The Hugo Valentin Lecture 2021: Professor Dan Stone

This year's Hugo Valentin Lecture has the title "Unaccompanied Children: The Child Search Branch of the International Tracing Service, 1945–1950" and will be held by Dan Stone, Professor of modern history and director of the Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Professor Stone will draw our attention to the many "unaccompanied children" that the UN encountered in occupied Germany and which were many more than expected. The focus of the lecture will be the work carried out by special research teams to locate and care for these children. As far as possible, the children were returned to their home countries. If that was not possible, the work instead focused on trying to find new homes for them. Professor Stone will provide some concrete examples relating to the experience of the children, highlighting the politically and emotionally difficult work that was done, and how some children tried to use the system to their own advantage.

Dan Stone is the author and editor of a great many volumes, including Goodbye to All That? The Story of Europe since 1945; The Liberation of the Comps: The End of the Holocaust and its Aftermath and Concentration Camps: A Very Short Introduction. In addition to his role as a teacher and researcher, he holds a number of positions of trust at the Imperial War Museum, the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and The UK Oversight Committee for the International Tracing Service.