was little, but I remember everything." Childhood trauma leaves powerful, indelible memories.
In early 2017, President Trump promised a crackdown on attempts of Central American families to cross the U.S.-Mexican border without permission. In April 2018, the administration officially launched a policy of "zero tolerance" in which children would be separated from families who crossed the border illegally. Parents were either jailed or deported. The inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services reported in January 2019 that a secret pilot program went into effect in El Paso from June to November 2017 in which children were separated from their mothers. The separation policy was officially and publicly adopted in April 2018. No plan existed for reunification of children and parents.
About 5,500 children would eventually be separated, usually from their mothers, and placed under supervision of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Some separations occurred at legal ports of entry. One account described a nursing baby being snatched from its mother. In June 2018, human rights advocates visited a converted warehouse in Texas in which they found children living in a large cage, while guards openly mocked them. Observers at another site described poorly fed children in filthy clothes, while older children cared for the younger ones.
A rising public outcry led President Trump to issue an executive order on June 20, 2018, ending the separation program. Six days later, U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw issued a nationwide injunction that ended the separation policy. He ordered that all separated children should be reunited with their families within 30 days. Hundreds of separations continued after the official "end" of the program.
The New York Times reported on Oct. 21 that parents of 545 children could not be located. Sixty of the children were younger than 5 years old at the time of separation. Some of these lost children had been placed in foster care, some in shelters.
President Trump dodged responsibility for the separation program during the third debate with Democratic candidate Joe Biden.
The policy of separating children from their parents was not simply wrong-headed. It was evil. Designers and executors of the policy should be named and publicly condemned. Every effort of the federal government must be engaged to reunite children with their parents. The government should provide a daily tally of the reunifications.
Who will record the stories of the separated children today and in their future years?
Contact Clif Cleaveland at ccleaveland@timesfreepress.com.