“A Bit of American Philanthropy in Swampy Pinsk”: Caring for and Constructing Children in Eastern Poland, 1919–22

This paper examines child-relief work conducted by American organizations in Poland’s eastern borderlands (kresy) from 1919 to 1922. Armed with only the Polish government’s blessing and ample financial and material resources from the United States, American aid workers arrived in the impoverished, underdeveloped, and ethnically diverse kresy with virtually no local linguistic or cultural knowledge. Though they soon came to occupy the central position of authority over child welfare, their encounters with resident populations were marked by a mixture of condescension, disdain, fear, and awe. Using sources, which include aid workers’ personal letters, official reports, photographs, and memorial albums, the paper looks at how children of the eastern kresy were constructed, classified, and cared for by the American mission. It explores how aid workers’ readings or misreadings of children’s ethnic and religious identities, their navigation of local disputes, and their own prejudices and cultural chauvinism shaped the administration of care. It also traces how foreign workers started to redefine communal responsibility and familial structure and authority, by advancing the notion that children were a separate category of the population in need of specialized care. Finally, this paper locates American relief work in relation to larger concerns in Poland at this time about children, health, and the formation of a sustainable nation-state.