Yenish child removal practices were justified as a welfare measure aimed at rescuing them from deprivation, and providing the chance to live a better life.
In close cooperation with the Swiss government, the private organisation Pro Juventute was the main contributor to the operation. At the time, Pro Juventute was the largest and only nationwide child and youth protection organisation. It was a quasi‐State foundation: its board included prominent representatives of civil society, politics and the economic sector, such as the Federal Councillor Giuseppe Motta (Huonker, 1987).
Through the operation ‘Relief organisation for the children of the open road’ (‘Hilfswerk für die Kinder der Landstrasse’), with the help of local authorities, Pro Juventute systematically removed approximately 600 children from their families, mainly in the Cantons of Graubünden, Ticino, Saint‐Gall and Schwyz (Galle and Meier, 2009).
Most children ended up in foster homes, orphanages, workhouses, psychiatric and penal institutions, and suffered from various forms of ill‐treatment such as unpaid farm work and educational deficiencies. Only a small portion of the children were put up for adoption (Meier, 2008). These children suffered humiliation and stigmatization. Leimgruber et al. (1998) describe the case of Bruno, a child who shares a similar path to that of many other children.
When 18 months older, he was taken away from his family by the police and placed in a children’s home. He spent his childhood moving several times between various foster families, orphanages, correctional institutions and closed youth custody centres. Children were frequently transferred from one place of custody to the next without explanations and disregarding their voices, thereby enduring very precarious living conditions and the majority did not receive an adequate school education.
The stated reason for the operation was that travelling adults were unable to educate their children so as to create ‘good citizens’ (Galle, 2016). Disrupting family ties, isolating Yenish children from their culture and language, and placing them in sedentary foster families or institutions were thought to be conducive to creating an environment considered educationally favourable.
Education was considered as a means to end the itinerant lifestyle, held as contrary and threatening to bourgeois norms and values dictating family organisation and the experience of childhood (Meier and Wolfensberger, 1998). The practices were in part eugenically driven, as Yenish were diagnosed at the time as ‘racially inferior’ (Mottier, 2010). A key rôle was played by Siegfried Alfred, a staunch eugenicist, who directed the operation almost in its entirety (Meier and Wolfensberger, 1998).
To this day, Yenish persons continue to suffer from trauma and psychological distress as a result of harsh treatment. Former victims of forcible family removal share in the grievance of a stolen childhood and youth (Meier, 2005).