Budapest's Children: Humanitarian Relief in the Aftermath of the Great War

In the aftermath of World War I, international organizations descended upon the destitute children living in the rubble of Budapest, and the city became a testing ground for how the West would handle the most vulnerable residents of a former enemy state.

Budapest's Children reconstructs the responses of Western humanitarian organizations to the mass migrations, hunger, and destitution in Europe following World War I. Drawing on extensive archival research, Friederike Kind-Kov塶s reveals how Budapest's children, as iconic victims of the war's aftermath, were used to mobilize humanitarian sentiments and practices throughout the United States and Western Europe.

Budapest's Children explores the intertwining of post-World War I nationalism and internationalism and sheds light on the ways humanitarian relief programs created patterns of social and economic inequality that simultaneously benefitted children and also exploited them.