Wolf children (German: Wolfskinder) was the name given to a group of orphaned German children at the end of World War II in East Prussia.
" German war orphans, who in 1945 evaded in other than German surrounding to survive and therefore had to live as adult persons in foreign countries (Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and others) under false identity are called Wolf children."
When the Red Army conquered East Prussia in 1945, thousands of German children were left on their own, because their parents had been killed during bombing raids or during harsh winters without any food or shelter. Older children often tried to keep their siblings together, and survival—searching for food and shelter—became their number-one priority. Many went on food-scrounging trips into neighboring Lithuania and were adopted by the rural Lithuanian farmers, who often employed them. Most of these children made these trips back and forth many times to get food for their sick mothers or siblings. They were called “wolf children” because of their wolf-like wandering through the forests and along railroad tracks, sometimes catching rides on top or in between railroad cars, jumping off before reaching Soviet control stations. All who assisted the German children to survive had to hide their efforts from the Soviet occupation authorities in Lithuania. Therefore, many German children's names were changed, and only after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990 could they reveal their true identities.
Read more about Wolf Children: Evacuation Impossible, Stories of Survivors, Search For Relatives, In Memory, Assessment in Film
Famous quotes containing the words wolf and/or children:
“Wulf, my Wulf! Waiting for you
has made me ill, your seldom coming,
this sorrowing mood—not lack of meat.
Do you hear, Eadwacer? Our poor whelp
a wolf bears off to the wood.”
—Unknown. Eadwacer (l. 13–17)
“Even though I had let them choose their own socks since babyhood, I was only beginning to learn to trust their adult judgment.. . . I had a sensation very much like the moment in an airplane when you realize that even if you stop holding the plane up by gripping the arms of your seat until your knuckles show white, the plane will stay up by itself. . . . To detach myself from my children . . . I had to achieve a condition which might be called loving objectivity.”
—Anonymous Parent of Adult Children. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 5 (1978)