Mothers and Children in Postwar Europe: Martyrdom and National Reconstruction in Italy and Poland

References to family and nation abounded in post-war rhetoric and informed the painstaking process of (re)creating a normal life in the aftermath of devastation. Taking Italy and Poland as its main case studies, this article explores the connections that linked familial and national discourses in post-war Europe. It is argued that families did not simply provide a useful metaphor to talk about national communities, but represented a constitutive element of post-war reconstruction. References to the family as a place of civic and national resistance were modelled on earlier narratives of national and familial devotions, which found in the sacrifice of children (in the double meaning of young person and offspring) a central theme. Both in Poland and in Italy, the celebration of the sacrifice of young people and their mothers became a means of celebrating the nation, its suffering and its recovery.