‘There was never a chance I could be a child’: a new exhibition explores how war shapes children’s lives | children

When John Hajdu was three years old, his parents gave him a teddy bear small enough to fit in his hands: 86 years later, the teddy bears are the only thing left of his childhood.

The bear, which the 89-year-old simply calls “Teddy”, stayed with him when his father was taken to a labor camp and his mother was sent to a concentration camp, and hid in a non-Jewish neighbour’s closet before being forced into the Budapest ghetto.

From 31 July, Teddy will be on public display for the first time as part of Childhood at War, a new exhibition at the Imperial War Museum in London, examining how conflict affects the lives of children.

Displayed in a reconstructed World War II bedroom, the bear sits among toys, books and personal belongings asking visitors to consider what childhood is like when war, education and family life are disrupted.

The exhibition brings together hundreds of objects with immersive environments, including a full-size train car, a wartime classroom, a Cold War living room and kitchen, along with testimonies from children living through conflicts in places such as Ukraine, Sudan and Afghanistan.

For Hajdu, the doll represents a disrupted childhood. Before the war, his life was typical of a wealthy, middle-class Jewish family. By 1944, after years of anti-Semitic persecution in Hungary, his father was sent to a labor camp and Hajdu and his mother were forced to live in a Yellow Star house.

“We could only take with us what we could carry, which meant just a few pieces of clothes and dolls,” he says. “There was absolutely no chance of being a child. I had no other toys or books. We were only allowed to go out in the afternoon wearing the yellow star. I couldn’t meet other children. We weren’t allowed to be in parks, cinemas, swimming pools or cafes. I was completely isolated.”

The show explores exactly those daily losses. One reconstructed classroom shows how war disrupts children’s education through objects from conflicts including World War II, Northern Ireland, Afghanistan and the former Yugoslavia.

There are cartoons warning children about landmines and unexploded ordnance. Visitors can also climb into an evacuated train carriage that contains letters sent home and Kindertransport items, including a red knitted sweater given to Josewit Heidenstein by her parents before she and her sisters fled Berlin for Britain.

In October 1944, Hajdu’s mother was arrested and taken to Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. Thinking she would never return, Hajdu’s aunt rushed him into a non-Jewish neighbor’s closet.

“I had a doll in my pocket,” he says. “I was in complete darkness and had to remain completely still. It seemed like a very long time, and it was an incredibly scary experience for a seven-year-old… By then I was able to comprehend what had happened without fully comprehending the enormity of the situation.”

He later moved with his aunt to the Jewish quarter of Budapest, where he shared an apartment with more than 20 strangers. “There were no children. We lived on horsemeat and bread. Corpses were piled up in the streets, having died of cold or hunger or disease. I was always hungry. And again, I had a doll in my pocket.”

The ghetto was liberated by Soviet forces in January 1945, before retreating German forces planned to destroy it. Miraculously, Hajdu was reunited with his parents. His mother survived Mauthausen after American forces liberated the camp, but returned with broken ribs, smashed teeth and permanent psychological scars. “I was convinced I would never see my parents again,” he says.

A decade later, after the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian uprising, Hajdu and his mother walked 40 kilometers (25 miles) and crossed a glacier under cover of darkness to reach Austria. They arrived in Britain in 1957 on a Red Cross train, with Teddy traveling with them.

Throughout the exhibition, stories like Hajdu’s sit alongside contemporary accounts of children experiencing war today. Visitors can explore a 360-degree virtual tour of an underground school in Ukraine created by one of its students, read poems written by Ukrainian children for UNICEF’s Poems for Peace project, and view drawings by children in Sudan that were later submitted as evidence of alleged war crimes to the International Criminal Court.

A poem by a 15-year-old Afghan girl describes the moment the Taliban returned to power in Kabul in August 2021: “I witnessed how that day darkened not only the skies of Kabul, but also the dreams and hopes of many.”

The exhibition also examines how childhood can be politicized, through material from the Hitler Youth and Soviet Komsomol movements.

“We wanted to talk about the impact of war on children’s lives,” says museum curator Fran Singleton. “With more conflicts in the news at the moment, it seemed like the right time to create an exhibition that provides families a space to come together and discuss these important topics.”

For Hajdu, letting Teddy leave his home for the first time was surprisingly difficult.

“Teddy meant, and still does, a lot to me,” he says. “He was my only connection to family life that I barely remember when I was three.” “I have a hard time looking at the desk where he usually sits.”

Now a grandfather of four, Hajdu spends most of his time speaking in schools about surviving the Holocaust. As the number of survivors dwindles, he hopes younger generations will continue to tell these stories.

“I tell them: When you return home, talk to your grandparents and parents. Find out if they have gone through trauma, whether it was in Asia or Africa.”

“My little story is an example that you can survive. Unfortunately, people are suffering all over the world. We are getting older, and fewer Holocaust survivors are here to tell these stories. It is absolutely necessary for the younger generation to take up what we are doing.”