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A
dark chapter of Swiss history is getting increased attention, with the release
of a feature film about "Verdingkinder" or "contract children" and an exhibition
about them which is touring the country.
A common feature of Swiss life
until the mid-1950s, Verdingkinder were primarily children from poor families in
the cities, forcibly removed from their parents by the authorities and sent to
work on farms.
There, many of them were regularly beaten and even
sexually abused. They had little education and consequently, as adults, little
chance of making careers for themselves.
Many also found that the abuse
experienced in their childhood made it difficult to establish relationships as
adults - former Verdingkinder have high rates of divorce and many now live
alone.
Peter Weber was a Verdingkind. Now 55, he lives in a small flat in
Basel, and he has never forgotten the day, over 50 years ago, when his childhood
ended.
"One morning, when I was four," Peter remembers, "my mother took
me on a train way out into the country, to a farm."
"Then she said, you
have to stay here now. I think that was the moment I lost my faith in people, I
had to work from the start, they hit me almost every day, it was
bad."
Child labour
Peter, who eventually ran away from the
farm aged 17, shared his fate with tens of thousands of other Swiss children.
The authorities, explains historian Ruedi Weidmann, always insisted they were
acting in the best interests of the child.
"Up to the 1950s there were
regions in Switzerland that were really poor," he explains. "The Verdingkinder
were taken from poor families in the cities.
"Families were deprived of
custody if they didn't live according to a middle-class family model - unmarried
mothers, or divorced people, or people who weren't able to keep their money
together.
"The authorities took away a lot of children and placed them in
agricultural environments where they had to work really hard."
Some
children were lucky enough to stay in farming families who cared for them, but
by and large they were used as child labourers, in an era when, as Mr Weidmann
points out, Swiss agriculture was not mechanised, and a great deal of work had
to be done by hand.
Worse though was the way many children were treated.
Often they were not accepted by the families they were placed with. They were
not allowed to eat at the same table, were given very little food, and some were
even forced to sleep in the cellar. Beatings were a daily event.
The
exhibition "Verdingkinder Reden" or "Contract Children Speak", contains
first-hand testimonies from former Verdingkinder, memories they have now shared
with Ruedi Weidmann and his colleagues to draw attention to what
happened.
In one room of the exhibition (on show in Zurich until April),
the walls are painted with quotes from contract children:
"In winter
they sewed my trouser pockets up (so I couldn't put my hands in them). They
said, if you work, you'll stay warm" - Werner
"I wasn't allowed to talk.
They talked about me, but never to me" - Clara
"I had to eat in a little
windowless shed next to the stable. I was never allowed to eat in the kitchen at
the table with them" - Johann
"I was so happy when I could go to school,
because no one hit me there" - Alice
Brutality
Other
rooms show a variety of farm implements - rakes, wooden shoes, leather straps,
cast iron pans. These, explains Mr Weidmann, were things the contract children
mention regularly because they were used to hit them.
Other exhibits
include small toys, and letters and postcards sent to the children by their real
parents.
"These were nearly always taken away - presents for Christmas
they were not allowed to have… to interrupt the contact with the real family,"
says Mr Weidmann.
The exhibition depicts cruelty on an institutional
scale. There are ledgers and files showing how the authorities removed children
from parents, and turned them into Verdingkinder.
Nevertheless, despite
all the documentation, it is a period in Switzerland's past which even
historians find hard to comprehend.
"We can explain many things when we
remember that it was a poor country," says Ruedi Weidmann.
"And some of
it was moral, a way to discipline the lower classes. But the aggression against
these children, that I can't understand."
Waiting for an
apology
Many Swiss historians are calling for more research into the
way Switzerland's fledgling welfare state operated, in the hope of understanding
how the authorities could have condemned so many children to such terrible
lives.
Meanwhile the feature film Der Verdingbub (The Contract Boy) is
bringing what was once a taboo subject to a wider public. The film has been
number one at the Swiss box office for weeks.
"It's time to talk about
it," says Mr Weidmann. "Since we began working on this exhibition we talk about
it, we tell our friends, and I would say every third or fourth person we talk to
says 'yes, my mother', or 'yes, my grandfather was a Verdingkind'."
"It's
something that affects a large part of Swiss society in one way or
another."
For surviving Verdingkinder however, life can be very
difficult. Peter Weber lives alone - his best friend is his dog. Still he takes
comfort from the fact that what happened to him is now, at last, a matter of
public record.
"My childhood was stolen from me", he says. "Imagine it,
someone takes your four-year-old child away and gives it to strangers -
imagine.
"It's very important that this is addressed openly. It's not
about money, it's [so] that we are believed, and that the government says sorry.
That would do us good. "
It is thought the Swiss government is now
considering some form of apology to the Verdingkinder, although no financial
compensation seems likely.
Meanwhile Peter's neighbour Magda, who only
learned of the history of contract children by talking to Peter, points out that
some things can never be put right with words or money.
"I think the
worst was that no-one ever told them a bedtime story, never took them in their
arms, never a hug - I can't imagine the loneliness.
"I think the worst
wasn't the work, it was the beating, and no love, no nothing."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16620597
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