Milk Sauce and Paprika

The compelling story of Hungarian children living with Belgian families during the interwar period
Children who migrated without their families were noteworthy participants of interwar European migration history. Milk Sauce and Paprika tells the story of Hungarian children who were sent to Belgium in the framework of a humanitarian project between 1923 and 1927.

Based on a wide variety of sources such as official documents, contemporary newspapers, photographs, family correspondences, biographies and interviews, this book examines the history of the Belgian-Hungarian child relief project and describes its social and cultural impacts on the families involved in both countries.

This compelling story of one of the first mass European child migration movements offers new insights in the dynamics of national and religious communities. Furthermore, it sheds light on intimate family life and contemporary habits and values regarding parenting and co-parenting in the interwar period. Cutting across national and cultural borders, this monograph connects individual and collective memory with the experiences of childhood and migration.

This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

"Milk Sauce and Paprika" was written by Vera Hajto.

Acknowledgements

Introduction
Migration and Childhood
States, Organisations, Families and Children: Levels of Analysis
Concepts: 'Holiday' -; 'Migration' -; 'Foster'
About Childhood: Archives, Ego-documents and Oral History

Part I
States, Institutions, and the Welfare of Children
Chapter 1. Nations and Actors
International Relief Projects for Children and Pacifistic Objectives
Economy, Politics and Social Circumstances -; Belgium and Hungary
Introducing the Actors: the State, the Organisers and the Catholic Church

Chapter 2. Practising Propaganda and Negotiating Collective Identities: “Catholic people of the Kempen! Think about the Hungarian children”
In the Newspapers
During Festivities
From the Travel Reports
'Are the Children Suffering from Hunger in Hungary?': Mission Statement in the Form of a Polemic
Concluding Remarks to Part I

Part II
The Family Network -; The Best Interests of the Child
Chapter 1. The Hungarian Nation and the Best Interests of its Families and its Children
“Walking Red Tulips”: They are the Future of the Hungarian Nation
Fairy Tales, Mythical Figures and the Relief Project
Fairy Tale Gone Bad?
Practising Social Control

Chapter 2. About the Families
Staying with Families
What Kinds of Families?
Assistance to the Families
The Question of 'Adoption'

Chapter 3. Representation and Bonding of Families
Photographing the Family -; Photographing the Hungarian Child
Exchanging Letters -; Creating Families
Concluding Remarks to Part II

Part III
Children -; Migrants -; Identities: Between 'Motherland' and 'Home'
Chapter 1. The Returned Ones
Exchanging Letters -; Retaining Attachment
'Anna uit Hongarije'

Chapter 2. Staying in Belgium -; Family and Friends
Letters from Home and Migrant Children
Girlfriends in Sisterhood
Hungarians around Us -; the Beginning of an Organisation
Collective Remembrance -; Bonheiden 2007
Remembering Individually
Concluding Remarks to Part III

Conclusion
Structure and Agency in Migration and Childhood
Memory that Defines
Life after the Relief Project

Appendices
Appendix 1. Confessional distribution of the Hungarian population around 1930
Appendix 2. Statistics of the Hungarian children who participated in the international relief project in the different countries
Appendix 3. Quantitative data on the relief project based on the lists of names of the Hungarian children (1923-1927)
Appendix 4. Estimation of number of children that remained in Belgium after the relief project

Notes
Illustration credits
Sources
Bibliography
Index