The study of “unaccompanied children,” whose parents’ fate was unknown in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust, has recently flourished, with a number of historians taking the opportunity provided by the opening of the International Tracing Service (ITS) to revisit how the Western Allies handled the complex legacies of child-specific persecution: from the murder of and hunt for Jewish children in ghettos or concentration camps, to the deportation of children for so-called Germanization purposes, to the recruitment of forced laborers of minor age. Lynne Taylor's book is a welcome addition to this scholarship, and it is the first study to focus in such depth on the American administration of their zone of occupation in Germany, on the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), and, later, on the International Refugee Organization (IRO). In December 1946, “unaccompanied children” numbered 6,526 in the American zone, including 5,036 registered as Jewish, 406 as Polish, 159 as Yugoslavian, and 532 identified as “other and undetermined” (81). These children were soon joined by other youths arriving as part of the flow of Eastern European “infiltrees,” often brought in by the underground Zionist rescue and flight organization, the so-called Bricha movement. Although these various groups were not numerous, they were at the heart of bitter struggles among international organizations, postwar states, German foster families, and biological families. Taylor explores the heated disputes that erupted among these various groups, for which these children represented a symbol of the future.

Her book is a valuable contribution to this burgeoning field for several reasons. First, Taylor complicates a well-established narrative in the history of postwar humanitarianism, namely, the primacy of family reunification. It is true that American officials initially considered this practice to be fundamental to the psychological health of children and to the stability of the postwar states. Yet, Taylor identifies a shift over time: as the Cold War unfolded, the emphasis on family was replaced by a heightened concern over the children's legal status, as American occupiers realized that, “without a nationality, an unaccompanied child had no clear future” (110). Second, Taylor provides a compelling account of the inconsistent categorization of these displaced children, demonstrating that, too often, “nationality (read: ethnicity) and citizenship were conflated by the people doing the determining” (281). The postwar period was indeed a “time of tremendous fluidity” (6), a finding that has important reverberations today. The study's success in demonstrating that these children had little say over the terms under which “humanitarian aid” was provided is also worth emphasizing.

Taylor's book follows a thematic structure that is well suited to an exploration of the multiple meanings of doing what was in “the best interest of the child,” a goal that all the organizations ascribed to their work. Yet, at times, this is at odds with the book's principal argument concerning change over time. The first chapter traces how the League of Nations set a precedent in “devising procedures for registering, documenting, and certifying people as refugees” (15), while the second illustrates the confidence that UNRRA workers had in the therapeutic value of the family, as well as the difficulties they faced when trying to facilitate the reunification of children with relatives in Eastern Europe. The third chapter examines both the launch of the UNRRA Child Search, a branch specifically dedicated to the search for unaccompanied children, and the discovery of the so-called Lebensborn homes, where Eastern European women bore children deemed “racially desirable” by the Nazis. UNRRA comes across here as a relatively unsuccessful organization, constantly running up against a lack of time and documentation. The fourth chapter provides a fascinating account of the complex legal complications that arose in some of these cases, including those of children born of unions between Polish female displaced persons (DPs) and African American GIs—children the newly established Polish government clearly did not desire. Taylor offers a detailed examination in the fifth chapter of the difficulties that American authorities faced upon the arrival of Jewish children from Eastern Europe. Many of the Jewish infiltrees established themselves outside of the displaced persons camps in self-contained independent communities, including on kitbbutzim. Children were left on these kibbutzim, even though many welfare workers felt uncomfortable with this decision upon realizing that some of the parents were still alive.

The sixth chapter explores the growing opposition that emerged within German institutions against the removal of children who had been placed in German families when their nationality was still uncertain. It provides a lucid account of the difficulties of determining whether children were Volksdeutsche, and of “the thin ground upon which many decisions about a child's future were being made” (148). The next chapter presents a compelling portrait of the American military government's determination to solve the problem of those of indeterminate nationality—by deeming them German, despite fierce opposition from the British, French, and Soviet occupiers, as well as from UNRRA. The American military government eventually failed in this endeavor, but its efforts represented an important shift in American policy: from reuniting children with their families to granting them German citizenship. The eighth chapter provides a thorough examination of the subsequent battle between the IRO and the military government over the removal of children from German foster families, with Taylor arguing that, by 1949, three components comprised a child's best interests in the eyes of IRO and American occupation officials: their physical, emotional, and legal security. In the final substantive chapter, she explores the introduction of resettlement as a viable option. Taylor ends her book by reviewing the debates between those who advocated a legalistic definition of nationality in terms of citizenship, and those who defended a more abstract definition determined by ethnic and cultural boundaries.

Taylor's extensive archival research is impressive, as is her ability to connect children's individual stories with broader policy changes. One of the major achievements of this book is also the way in which it highlights how children were left vulnerable to the “vagaries of both the liaison officers and the Cold War” (335). It prompts historians to explore how governments used both civic and ethnic national identities in ways that suited their own purposes, as well as how state interests too often took precedence over the interests of the children. That said, the book might have offered a slightly richer engagement with issues debated in the recent historiography. To some extent, there is some of this in the introduction, where the author argues that Tara Zahra's study, The Lost Children (2011), misses a key factor in the ways welfare workers established what was “best” for unaccompanied children, namely, “the need for a legal identity based on citizenship” (11).

Some of the themes discussed in this book will be familiar to historians of postwar humanitarianism, such as how the integration of Allied children into German families became a feasible solution for at least some IRO relief workers. But this should not distract from the fact that there is much that is new here. Taylor rightly urges us to reconsider the difficulties and anxieties of motherhood, as well as the situation of children abandoned by their displaced mothers because of fears of being stigmatized upon returning home. Readers will also appreciate the careful attention that Taylor devotes to the power of relief workers to formalize foster care arrangements that they deemed suitable (according to the cultural norms of their time) prior to the formalization of legal adoption in the adoptive parents’ native country. This important contribution to the history of international adoption practices calls into question the belief that there was a clear rupture in 1945—from prewar practices of separating Eastern European parents from their children, to a postwar emphasis on keeping families together. That alone will make this impressive book important for those who seek to understand better the history of displacement in the aftermath of World War II.