The Memories of Displaced Children: Flight Experience in the Life Stories of Exiled Latvians

Abstract

This article explores how Latvian children who were displaced during the Second World War came across their displacement and how they compose the narratives of this childhood experience. Their life story interviews have been preserved in the Latvian National Oral History Archive. Recorded testimonies convey the migration experience in an intense way by vividly depicting the psychological, emotional, and material circumstances that children faced and by revealing common themes relevant to them at the time of the displacement.

Keywords

• life stories
• memory
• displaced children
• childhood experience
• latvia
• second world war