http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29765623
29 October 2014
Last updated at 01:37
By Kavita Puri
Switzerland
Thousands
of people in Switzerland who were forced into child labour are
demanding compensation for their stolen childhoods. Since the 1850s
hundreds of thousands of Swiss children were taken from their parents
and sent to farms to work - a practice that continued well into the 20th
Century.
David Gogniat heard a loud knock on the door. There were two policemen.
"I heard them shouting and realised something was wrong. I
looked out and saw that my mother had pushed the policemen down the
stairs," he says.
"She then came back in and slammed the door. The next day
three policemen came. One held my mother and the other took me with
them."
At the age of eight, he was in effect kidnapped and taken away to a farm. To this day he has no idea why.
For the first years of his life, he and his older brother and
sisters lived alone with their mother. They were poor, but his
childhood was happy until one day in 1946, when he came home from school
to find his siblings had disappeared.
A year later it was his turn.
He was taken to an old farmhouse and
became the farmhand. He would wake before 06:00 and worked before and
after school. His day finished after 22:00. This physically imposing man
in his 70s looks vulnerable as he remembers the frequent violence from
the foster father. "I would almost describe him as a tyrant... I was
afraid of him. He had quite a temper and would hit me for the smallest
thing," Gogniat says.
Watch Kavita Puri's report
Switzerland: Stolen Childhoods on Our World at 11:30 GMT on Saturday 1 November and at 2230 GMT on Sunday 2 November on BBC World News.
Assignment is on BBC World Service radio from Thursday.
On one occasion, when he was
older, he remembers he snapped, grabbed his foster father, pushed him
against the wall and was about to hit him. The man threatened him: "If
you hit me, I'll have you sent to an institution." David backed off.
His siblings were living with families in the nearby village,
though he rarely saw them. He missed his mother desperately. They wrote
and there were occasional visits. One day his mother made an audacious
attempt to get her children back. She came up with an Italian couple in a
Fiat Topolino and said she was taking his siblings for a walk. David
wasn't there but it was the talk of the village when he came back that
night. The police brought the children back three days later.
"The fact that my mother arranged to kidnap her own children
and take them back home to Bern with her just goes to show how much she
was struggling against the authorities," Gogniat says. On his mother's
death he made a shocking discovery. He found papers which showed she had
been paying money to the foster families for the upkeep of her four
children, who had been forcibly taken away from her and were working as
indentured labourers.
Gogniat, his brother and two sisters were "contract children" or
verdingkinder
as they are known in Switzerland. The practice of using children as
cheap labour on farms and in homes began in the 1850s and it continued
into the second half of the 20th Century. Historian Loretta Seglias says
children were taken away for "economic reasons most of the time… up
until World War Two Switzerland was not a wealthy country, and a lot of
the people were poor". Agriculture was not mechanised and so farms
needed child labour.
David Gogniat with his younger sister before they were taken away from their mother
If a child became orphaned, a parent was unmarried, there was
fear of neglect, or you had the misfortune to be poor, the communities
would intervene. Authorities tried to find the cheapest way to look
after these children, so they took them out of their families and placed
them in foster families.
"They wanted to take these children out of the poor family
and put them somewhere else where they could learn how to work, as
through work they could support themselves as adults," says Seglias.
Dealing with the poor in this way she says was social
engineering. If a parent dared to object, they could face measures
themselves. "They could be put in prison or an institution where you
would be made to work, so you could always put pressure on the parents."
Mostly it was farms that children were sent to, but not
always. Sarah (not her real name) had been in institutions from birth,
but in 1972, at the age of nine, she was sent to a home in a village,
where she was expected to clean the house. She did that before and after
school, and at night cleaned offices in nearby villages for her foster
mother. She was beaten regularly by the mother, she says, and at the age
of 11 started being sexually abused by the sons at night.
This is the first time she has spoken about her story and her
hands shake as she remembers. "The worst thing is that one sister,
their daughter, once caught one of those boys... while I was asleep and
she told the woman... [who said] that it didn't matter, I was just a
slag anyway," Sarah says. A teacher and the school doctor wrote to the
authorities, to express concern about her, but nothing was done.
There was no official decision to end the use of contract
children. Seglias says it just naturally started to die out in the 1960s
and 70s. As farming became mechanised, the need for child labour
vanished. But Switzerland was changing too. Women got the vote in 1971
and attitudes towards poverty and single mothers moved on.
I found an exceptionally late case in a remote part of
Switzerland. In 1979, Christian's mother was struggling. Recently
divorced from a violent husband she needed support.
Christian with his mother
Instead, the state took her seven and eight-year-old sons to a
farm many hours away by car. Christian remembers getting out of the car
and watching his mother and the woman from social services driving off.
"My brother and I stood in front of the house feeling very
lost and didn't know what to do… it was a strange moment, a moment you
never forget," he says.
On the first day they were given overalls and perfectly
fitting rubber boots, "because before the placement the woman from
social services had even asked what size shoes we wore… When I think
back I do believe there was an awareness that my brother and I would be
made to work there."
There was work before and after school, at weekends and all
year round. He remembers one incident, at a silo where cut grass was
kept to make into silage. "In winter it was pretty frozen and I had to
hack quite hard with the pitchfork and I was put under pressure and then
this accident happened and the fork went through my toe."
Christian says work accidents were never reported to his
mother or social services. And if the boys didn't work hard enough there
were repercussions. Food was withheld as a form of punishment.
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"My brother and I just went hungry at
the time. When I think back there were five years during which we
constantly went hungry. That's why my brother and I used to steal food,"
Christian says. He remembers they stole chocolate from the village shop
- though he now thinks the owners knew the boys were hungry and let
them take the goodies. A former teacher of Christian's at the local
school says with hindsight he looked malnourished.
But there were also more serious consequences if Christian
didn't work hard enough, including violence. "We were pretty much being
driven to work," he says. "There were many beatings, slaps in the face,
pulling of hair, tugging of ears - there was also one incident involving
something like a mock castration."
Christian has no doubt why he and his brother were placed
with the farmer. "I believe it was about cheap labour... we were
profitable," he says. "They expanded the farm... it was five years of
hard work."
When I visited Christian's mother, Svetlana, she took out a
letter he had written to her during his time with the foster family.
Christian himself hadn't seen it for nearly 30 years.
"It's a very strange letter. It's my handwriting but not my
words," he says. It's a rhyming poem in German, sent to her on Mother's
Day, and it accuses her of failing to look after her children. Svetlana
cries as Christian translates it into English. "We are never washed and
usually not combed, the socks had holes and the shirt was dirty," he
says.
For Mother's Day: We would never
be washed, and mostly not brushed, our socks would have holes, our
shirts were dirty, we would eat fish with honey, and cauliflower with
cinnamon if you didn't take care of us. We would have wet feet, and
black teeth like soot, and would be covered up to our ears in prune
mousse. We couldn't sleep if you didn't come and take us in your arms
before we slipped into our dreams. And still we are sometimes a burden,
but what would you be without children? Be glad you have us.
His mother has been unable to read this for decades. "I was
being humiliated, portrayed as a bad uncaring mother without a heart or
soul," she says.
"We were forced to write these letters," Christian remembers.
"There was constant control… no boy could have written that." Around
the borders of the letter are Christian's childlike drawings. And there
is a sticker of a heart with the word "love" written across it.
Historians estimate there were hundreds of thousands such
children. For one year alone in the 1930s, records show 30,000 children
were placed in foster families across Switzerland.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
They were being abused and no-one believed them”
Loretta Seglias
Historian
"It's hard to know precisely how
many contract children there were as records were kept locally, and
sometimes not at all," says Loretta Seglias. "Some children were also
placed by private organisations, or their own families."
The extent to which these children were treated as
commodities is demonstrated by the fact that there are cases even in the
early 20th Century where they were herded into a village square and
sold at public auction.
Seglias shows me some photographs. One child looks barely two
- surely she couldn't be a contract child? "She could, she would be
brushing floors bringing in the milk. Sometimes they came as babies on
to the farms, and the bigger they grew the more work they would do,"
Seglias says.
In her studies, and speaking to former contract children she
finds recurring themes. The lack of information comes up again and
again.
"Children didn't know what was happening to them, why they
were taken away, why they couldn't go home, see their parents, why they
were being abused and no-one believed them," she says.
"The other thing is the lack of love. Being in a family where
you are not part of the family, you are just there for working." And it
left a devastating mark for the rest of the children's lives. Some have
huge psychological problems, difficulties with getting involved with
others and their own families. For others it was too much to bear. Some
committed suicide after such a childhood.
Social workers did make visits. David Gogniat says his family
had no telephone, so when a social worker called a house in the village
to announce that she was coming, a white sheet was hung out of a window
as a warning to the foster family. On the day of this annual visit
David didn't have to work, and was allowed to have lunch with the family
at the table. "That was the only time I was treated as a member of the
family… She sat at the table with us and when she asked a question I was
too scared to say anything, because I knew if I did the foster family
would beat me."
David with his foster family and another unidentified boy
Sarah too remembers that visits were announced and that social
workers were always welcomed with cake, biscuits and coffee. "I used to
sit at the table too. It was always lovely, ironically speaking, but at
least I knew I was being left in peace, that nothing was going to
happen." She never spoke alone to a social worker during her stay with
the family.
Christian doesn't remember seeing a social worker alone
either. In his documents, social workers wrote that he was "happy". In
one of the letters, a visit is announced, saying it doesn't matter if
the children are at school. Christian shows me letters written by his
mother, detailing her concern that they were being beaten, were
malnourished, and doing agricultural labour. His mother organised a
medical assessment, on one of his rare visits home, and the doctor's
conclusion was that he was psychologically and physically exhausted.
This triggered his removal from the farm in 1985, when he was 14. His
older brother, left at the same time. They were then sent to a state-run
institution.
An exhibition which opened five years ago, and is still running
today at the Ballenburg open-air museum, awoke modern Switzerland with a
shock to its dark past of child exploitation. The man behind it, Basil
Rogger, says that from the 1920s on there was a constant flow of
pamphlets, autobiographies, and newspaper articles about the plight of
the contract children. Their history was not a secret. If you wanted to
know about it you could.
By the time of the exhibition, a generation had passed since
the practice had died out, and there was enough distance to cope with
it. Crucially, he says, the state was prepared to address the issue.
Contract children who thought their experiences were isolated realised
they were not alone, and began to share their stories.
Visitors also began to ask questions within their own family -
Rogger says when he met people weeks after the exhibition they would
tell him someone in their family was a contract child. "So people became
aware of the omnipresence of this system, because almost any Swiss
person knows someone placed in a foster family."
In recent years there has been a process of national
soul-searching. Last year an official apology was made to contract
children, and other victims of the state's compulsory measures - people
who had been forcibly sterilised, or unlawfully detained.
The Swiss Parliament, the Bundeshaus is buzzing. The campaigner
Guido Fluri has just got the 100,000 signatures for a petition that
could put the question of compensation to a national referendum. It's
calling for a restitution package of about 500 million Swiss Francs
(£327m) for the 10,000 contract children estimated to be alive today, as
well as others wronged by the state's coercive measures. The petition
was launched in April. Fluri says its success shows how strongly the
Swiss people sympathise with the contract children.
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“Start Quote
Many who have experienced such severe suffering feel that wounds are being reopened”
Guido Fluri
Campaigner
He is in parliament lobbying
politicians to win their support for the petition. He explains to
parliamentarians the plight of survivors - "people who suffered for
decades, who fought, who were never able to leave their trenches, who
hid away, who were ashamed of their story… some of whom are living in
neglect". It's not just money, he says. "What's important is to point
the way towards acknowledging that huge suffering."
The Farmers Union agrees with the principle of compensation,
but is adamant that farmers should not have to contribute. You have to
understand the times in which these children were placed into foster
care, says union president Markus Ritter. Councils and churches had no
money. Farming families were asked to take children who had fallen on
difficult times or had one parent so the farmers were fulfilling a
social function. Does he acknowledge abuse occurred? "We received a lot
of feedback from children who were treated really well… But we are also
aware that some children were not treated properly."
Guido Fluri says this social re-examination is liberating for
some former contract children. Many elderly people come on crutches and
in wheelchairs to his office to discuss their stories with him. The
other day he found a poem left on his desk. For others, public
discussion is too much to bear, and Fluri has received death threats.
"Many who have experienced such severe suffering feel that wounds are
being reopened," he says. "You can understand. They are completely
overwhelmed by the situation."
It's taken a long time for the drive for compensation to
reach this point, and there could still be many years of parliamentary
discussion more before it becomes a reality. Loretta Seglias says the
issue of restitution is a complicated one in Switzerland. "There is this
fear of having to pay compensation... Some will say who else will come
forward?" The experience of war reparations has left a scar.
David Gogniat, who left his foster family when he was 16, is
now 75. He runs a successful trucking business. He arrives with his wife
at the Bern archive. Since July, former contract children have had the
right to access their childhood files.
David started the search into his past two months ago. He waits nervously outside in the autumn sunshine.
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“Start Quote
Many are probably afraid to read those files because they don't know what to expect”
Yvonne Pfaffli
"To me it feels as though there
was some sort of an agreement between the farmers and child services to
provide children as cheap labour," he says. But he only wants to know
one thing: "Who was responsible for the fact we were taken away?"
He accepts that he may end up feeling disappointed, but he also thinks this could help him move on.
Once inside, he waits in a modern glass room. Yvonne Pfaffli,
who has found his records, arrives with two files. I leave David in
private to absorb it all. A while later, earlier than I expect, he
emerges.
"Things came to light that I hadn't heard of or seen before,
and I think I need to look at it again some other time," he says. Later,
he tells me he learned something about his father, and some intriguing
financial information - but he doesn't divulge details. He just seems
relieved to have held the files of his childhood in his hands.
Over many more visits to the archive he will now try to piece together the mysteries of his past.
Many people have big gaps in their knowledge, says Pfaffli.
They may remember being taken away in a black car, without ever having
known why.
"They didn't know that it might be the result of something
like their parents' divorce," she says. "These are very big questions,
and many are nervous, and many are probably afraid to read those files
because they don't know what to expect, but on the other hand they are
hugely grateful that these files exist."
The documents have usually been written by social services
staff and their perspective may be very different from the child's.
There tends to be no mention of abuse.
Yvonne Pfaffli with files from the archive
Sarah, now 51, left her foster family at 15 for an
apprenticeship and never went back. She too has her file, though she was
shocked at some significant omissions. Letters from her school doctor
and teacher expressing concern about the way she was treated are not
there, she says. Neither is a letter from the local authority
apologising for placing her with an inappropriate family, which she says
she was only ever allowed to read and not keep. With the help of the
Verdingkinder network she is trying to trace them.
"What's also missing is the bit explaining why I was placed
in that family in the first place, who made the decision, how it even
came to that, so my files are anything but complete," she says. "And
that's a shame. All we want is our story, and then we can draw a line
under it… I am by no means certain whether the authorities aren't just
putting up a front when they say they're helping us. For me there is a
question mark."
Christian got his files back in July. "It's very very
important. It's my life. It's also important for coming to terms with it
in a historical and scientific way," he says. He has many questions:
why they were taken away, and why so far away from their mother? Did the
authorities know about the work they were doing. Did they know about
the polio-arthritis he began to suffer from while living with the foster
family? He says the report from a psychologist that triggered his
removal from the farm is missing. He is still studying the 700 pages.
He shows me letters from his mother documenting her concern
about her sons' health and the fact that they were not allowed to go to
secondary school.
There is a contract with the farmer showing his parents'
contribution to the foster family of 900 Swiss Francs a month, later
increased.
But some former contract children find that no files remain.
"Either they have been destroyed a long time ago, or more recently,"
says historian Loretta Seglias. "Some get answers… others don't."
Two unidentified contract children
Christian's foster parents agree to meet me - and are open to
meeting him. One early morning we make the journey to the countryside.
Before we get in the car, Christian tells me he doesn't
expect an apology, but by talking about what happened, he thinks, maybe
they will reflect on how they behaved. As we drive into the countryside
the views are breathtaking. Christian looks out of the window. "I am
feeling very complex emotions. The landscape that used to give comfort
to me as a child is giving me comfort now, but I'm also a bit
speechless. It's difficult... I am feeling nervous as I have no idea
what will happen there."
As we enter the village, Christian points out the village
shop where he used to steal chocolate as a child. It's had a makeover
three decades on. He becomes palpably anxious as we approach the farm.
He wants to be left at a nearby river while we conduct the interview.
I approach the picture-postcard farmhouse. After some time,
the farmer and his wife emerge. They agree to talk but on the condition
of anonymity. They deny all of Christian's allegations - describing them
as "lies". They say he never worked before or after school… maybe
during the holidays he swept the stables. And they insist they were
never violent towards Christian or his brother.
"No. You shouldn't hit children," says the farmer. "On the
contrary" says his wife "with hugs, we tried with love." I mention the
mock-castration, "Ha, castrate!" the farmer shouts. "What else? Those
are some memories he has!"
Farmhouses have been erected at the museum to show traditional rural life in Switzerland
It infuriates him when I say Christian said he felt as if he
were a contract child. "No, he wasn't a contract child, he was no
contract child, we had them as if they were our own children," says the
farmer.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
I don't know where my journey will take me, I just know I want to fight for something”
Christian
I show them the Mother's Day
letter. The farmer's wife denies asking Christian to write it. She
attempts to tear it. "Don't roll it up," the farmer says under his
breath. "Well, what should I do with this piece of paper? Burn it?" his
wife asks him. They return it.
I ask how it feels three decades on to have these allegations
made against them. "It's a saddening feeling, very sad," says the
farmer. His wife adds: "I was so attached to those two."
But they refuse to see Christian. "We congratulate him on
those lies he cooked up!" she says. The farmer adds: "I wouldn't even
look at such a person with my backside."
Afterwards, I tell Christian there will be no meeting. "In
some ways it makes me very, very sad because I was here, he had the
opportunity to speak to me… I had prepared myself to talk to him and I
would like to have confronted him with these questions in person and
seen whether he would also have told me it was lies."
Christian walks back to the car, limping because of his
arthritis. On the way back he is silent. Just before reaching home he
tells me he has the same feeling of dread he used to have when going
back to the farm. He seems fragile.
"I don't know where my journey will take me, I just know I
want to fight for something that needs to be done," he says. "And I want
to take responsibility not just for my brother and myself but for
others in my generation as well."
Because it all happened so long ago, it is no longer possible
for charges to be brought against the farmer, should the authorities
have wanted to. Very few prosecutions have ever taken place against the
foster parents of contract children, or the social workers who failed
them.
Sarah's home is covered with pictures of her children and
grandchildren. She has a happy marriage. Her family know nothing of her
childhood. She keeps the file containing her records away from the house
so there is no risk of it being discovered. She attends contract
children support meetings in a different city so she won't be
recognised.
"I don't want to stand in my children's way - I don't want
them to be snubbed because of me because of my past," she says.
"Contract children still haven't found their place in society, we're
still considered to be on a lower level, or even in the basement. That's
why I'd rather the neighbours didn't know."
David Gogniat used to be Bern president of the Hauliers
Association, and some members found out recently that he had been a
contract child. "It then turned out some people I had done business with
had grown up just like me," he says. "They later founded a club and a
few weeks ago they invited me to visit, so I am now a member."
His goal is to get compensation for former contract children.
"I was lucky to be healthy so I was able to work and managed to make a
life for myself," he says. "But many were not that fortunate."
Christian, now 42, is an artist. His home is decorated with
his sculptures and pictures. His career choice is no coincidence. "My
brother and I were never encouraged to put our feelings into words, to
describe them, and of course to express them without fear," he says.
"Somehow I felt in art I learned to talk about my inner thoughts, the
images inside me and also about the external impressions and images, so
this path was very, very important for me."
Christian's mother, 2014
His relationship with his mother has been damaged. "These
events have completely torn my family apart," he says. His mother
agrees. "I would say we have grown apart, we don't really have much in
common," she says. "It's very difficult, even now."
Christian says the experiences of his childhood have left huge scars.
"You understand you are different, but you don't want to be
different, you'd somehow like to be normal, you'd like to pretend this
had somehow never happened."
Archive photos of verdingkinder courtesy of Paul Senn
(1901-1953), Bern Switzerland; Bernese Foundation of Photography, Film
and Video, Kunstmuseum Bern, deposit Gottfried Keller Foundation. ©
Gottfried Keller Foundation, Bern.
Watch Kavita Puri's report Switzerland: Stolen Childhoods on Our World at 11:30 GMT on Saturday 1 November and at 2230 GMT on Sunday 2 November on BBC World News. Assignment is on BBC World Service radio from Thursday.
