Irish Oranges / Irische Orangen

Western Europe in the Winter of 1945: destruction, poverty, starvation, cold and suffering. For the people of Ireland, these terrible images are but a couple of generations old. The memory is still alive. After newspapers and radio stations filed almost daily reports on the fate of starving children in Germany and France, the Irish Red Cross made an appeal for the people of Ireland to take in foster children.
For the parents of the starving children, „Operation Shamrock“ came as a last chance for survival. Heavy of heart, they sent their children to a far off land for three years. In the weeks following the appeal, more than 1000 children between the ages of five and ten docked at Dublin port. They were fed a special diet to help them get used to normal food again before they were sent off to their new Irish families.
Some of the children went home to their parents, some remained on the island, never to return home. Five of them tell their stories, their memories of the unique Irish aid campaign.