Be Careful What You Wish For

Dr James Wittig with adopted son Ronnie

Metaphysically, I’m a fan of synchronicities. I like this perspective – “The universe listens,” Wittig said, and gives you what you need. “Have you heard of synchronicities?” he asked. “It’s God’s way of giving you what you want.” James Wittig notes that “Years ago, I was engaged to be married, and we used to joke about having kids and we’d say: ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we have a child, send him away and then get him back when he’s 13, after the hard years?’ Then funny enough, a 13-year-old boy falls into my lap.”

Today’s blog is from a story in LINK>USA Today originally published on a North Jersey website. The story doesn’t tell us whether Ronnie wanted to be adopted but given the circumstances, I really don’t have a problem with this. The story does say that “When asked, Ronnie, now 20, said he did not want to be interviewed. He’s not comfortable talking about his story, but his father said following his graduation from Seton Hall Preparatory School last year, Ronnie enrolled in a welding program at a technical school. He fell in love with welding during a summer program shortly after he moved in with Wittig. He recently used his welding skills to make a firepit that now sits in their backyard.”

The connection between the doctor and the boy runs from the doctor’s work in his profession. About 20 years ago, when orthopedic surgeon James Wittig was a resident in training, his mentor gave him a photo of two young girls he had treated for bone cancer during the 1980s. The photo was meant to be a reminder to the young doctor of the importance of their life-saving work. Wittig had no way of knowing then that the 14-year-old girl in that photo would forever change his life. The other girl in the photo was 10 years old at the time. 15 years later, now in her 30s, this younger girl developed an infection in her leg and became Wittig’s patient. The doctor and patient kept in touch following treatment via Facebook.

The two girls remained friends long after they posed for that photo. Their close age and shared illness had created a strong bond. The older girl grew up, married and had two sons. She had to undergo more surgeries and eventually, her husband and the woman divorced. He moved to Colorado where he died a few years later. She remarried but died (due to complications of her cancer) only a month later. Her boys were just 11 and 7 years old. They went to live with their grandparents, but they also unfortunately died of cancer a year later. This sent them back to live with their stepfather. He fostered them, but did not have the resources to care for them properly. The younger of the two girls (now mature), took temporary custody of the two boys, now 17 and 13. The older boy already planned to join the military on his 18th birthday.

Thanks to a request for help by this woman on Facebook, where she was already remained in contact with her doctor, the younger boy found a home and a man gained a son, already 13, as he has fancifully mused about many years earlier. The adjustment was not easy for either of them. Understandably, the boy struggled with the death of his mother. He had not had a strong person in his life who he really trusted for a long time. Eventually trust came but it was slow.

Not Actually An Orphan

War is hell but imagine being sent far away from your native home and told you are an orphan but you are not. That is the story in The Guardian about 1,400 still seeking to learn who their parents were. LINK>‘I couldn’t love her’: the last UK child migrants to Australia on the long, lonely search for their mothers by Susan Chenery.

Michael Lachmann had always believed he was an orphan. There was no childcare during WWII, unless you were rich. Much like my own maternal grandmother, his mother was doing what she could to provide care for him, while his father was away fighting in the war and she was working. Instead of being available for her to pick him up at a residential nursery, he was shipped to Australia at the age of 5 and placed in the Castledare Boys Home, run by the Christian Brothers, where numerous boys were starved, beaten and subjected to sexual abuse.

Between the 1910s and 1970, 7,000 children aged between three and 14 were transported to Australia as part of Britain’s child migrant program. Promised a better life and loving families waiting to adopt, most were instead delivered into institutions where large numbers suffered abuse. Often their names or birth dates were changed, erasing their links to their families of origin. Very few were adopted or fostered.

Even in their 70s and 80s all these people want is to find their mother, to know who she was. Two years after he was sent to Australia, Lachmann was adopted by a middle-aged Catholic couple, making his situation better than it was for some. Now 80 and living in Perth, after reading a newspaper article 10 years ago, he contacted the Child Migrants Trust. “I had no identity for my own children. It is terrible not having a family history, it is like being in the universe alone.” Thirteen years ago then British prime minister Gordon Brown gave a heartfelt apology to the former child migrants. “Your cries for help were not heeded.”

That apology came after decades of work by Margaret Humphreys, the founder and director of the Child Migrants Trust, who advocates for and seeks to reunite family members after a lifetime of separation. In addition to forensic work in finding mothers who had often kept illegitimate births secret, she took on governments, the power of churches and the establishment to uncover the injustice suffered by these children.

Humphreys had been a social worker in child protection in Nottingham in 1986 when she received a letter from a woman in Australia. “She said that at four years old she was put on a boat with lots of other children. She said ‘my parents are dead, I have no birth certificate, I don’t know who I am. Can you help me find my mother?’” Humphreys thought it was “preposterous” but investigated it, “as social workers should do”. She found the mother was “very much alive” and had been told her child was dead. Very similar to how Georgia Tann operated (she ran the agency my mother was adopted from), many of the children came from single mothers who had put their children into care, until they could get back on their feet. That is how my maternal grandmother lost my mom and my grandmother was married but for reasons I’ll never know, my mom’s father had abandoned them before her birth. So often, when the mother arrived to collect her child where they had been left for care, the child was gone.

There is much more to this heartbreaking story at the link in the opening paragraph.

Kidsave’s FlatSasha Project

I learned about this organization LINK>Kidsave and their FlatSasha Project today, thanks to an article in The Guardian LINK>Ukrainian children orphaned by war ‘need a tremendous amount of help’.

Last February 24th marked one year since Russia invaded Ukraine. Since the war began, Kidsave Ukraine has been working tirelessly to rescue those in danger, get them to safety and provide them with urgent humanitarian aid. When the harsh winter set in, the most vulnerable members of society – Ukrainian orphans – were having to navigate these frightening and unstable times without families to support and comfort them.

Flat Sasha represents a 12-year-old orphan displaced from their home in Mykolaiv due to the war, like so many other children in the country. Flat Sasha can be printed out, colored in and decorated. Once you’ve created your Flat Sasha, we encourage you to hang them up in your school, office, home, car, or bring them along with you on a brand new adventure. LINK>Download FlatSasha. There is both a male and a female version.

Kidsave will be training volunteers and staff on trauma therapy as part of their own efforts to rebuild Ukraine. Donations to the organization will aid the construction of a center in Ukraine aimed at providing mentorship, therapy and other emotional support services to children trying to grow up within a conflict experience.

The organization had already been working in Ukraine for six years – BEFORE the invasion by Russian forces on February 24 2022 made a bad situation worse. It has been estimated that there were more than 105,000 children across 700 orphanages, boarding schools and other institutions in Ukraine when the war started there – that’s more than 1% of the nation’s underage population and Europe’s highest rate of youth institutionalization. Numbers since then are harder to track as children have been evacuated and moved out of Ukraine’s institutionalized care for safety reasons. But there’s reason to think things have gotten only harder for Ukraine’s orphans. Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Andriy Kostin, has said his teams have documented more than 14,000 instances of Ukrainian children being forced into adoption in Russia since the invasion. Ukraine has made it a clear priority to keep any of its children who are in need of adoption in the country as opposed to sending them abroad.

Conflict Induced Adoption

An interesting custody battle is taking place. I am going to summarize. You can read a more detailed account at this ABC News LINK>Baby orphaned in military raid now at center of custody battle with her relatives and Marine.

In September 2019, a weeks-old baby girl was found badly hurt but — miraculously — alive in the rubble of a raid by U.S. special operations forces. Both of her parents were killed in the operation and she was placed under the temporary medical care of the U.S. military to recover from burns and physical trauma. The military had targeted a home in central Afghanistan, looking to capture or kill suspected foreign fighters associated with al-Qaida.

Today, the 3-1/2 year old girl (known as Baby Doe) is claimed by two families who are fighting a complex legal battle over the right to raise her. On one side are her paternal uncle and cousins in Afghanistan, with whom she was placed by the Afghan government in early 2020. Her uncle’s son and his wife, referred to in court as John and Jane Doe, cared for her for 18 months. Baby Doe and her Afghan family fled the Taliban and came to the US. John and Jane Doe have now resettled in Texas.

On the other side is a U.S. Marine lawyer who was in Afghanistan at the time of the raid and who successfully petitioned a local Virginia court to grant him an adoption order. An attorney for the Marine, Maj Joshua Mast, has contended in court filings that the girl had no surviving biological relatives (which the U.S. government says isn’t true). Mast’s attorney described her as an “orphan of war and a victim of terrorism” and Mast used the adoption order in Virginia to take custody of Baby Doe in September 2021. Baby Doe currently lives in North Carolina with Mast, his wife and their children. In September, John and Jane Doe filed a federal lawsuit suit against the Masts, claiming that the Masts unlawfully took Baby Doe.

The case is being reviewed in both Virginia and federal courts. Also involved are the Pentagon, the State Department and the Justice Department, who say the child should be returned to her Afghan relatives.

Following Afghan cultural traditions, Baby Doe should have then been taken to her next closest relatives. But who was she? Who were those relatives? Was she even Afghan? The US worked with the Afghan administration of then-President Ashraf Ghani and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to locate Afghan relatives who could raise her as their own, in line with local customs.

Mast was serving in Afghanistan at the time, as an attorney for the government’s Center for Law and Military Operations. In that role, he was involved in discussions about what to do with Baby Doe and took a keen interest in her welfare. He advocated for her transfer to the United States, so she could be placed for adoption far away from the dangers of “a country known for child abuse, neglect and sexual trafficking of children,” as an attorney for Mast once wrote. Mast’s court filings have also stated that Baby Doe’s parents were likely combatants, not collateral damage from the 2019 military raid. In late 2019, when Mast and his wife, Stephanie, sought an adoption order, they claimed Baby Doe was stateless and needed continuous medical care. John and Jane Doe claim that Mast abducted Baby Doe days after he had helped them arrive in the US in August 2021, as part of the chaotic US evacuation from Afghanistan.

The Justice Department filed a motion that argued the case should be moved to a federal court. The motion also stated that the Masts’ adoption should not have been granted, citing a U.S. government decision that Baby Doe should be returned to her Afghan family. The State Department likewise said in a recent statement to ABC News that the baby should have been brought back to her relatives. “Reuniting the child with the family members in Afghanistan was the right thing to do,” a department spokesperson said.

“We need a full investigation on this case and how this child could have been adopted away from her relatives,” Lisa Lawrence, a Defense Department spokesperson, said. “The investigation could lead to loopholes that need to be closed within our system. There shouldn’t be anyone from any rank of military that can push something as significant as an adoption through without following proper protocol and procedures.”

From Orphan to Chess Master

Rex Andrew Sinquefield has been called an “index-fund pioneer” for creating the first passively managed index fund open to the general public Sinquefield was also a co-founder of Dimensional Fund Advisors. I may have seen his name mentioned before. In Missouri state politics he is considered somewhat of a king maker. Missouri is heavily Republican, and so most of the millions he has donated in political campaign contributions have gone to Republicans, though not exclusively. I suspect his story is more complicated than our divided partisan politics might indicate. The political cartoon alludes to the fact that because he is a chess enthusiast, he was instrumental in relocating the World Chess Hall of Fame to St Louis, making the city the nation’s chess capital.

I became interested in this man when I learned he was raised in a St Louis-area orphanage, the St Vincent Home for Children. He has also donated to them through his Sinquefield Charitable Foundation. When I was growing up, because I had learned that both of my parents were adoptees, I thought they were orphans. I had no idea of the truth that there were people out there I was genetically related to living out their lives more or less ignorant of our own existence. I guess this is why the idea of orphans always gets my attention.

LINK> St Vincent Home for Children was founded in 1850 following a cholera epidemic and a fire, both of which occurred the previous year and which left many St Louis children orphaned. The fire, begun aboard a steamboat at the levee, caused hundreds to be homeless and ravaged a 15-block area. Meanwhile, cholera transmitted by arriving immigrants had killed more than 4,000 of the city’s 64,000 residents. Diocesan orphanages at the time were already very crowded and many of the victims of the cholera outbreak were poor. An appeal to the German Catholic community brought the construction of the new orphanage in 1850 by the German Saint Vincent Orphan Association.

In 1914, a 20-acre plot in Normandy Park was purchased for $18,000. The Cornerstone for the new Home was set on June 15, 1916 and the children moved into their new home in Normandy on August 8, 1917. St Vincent Home sustained itself through the Civil War, the Great Depression, two World Wars and other conflicts, all of which brought their share of orphans to the Home’s doors. Over the years, the St Vincent Home has transitioned to meet the changing needs of children in the area. It is no longer an orphanage but a residential treatment center for at-risk youth very much like the Porter-Leath orphanage in Memphis TN where my mom spent time as my maternal grandmother struggled to find a way to support them both.

St Vincent is now know as The Core Collective. The image above is titled “Bed in the Attic” and was photographed by 16-year-old Shardae for the LINK>”Photography Project: St. Vincent Home for Children” exhibit. The featured pictures taken by teenagers, educators, support staff and volunteers of the north St. Louis County-based St Vincent Home for Children. Participants were taught photography through the University of Missouri at St Louis, known as UMSL.

One never knows what they might run into googling around. I’ve not seen this version of Dicken’s Christmas story but I am intrigued by some of what I read about it here LINK>An American Christmas Carol. The Bookshop Owner of Christmas Past whisks Slade back to his childhood at the orphanage, where local businessman Mr Brewster shows up looking for an apprentice to help him at his furniture factory. Instead of choosing one of the good kids, Brewster instead chooses Slade, a known troublemaker (“he likes to FIGHT!” warns the old maid running the orphanage), and teaches him how to whittle. No, really. He gave the kid a knife, and a stick of wood. And they whittle. And whittle. And whittle some more. So Slade becomes Brewster’s apprentice, and moves in with him. In other words, he’s basically been adopted.

And shades of Sinquefield, the real trouble starts when Brewster doesn’t change, and his business starts going down the tubes. This leads to Slade leaving Brewster and starting an investment firm with Latham. So the investment firm of Slade and Latham has a choice: they can either fund Brewster’s failing furniture business, or they can put their money into Slade’s new idea, which is basically to let people rent appliances and charge them a weekly fee. You know those rent-to-own places where you go and get an Xbox 360 for $30 a week, which you wind up paying $1,700 for before you actually own it? All Slade’s idea.

I don’t know – although it is probably awful, I might just have to watch that version of a Christmas Carol. Art has a funny way of imitating life.

Parental Death Then What

Sadly, it happens. Parents die and something must be arranged for the ongoing care and healthy development of a child. A lot of make suggestions in our wills or trust regarding our minor children but few think it out from the perspective that the adoption community can bring to the issue. Today’s stories and insights highlight the issues.

I am looking for resources about adoption following death of a parent or parents, NOT adoption due to a lack of support for birth parents. Attachment trauma is a given. Actively honoring the memory of the late parent(s) is a high priority, as is pursuing therapy for all parties. The children know their own stories, have access to their family health history, and retain their birth names. Beyond this, I would like to better understand adoption vs. legal guardianship in the context of parental death.

My sister died, leaving my niece behind. My parents already had guardianship before she passed, but also go full custody as well after. but they are currently pursuing adoption strictly for the legal assurances it gives us. They are in their 70’s and although in excellent health, you never know. If they adopt her, they can “leave her to me” for lack of a better term. With the current arraignment, I would have to totally start over from square one. But they aren’t trying to adopt her in the traditional sense. They don’t want to be called mom/dad, etc. it’s just for custody/legal purposes.

I was orphaned at age 7 when my mother died in a car accident. Legal Guardianship made college paperwork a nightmare, it made school field trips/enrollments and passports and traveling across borders immensely difficult. One time, I had a border patrol agent insinuate my grandfather was trafficking me despite our last names matching on our passports and his drivers license. My mother did not allow my stepfather to adopt me despite him coming into my life when I was 1. I am grateful she didn’t.

Adoptee who was adopted due to the death of a parent. Please do not steal their last name. My name being changed stole my connection to my deceased dad and I still resent it decades later. My last name was all I had of his and it was changed, even though my adoptive parents knew how I felt about it

Guardianship is will be heavily state dependent because states are so different with respect to family law. It could largely depend on the specifics of the court order. A guardianship order for a child who has no legal or living parents would have to ensure the guardians have the same rights and responsibilities as parents, including the ability to sign for a passport / take children out of country. One problem you could run into with guardianship would be – if you did have to immigrate to another country – the children would likely not be eligible on your visa. Only legally adopt if that’s the only option.

Best to not change the birth certificates, refer to yourself as “mom/dad” and do maintain relationships with extended family. Consider long term security in terms of custody (including if you were to die and future guardianship decisions), medical decision-making rights, access to IDs/passports, and so on. Legal guardianship can be tricky to navigate. An informed attorney is a must. As far as I know, there is not currently any state that allows the original birth certificate to remain intact with the finalization of an adoption. Hence the growing interest in guardianships. In some states, children under legal guardianship do not get all the benefits that foster and adoptive children do (example: free college tuition).

Here was a good example of how to talk to people at the child(ren)’s school – always introduce your title – grandma/grandpa, aunt/uncle, etc. Let them call you by your real name/ title (Aunt Carla, Grandma, etc.) rather than Mom. That will require some effort upfront on your part with teachers and so forth. Reach out to their teachers before the start of the school year and introduce yourself – Hi, John and I are Jane’s Aunt and Uncle. I know most kids live with parents but Jane‘s parents are deceased. It’s a tough subject for her – of course – and I know you would want a head’s up so that you can use inclusive language for the students’ families. I think it is important to take the lead with all those kinds of introductions, so the burden to explain does not fall on the child(ren).

Two Men – Adventures in Africa

I am reading the book, Exterminate All The Brutes by Sven Lindqvist, which is not at all what I expected. In yesterday’s reading I found linked two men with books set in the Congo. Henry Morton Stanley, who wrote In Darkest Africa, published in 1890 and Joseph Conrad wrote Heart of Darkness, published in 1899. I read that both grew up motherless, both had been adopted by benevolent father figures and that both ran away to sea, changed their name, home country and identity. This I thought this a worth topic for my Missing Mom blog. So some historical stuff today.

Henry Stanley was born in 1841 as John Rowlands in Denbigh, Denbighshire, Wales. His mother Elizabeth Parry was 18 years old at the time of his birth. She abandoned him as a very young baby and cut off all communication. Stanley never knew his father, who died within a few weeks of his birth. There is some doubt as to his true parentage. As his parents were unmarried, his birth certificate describes him as a bastard. His baptism registry indicated that he was the bastard son of John Rowland of Llys Llanrhaidr and Elizabeth Parry of Castle. The stigma of illegitimacy weighed heavily upon him all his life.

The boy John was given his father’s surname of Rowlands and brought up by his grandfather Moses Parry, a once-prosperous butcher who was living in reduced circumstances. He cared for the boy until he died, when John was five. Rowlands stayed with families of cousins and nieces for a short time, but he was eventually sent to the St Asaph Union Workhouse for the Poor. The overcrowding and lack of supervision resulted in his being frequently abused by older boys. Historian Robert Aldrich has alleged that the headmaster of the workhouse raped or sexually assaulted Rowlands, and that the older Rowlands was “incontrovertibly bisexual”. When Rowlands was ten, his mother and two half-siblings stayed for a short while in this workhouse, but he did not recognize them until the headmaster told him who they were.

Rowlands emigrated to the United States in 1859 at age 18. He disembarked at New Orleans and by his own account became friends by accident with Henry Hope Stanley, a wealthy trader. He saw Stanley sitting on a chair outside his store and asked him if he had any job openings. He did so in the British style: “Do you need a boy, sir?” The childless man had indeed been wishing he had a son, and the inquiry led to a job and a close relationship between them. Out of admiration, John took Stanley’s name. Later, he wrote that his adoptive parent died two years after their meeting, but in fact the elder Stanley did not die until 1878. This and other discrepancies in Stanley’s own autobiography lead some to argue that no adoption took place.

Stanley reluctantly joined the American Civil War, first enrolling in the Confederate States Army’s 6th Arkansas Infantry Regiment and fighting in the Battle of Shiloh in 1862. After being taken prisoner at Shiloh, he was recruited at Camp Douglas Illinois by its commander Colonel James A Mulligan as a “Galvanized Yankee.” He joined the Union Army on June 4 1862 but was discharged 18 days later because of severe illness. After recovering, he served on several merchant ships before joining the US Navy in July 1864. He became a record keeper on board the USS Minnesota, and participated in the First Battle of Fort Fisher and the Second Battle of Fort Fisher, which led him into freelance journalism. Stanley and a junior colleague jumped ship on 10 February 1865 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in search of greater adventures. Stanley may have been the only man to serve in all three of the Confederate Army, the Union Army, and the Union Navy. He is remembered for the line – “Dr Livingstone, I Presume ?” Henry Morton Stanley wrote In Darkest Africa published in 1890. This is how his story intersects with the next one.

Joseph Conrad born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in 1857 in Berdychiv Ukraine. His family called him “Konrad”, rather than “Józef”. His father was arrested and imprisoned in Pavilion X of the Warsaw Citadel. Conrad would write: “[I]n the courtyard of this Citadel—characteristically for our nation—my childhood memories begin.”

His father’s sentence was commuted, and the family was sent to Chernihiv in northeast Ukraine, where conditions were much better. However in 1865 his mother died of tuberculosis. His father also died of tuberculosis in 1869 leaving Conrad orphaned at the age of 11. The young Conrad was placed in the care of his mother’s brother.

Since he showed little inclination to study, it was essential that he learn a trade; his uncle thought he could work as a sailor-cum-businessman, who would combine maritime skills with commercial activities. In the autumn of 1871, thirteen-year-old Conrad announced his intention to become a sailor. At the age of 15, he was sent to a boarding house for orphan boys. The owner’s daughter recalled: “He stayed with us ten months… Intellectually he was extremely advanced but [he] disliked school routine, which he found tiring and dull; he used to say… he… planned to become a great writer…. He disliked all restrictions. At home, at school, or in the living room he would sprawl unceremoniously.”

“Living away from one’s natural environment—family, friends, social group, language—even if it results from a conscious decision, usually gives rise to… internal tensions, because it tends to make people less sure of themselves, more vulnerable, less certain of their… position and… value… ” ~ Zdzisław Najder

After nearly four years in France and on French ships, Conrad joined the British merchant marine, enlisting in April 1878. His book Heart of Darkness was published in 1899 and like Stanley’s account is set in the Congo. To Conrad’s credit, his contains bitter reflections on colonialism. Conrad regarded the formation of a representative government in Russia as unfeasible and foresaw a transition from autocracy to dictatorship. Conrad’s distrust of democracy sprang from his doubts whether the propagation of democracy as an aim in itself could solve any problems. He thought that, in view of the weakness of human nature and of the “criminal” character of society, democracy offered boundless opportunities for demagogues and charlatans.

Roslï Näf

Not a good realization regarding the actions of Switzerland or the Swiss Red Cross during the Nazi occupation in France. After watching the movie Resistance last night which is about Marcel Marceau’s heroic work assisting Jewish children left orphaned by Nazi atrocities, I wanted to know what happened to the children who made it across the border from France into Switzerland. I didn’t actually find that answer but I did discover this woman, Roslï Näf.

She is an example of how Switzerland was swayed by Nazi pressure, which included the Swiss Red Cross. In late 1941, the agency dispatched a team of teachers and nurses on a humanitarian mission to care for a group of about 100 Jewish children who had been hidden in an ancient chateau Vichy-ruled France, known as Chateau de la Hille. A leader of the team was Roslï Näf, a nurse who had previously worked with the renowned German physician Albert Schweitzer.

In August 1942, when French police rounded up Jews around the country at the demand of German authorities, the 40 eldest children under Naf’s care at the chateau were taken, over her objections, to a French transit camp. She bicycled to the camp, talked her way in and insisted she wouldn’t leave until “my children” were freed. A week later, the French relented and released the children to Naf’s care, just hours before they were to be placed into boxcars for the journey to Auschwitz.

One of the surviving children, whose parents and younger brothers were murdered, Walter H Reed recalled Näf’s sacrifice: “For these acts—protecting the Jewish youngsters, obtaining their release from Le Vernet, and enabling many to escape into Switzerland—Roslï Näf was summoned before the chief of the Swiss Legation in Vichy and dismissed from her post at La Hille.”

In the months immediately after Naf’s heroic act, in late 1942, she and her colleagues from the Swiss Red Cross would assist several groups of teens in escaping from France and heading to Switzerland, where they were allowed to stay. But when a group of five teens tried to escape across the border in the first week of January 1943, German guards caught them.

Inge Joseph Bleier recalls that Näf, with her blonde hair, always had a stern look on her face, had steely blue eyes, and “conveyed a sense of purposefulness and authority.” One of those captured was 17 year old Inge. She managed to escape the Germans by jumping out a bathroom window and then proceeding to flee across the border into Switzerland. She walked far enough that she could see the lights of Geneva, when a Swiss gendarme arrested her.

Inge figured he might send her to a detention camp. But in response to the flow of children and adults escaping from France into Switzerland, the authorities had instituted a new law just a few days earlier requiring any refugee 16 or older to make it at least 10 kilometers into the country before being allowed to stay. Inge hadn’t made it far enough, and so she was returned to the chateau in France. Only one of 30,000 Jews sent back from Swiss border areas to Nazi-controlled France.

Within weeks of the aborted escape, Näf was fired for intervening on behalf of the “Jew children from Chateau la Hille,” according to an internal organization memo. It concluded: “Unanimously agreed the Swiss Red Cross needs to totally distance itself from the director (Näf).” Inge Bleier had realized in hindsight that, after helping Jewish children escape, Näf “was in big trouble. She had been turned into a scapegoat. Her career with the Swiss Red Cross was likely over.” Näf, was never honored by the Red Cross or Switzerland. She died alone in a Danish nursing home at the age of 85. She said shortly before death, that her biggest regret was that “I should have tried harder. There were more children to save.”

But Näf’s colleagues who remained in France continued to help Jewish children to attempt escapes. Ten months after her aborted escape attempt into Switzerland, Inge made a second dash into the country. This time with help from Swiss sympathizers, she was escorted through heavy woods the requisite 10 kilometers. Seven other young Jews were similarly aided in these dangerous cross-border escapes.

Näf as well as a dozen Swiss colleagues who helped Jews escape to Switzerland from France were mostly forgotten by their own country. When they were referred to at all, it was as “smugglers,” as if to suggest they were sneaking cigarettes, food and other bounty over the border for profit instead of saving lives.

In 2014, a group of Christians in the Vallée de Joux region of French-speaking Switzerland decided to try to bring Switzerland’s murky Holocaust past to light by recognizing people like Näf who had been heroes. Joel Reymond, a local journalist and head of the not-for-profit Association les Passeurs de Memoire, spearheaded a two-year campaign to raise funds for a monument in the lakeside town of Le Pont, a few kilometers from the French border, where much of the “smuggling” occurred.

To his surprise, Reymond tapped into an emerging groundswell of interest among younger people in honoring the Swiss heroes of the war. So on a sunny morning this past September, hundreds turned out in Le Pont to view the unveiling. They included the last surviving “smuggler,” 90-year-old Bernard Bouveret, who worked as a forester during the war years.

The weekend commemorations had the feel of a catharsis. These ordinary Swiss who have eagerly taken up the mantel of transparency and introspection can only hope Swiss bankers and art officials will do the same and finally confront head-on their country’s behavior during the Holocaust.

David E. Gumpert wrote much of the story above and is the author of “Inge: A Girl’s Journey Through Nazi Europe” (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 2004).

Concerns About Illegal Adoptions

Ukraine’s foreign ministry has appealed to the United Nations to facilitate the return of Ukrainian children who have been “illegally deported” to Russia.

In a statement, the ministry said Russia had engaged in the “illegal and forced displacement” of Ukrainian children, “among them orphans, children deprived of parental care, as well as children whose parents died as a result of Russia’s military aggression” across Ukraine’s borders to Russia.

The statement reads:

In violation of international humanitarian law and basic standards of humanness, Russia is engaged in state-organized kidnapping of children and destruction of the future of the Ukrainian nation.

Such actions of the Russian occupiers can be qualified as kidnapping and require a decisive reaction from the international community, primarily from the relevant international organizations.

Ukraine has repeatedly accused Russian forces of forcibly deporting thousands of children from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine since the war began.

Earlier this month, two individuals said they and other women and children were forcibly transported to Russian territory from the besieged city of Mariupol in March. The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, has denied these accusations, claiming “such reports are lies”.

~ source The Guardian reporting

Because I am generally against adoption in most cases, and even though I know that the US has no high moral ground, as I am aware that children arriving unaccompanied at the US border were taken in and most likely, too many adopted by families that were total strangers to them, I am still concerned that this same unfortunate situation is also happening to Ukrainian children. I know the circumstances are not equal but the outcomes are equally concerning.

War Is Not Healthy For Children

I didn’t know there was a day for this. It passed right by with no awareness on my part about a month ago. Like many, the impacts of active war weigh heavily on my heart and mind today.

Americans have such a huge appetite for adoption that local sources are insignificant to meet the huge demand. So always, there are Americans adopting foreign children, removing them from culture, language and family. War is often a precursor to a huge push to bring the children traumatized by the violence of war, devastated by its impacts and who have lost or been separated from their families due to the effects of military actions.

I remember when adopting orphans from Russian orphanages was a big thing. I remember that many adoptive families were ill prepared for the challenges they received. I didn’t even know as much about adoption then as I do now. I totally agree with any sovereignty a country that choses to shutdown an adoption pipeline that opened in their country.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was an increase in the number of orphans. In 1995, there was a reported 300,000 children in the orphanage system. Although difficult to accurately count, there are an estimated 1 million to 5 million homeless youth. The number of orphanages increased by 100% between 2002 and 2012 to 2,176. Some of the reasons for children to end up in the orphanages are domestic abuse, parental substance abuse, having lost their parents, or being found alone on the streets. As for those who are social orphans (meaning that one or more of their birth parents are still alive) there are various reasons as to why they end up in orphanages. For instance one girl’s parents were told when she was born that she wouldn’t live long, so her parents refused to take her. Other children have been abandoned due to reasons such as their disabilities, or their parent’s drug or substance problems.

On December 28, 2012, Russian President Vladimir Putin approved the Dima Yakovlev Law, prohibiting Russian children from being adopted by American citizens. The law was described by the BBC as “a reaction to the US Magnitsky Act”, which blacklisted high-ranking Russian officials. Personally, I am not sad if there are less “orphans” going into the US from whatever pipeline for whatever reason.

I’m glad if there are fewer adoptions that take a child out of the country of their birth, remove them from their native language and customs and drop them into unfamiliar environments. In 2019, the last pre-pandemic year, US families adopted 2,971 children from other countries. In 2020, there were only 1,622 intercountry adoptions — a 45% drop from the year before and a nearly 93% decline from the peak.