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It has been 80 years since World War II ended in May 1945. The appearance of Christiane Ludwig-Körner's biographical work, The Women of Anna Freud's War Nurseries: Their Lives and Work coincides with two popular films that depict the time between 1938 and 1941, when endangered children in Eastern Europe and later in the United Kingdom were forced to part from homes and families in order to be kept safe from the advancing dangers of war. Just as these films remind or inform their lay audiences of tragic and horrific circumstances, along with efforts to respond to them, Ludwig-Körner reminds or introduces our psychoanalytic community to the important story of Anna Freud and a group of remarkable women she assembled to courageously provide care for those forcibly separated children. In doing so, Miss Freud, always the teacher, brought psychoanalytic insights and knowledge to train these caregivers and to benefit a community in need. We might think of them as among the earliest “analysts in the trenches” (Sklarew et al., 2004). The author is to be commended for ensuring their story is not lost to history.
To set the stage for this review of Ludwig-Körner's book, I'll begin with two films. One Life (Hawes, 2023) tells the true story of Nicholas Winton's efforts in 1938 and 1939 to bring as many refugee children as possible by train from German-occupied Czechoslovakia to England, where they might be protected in foster care. Working with the British Committee for Refugees, he raised money, found homes, and cut red tape so that the lives of 669 children were saved through this arm of the Kindertransport. In most cases, they were never reunited with their
Denia Barrett, The Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute, 7745 Lakeshore Boulevard, Madison, OH 44057
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parents, siblings, or other relatives who were left behind to perish among the millions killed in the Holocaust. Blitz (McQueen, 2024) provides a vivid depiction of the period between September 7,