*** Welcome to piglix ***

Kinder der Landstrasse


Kinder der Landstrasse (literally: Children of the Country Road) was a project of the Swiss foundation Pro Juventute that ended in the 1970s. The focus of the project was, in part, to "equalize" the Yenish culture in Switzerland by removing about 590 children from their parents.

From 1926 to 1973, the Swiss government had, according to the final report Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz – Zweiter Weltkrieg (Volume 23) of the Swiss parliamentary commission of that name, a semi-official policy of institutionalizing Yenish parents and having their children adopted by more "normal" Swiss citizens, in an effort to eliminate Yenish culture. The name of this program, provided by the Swiss children-oriented Pro Juventute foundation, was Kinder der Landstrasse (literally: children of the country road). In all, about 590 children were taken from their parents and institutionalized in orphanages, mental institutions and even prisons.

In 1926, Pro Juventute started – supported by the federal authorities and official institutions – systematically taking children away from Yenish families living in Switzerland and placing them in foster homes, psychiatric hospitals and even prisons. This so-called "re-education" had the goal of establishing Yenish families, and particularly the next generation, in a 'sedentary' lifestyle. After 47 years of those unremitting activities, the affected people obtained in 1973, with the support of the media, an end to these practices.

As the legal basis of the forced separation of families and children served the Swiss Civil Code (Zivilgesetzbuch) of 1912, by – at misfeasance behavior of parents, permanent risk or, more generally, neglect – the guardianship authorities were empowered, parents to take away the custody of their children. Although the Civil Code mentioned a supervision over the work of the authorities, it was widely ignored. Although the welfare authorities possessed the right parents to escape custody, such as the supervision in the mass application of the laws of the article, was nowhere determined. Crucial and sufficient was the 'legal fact', that the children were members of a traveling (Yenish) family, and thus a sufficient reason, to take away the children from their parents.

As a professionally-welfare justification generic psychiatric reports, which let the "Fund" the full control over his wards. The 'general scientific basis' for the attitude of those responsible functioneers was primarily the conviction of the harmfulness of family socialization "categorized as asocial families, as families who were traveling with origin per se". These fascist assumption informed at the same time in "hereditary biological notions of inferior 'genetic asocial material', whether sedentary or not, that will "damage the valuable heritage of the settled majority population, if its disclosure would not prevent."


...
Wikipedia

...