Bücher von Machteld Venken

Following the Treaty of Versailles, European nation-states were faced with the challenge of instilling national loyalty in their new borderlands, in which fellow citizens often differed dramatically from one another along religious, linguistic, cultural, or ethnic lines. Peripheries at the Centre compares the experiences of schooling in Upper Silesia in Poland and Eupen, Sankt Vith, and Malmedy in Belgium - border regions detached from the German Empire after the First World War. It demonstrates how newly configured countries envisioned borderland schools and language learning as tools for realizing the imagined peaceful Europe that underscored the political geography of the interwar period.

This book centralizes a unique collection of ego documents created under communism in which Polish former child forced labourers articulate their war experiences. A comparative analysis of them with recent testimonies reveals that these ego documents offer a more nuanced depiction of Germans and display richer information on the specific working conditions and daily routine for children than the contemporary ones. A comparative reading of the archival testimonies with their published equivalents shows how the streamlining of a publicly acceptable version of the past under communism went both ways, i.e. at times foregrounding the propaganda content of autobiographical wordings, but also at other moments downplaying this element. The collection increases our understanding of child forced labour experiences during World War II, specifically the ways in which children perceived that experience, and offers insights into the negotiated appropriation of communist ideology at the individual level.

This book provides a comparative analysis of the history of borderland children during the 20th century. More than their parents, children were envisioned to play a crucial role in bringing about a peaceful Europe.

In aftermath of World War II, two migration streams entered Belgium: former allied soldiers from Poland and former Ostarbeiterinnen from Soviet Union. This book focuses on these people's attempts to give meaning to their war experiences in post-war life, and delineates processes they used to understand and articulate what they had been through.