Conferences

In the Netherlands about 12000-16000 children were born during World War II by Dutch women and German soldiers. After the war stigmatization was the reason that many children fathered by Germans were rejected by their mothers and society. As a result, the children of members of the Wehrmacht in the Netherlands still have the feeling of not being accepted and suffer from serious identity crises. As in the other occupied European countries this topic was taboo for decades. However, in contrast to countries such as, for example, Norway, Denmark and France were it has received wide attention both from media and academia, this topic has found very little attention in the Netherlands so far. Information on the Dutch children born of war is sketchy, and even after newspaper interview with several of these children in the Dutch media between 1990 and 1995 this did not have the same effect such interviews have had in the other countries. This does not mean that the children do not exist and do/did not suffer, however. In this presentation, the different sources available on Dutch children born of war will be presented and challenges related to data collection discussed. Furthermore, the suitability of applying an anonymous questionnaires survey in order to obtain information on the lives of children born of war will be discussed based on experiences with survey among Dutch children fathered by German soldiers in 2001.