Created by Theodore Andrica and narrated by him, CHILDREN OF EUROPE is an emotional, and disturbing portrait of post-WWII Europe. It shows the plight of the youngest survivors of the war, including the many orphans and Jewish concentration camp victims who outlasted the conflict and now face uncertain futures. Andrica’s film, which was funded by the Cleveland Press, represents a plea for support for organizations like the Red Cross which was actively working to return children to school and divert them from other enterprises — such as hard labor. Plenty of work by children, including construction and other dangerous jobs, is shown in the course of the film, as is scavenging. Images of children playing amidst the rubble of Europe’s once great cities is both heartbreaking and stirring. For Andrica (9 Aug. 1900-1 Mar. 1990), this film represented a continuation of work he began before WWII. As a writer for the Press, he chronicled the affairs of Cleveland’s diverse ethnic population for 46 years. Born in Radna, Romania, Andrica emigrated to the United States in 1920 and began writing nationality news for the Canton Daily News. In 1927 the new editor of the Press, Louis B. Seltzer hired him to cover the same beat in Cleveland. With Seltzer’s encouragement, Andrica literally invented the field of “ethnic journalism.” Naturalized in 1928, he married Mary P. Patrilla of Cleveland the following year. In pursuit of material for his “Around the World in Cleveland” column, he conversed in 6 languages and claimed to have attended an estimated 14,000 banquets. Affectionately dubbed the “Broken-English Editor” by his colleagues, he promoted a series of All-Nations exhibitions and in 1932 sold Seltzer on the idea of sending him on annual visits to the homelands of their readers. He took thousands of messages, culled from mail-in coupons printed in the Press before his departure, from Clevelanders to their relatives in Central and Eastern Europe. Prior to the outbreak of the war he visited Nazi Germany, a trip showcased in another film (see film 3275 on Youtube). After a year at Harvard in 1943 on a Nieman Fellowship, Andrica resumed his European tours in 1945. This film comes from that immediate post-war period. He remained active throughout the Cold War and once chartered a jet liner to fly tons of clothing from Clevelanders to refugee camps in Austria following the 1956 Hungarian uprising. Retiring from the Press in 1973, Andrica edited a Romanian quarterly and authored Romanian Americans and Their Communities of Cleveland in 1977.

This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD and 2K. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com