Unveiling the War Child Syndrome: Finnish War Children's Experiences of the Evacuation to Sweden During WWII from a Lifetime Perspective

ABSTRACT

During World War II, a total of 48,628 Finnish children were evacuated to Sweden and placed into temporary foster care. We studied the long-term effects of early separation among aging evacuees using a mixed-methods approach. The purpose was to understand how the evacuees experienced the evacuation event from a lifetime perspective and to determine the features of a possible war child syndrome. The evacuees expressed problems related to loss of confidence, detachment or rootlessness, and unworthiness or rejection. Feelings of rejection and unworthiness provoked shame in many of the reports. Our results suggest that support interventions should focus on processing these painful experiences.

KEYWORDS:

• Early separation
• evacuation
• shame
• trauma

Notes on contributors

Cecilia Heilala is a doctoral student at the Institute of Behavioral Sciences at the University of Helsinki. She participates in a war child project investigating the long-term consequences of separation, early life stress, bereavement, and trauma.

Nina Santavirta is the principal investigator (PI) in the war child project. She is an associate professor at the Institute of Behavioral Sciences at the University of Helsinki.

Notes

¹As Karelia was the border region between Finland and the Soviet Union, it was most adversely affected by the war. Roughly 400,000 people, virtually the whole Karelian population, had to be relocated to other areas of Finland in 1940 as a consequence of the Moscow Peace Treaty between the Soviet Union and Finland, which ceded Karelia to the Soviet Union.

²The Soviet Union sought to claim parts of Finnish territory, and attacked Finland in 1939. The Moscow Peace Treaty in 1940 ceded Karelia to the Soviet Union. Most children evacuated during this time (Winter War) were accompanied by their mothers and/or siblings and did not stay in Sweden for a prolonged time.