Thousands Of Swiss Children Sold Into Slavery

[MrPrax]

(note to MODs: This link is from Rense.com, but it is cited from the The Telegraph UK which the original story is 'login' ergo I have posted the 'freebie' summary)

Thousands Of Swiss
Children Sold Into Slavery
By Kim Wilsher
The Telegraph - UK
3-14-4


Tens of thousands of unwanted Swiss children were sold in auctions or given away as cheap labour until the 1950s, according to a shocking television documentary which has forced the country to confront a dark chapter of its recent past.

Many of the child workers, known as Verdingkinder (discarded children), ended up being beaten and sexually abused after passing under the auctioneer's hammer in Swiss provincial towns.
<snip>
Historians estimate that as many as 12,000 children of poor families, some of them infants and many with unmarried or divorced mothers, were given away or sold during the 1930s alone. The trade finally ended only in the decade after the Second World War, when increased farm mechanisation meant less need for youthful labour.
<snip>
The trade in surplus or unwanted children started during the early 19th century. Although it was particularly widespread in the German-speaking cantons of Switzerland, it occurred elsewhere as well: boys known as "black brothers" were sent from the Italian-speaking region of Ticino, across the border to work as chimney sweeps in Italy.
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004.
(more)
Summary here:
http://www.rense.com/general50/children.htm

Full Story from:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/03/14/wswi
ss14.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/03/14/ixworld.html

To quote Harry Lime:
"In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed—but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

And slavery apparantly

[yardwork]

1. This happened in the United States as well.

In the 19th century, for instance, orphans were shipped out to the expanding western territories to work for farmers and ranchers.

[DBoon]

2. Traditional American values at work?

I wouldn't mention stuff like this in public - someone might overhear you and think it's a good idea. We might get something like faith based involuntary servitude" or something like that.

[Roaming]

3. Slavery has existed probably as long as humankind and

continues to this day. It's always been a reprehensible practice. Places like Africa and eastern countries still practice it; slaves are even smuggled into America from foreign countries. Sadly it seems in the future it will only continue, wherever some human beings are willing to sell out their brothers and sisters; very sad.

[Enraged_Ape]

4. I have no doubt that this is a thriving business today

There are sweatshops the world over, many (if not most) are run off American $$$$. There are groups like the Travellers that all but sell their young pre-teen women into arranged "marriages", right here in the good old USA. You can get away with ANY crime in this country if you have the money. Only the absolute poor and disenfranchised have to pay any of their crimes. So why should the more established have to worry about getting busted for a "little" thing like this? What's to stop them from pursuing the young and helpless? The answer: NOTHING. This goes on every day, right under our noses.

[revree]

5. Now I know why I prefer animals to humans...

[JohnyCanuck]

6. British orphans were shipped to Canada and Australia

mainly to provide cheap labor on farms.

There've been some documentaries on TV about these British children who had been given up for adoption or orphaned and then shipped out to the "colonies" to be "adopted" by Canadian and Australian farming families and earn their room and board by working on the farm. There was an English orphanage, Bernardos, which was heavily involved int this and while they probably sent these children off sincerely believing they were doing what was in the kids' best intererest and there probably were some happy outcomes, many of these kids were quite horribly abused when they finally arrived in their new surroundings and treated as little more than indentured servants and second class citizens. In some cases siblings were also split up and not able to maintain contact with each other.

Thomas Barnardo started the Charity which bears his name when he opened the first of many children's homes in 1867. Between 1867 - 1981 (when the last home closed) over 350,000 children were cared for by this organisation. Many of the children were not orphans as is popularly believed, but children (often from large families) whose parents were simply no longer able or willing to look after them.

Barnardos kept extensive records of every single child who passed through their homes, but this was done in great secrecy, and the individual child was rarely told about their own family background. The philosophy seemed to be that the physical well-being of the child far outweighed any emotional problem of not having information about one's family.

Between 1882 - 1967 over 30,000 of these children were sent to
Canada or Australia to start a new life, and there must now be many
descendents of these children in those countries

Since Jan this year Barnardos have decided to open their files to those who are former Barnados children trying to trace still living relatives, and to descendents of former Barnardos children trying to research their family history.

http://www.afn.org/~afn09444/genealog/notes/barnardo.htm