Developing Terminology, Reshaping Categorisations – Critical Reflection on Theorising the Concept of Children Born of War (CBOW) with Regard to Research in Poland

Guest Lecturer Jakub Gałęziowski

The subject of this presentation is the fate of Polish children born of war – in other words, individuals with one parent, usually the mother, who was a member of the invaded (occupied) local community, and one, usually the father, who was among the invaders or occupiers. Existing studies on children born in the Second World War and beyond have been almost exclusively related to societies in Western and Northern Europe. The research strategy used in previous studies, however, could not be easily applied in Poland. It has become necessary to challenge the relevance of terminology and categorisations used so far by scholars lacking empirical data from the vast geographical area of Central and Eastern Europe.

Using appropriate terminology is critical in all research. The research on CBOW in Poland has yielded an extraordinary body of empirical evidence: retrieved written documents and autobiographical narrative interviews with people who were born of war. These include not only children of German and Soviet occupiers but also unexpected research participants, conceived in different war and post-war scenarios that had previously not been considered. The life stories of participants in the study do not fit into the categorisation scheme currently in use for the CBOW research field. Most of them would be difficult to place unambiguously in the existing categories. At the same time, they fully or partially meet the criteria of the definition and there are no grounds to claim that they cannot be considered as CBOW. The outcomes of research carried out in Poland revealed the need to revisit both the terms and the definitions used so far in this field of study. Gałęziowski hypothesises that this is true for the entire CEE region.

The presentation shows how important it is to be careful and open to new sources and perspectives when studying global phenomena in local circumstances. The existence of CBOW in CEE should result in a discussion on how to optimise descriptive tools and research methods in such a way as to fully capture the entire CBOW phenomenon and its local characteristics.

About the Author

Jakub Gałęziowski holds a PhD in History from the University of Augsburg and the University of Warsaw. His thesis focused on Polish children born of war, whose mothers belonged to the occupied society and fathers to the occupiers. He works at the University of Warsaw (Faculty of Culture and Arts) and has a particular interest in oral history and biographical studies. Since 2006 he has worked with the KARTA Centre, a Polish non-governmental public organisation documenting and popularising the recent history of Poland and Central and Eastern Europe. He has conducted more than 200 autobiographical narrative interviews both in Poland and abroad. Recently he has also taken an interest in ethical aspects and the role of emotions in academic research. He is a co-founder of the Polish Oral History Association and was its first president, and he is a member of the editorial board of the Wrocławski Rocznik Historii Mówionej, the Polish academic journal devoted to oral history.

Suggested Literature for Lecture

Delić, Amra, Philipp Kuwert, and Heide Glaesmer. ‘Should the Definition of the Term “Children Born of War” and Vulnerabilities of Children from Recent Conflict and Postconflict Settings Be Broadened?’ Acta Medica Academica 46, no. 1 (31 May 2017): 67–69.

Lee, Sabine, and Heide Glaesmer. ‘Children Born of War: A Critical Appraisal of the Terminology’. In Children Born of War: Past, Present and Future, edited by Sabine Lee, Heide Glaesmer, and Barbara Stelzl-Marx, 12–31. Routledge Studies in Modern History. Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2021.

Mochmann, Ingvill C. ‘Reflections on the Definition and Categorization of “Children Born of War”’. Acta Medica Academica 46, no. 2 (11 January 2018): 180.

Copyright

The author of this presentation was allowed to use the displayed material for academic purposes by Ingvill Constanze Mochmann and Heide Glaesmer.

CC BY-NC-SA