ABSTRACT
For war orphans, the ways in which family councils or other government-appointed tutors oversaw their welfare before adulthood became the main point of contention in their relationship with IOVR. In the 1930s, when many children of deceased veterans became adults, the IOVR administration was flooded with Dickensian narratives: adults stealing from children; misrepresenting themselves to the authorities; using pensions and the land legally granted to these minors for their own personal purposes; and overall failing to do due diligence in regard to their legal and moral obligations they freely agreed to take on. These stories present a shockingly disconcerting image of the morality of families in Romania, very much at odds with the care and concern for orphans as expressed in the IOVR 1920 law. The story for the 1920s is also one of exceptional growth in ethnic Romanian women’s public activities in the area of orphan care and education.
