To mark World Radio Day, celebrated on 13 February, UN News has reached back into our audio archives to a classic collaboration between UN Radio and the great broadcaster Edward R Murrow.

The voice of World War Two for millions of Americans, Murrow put his talents at the disposal of the UN in 1948, to produce a searing and moving radio documentary on the plight of Europe’s children.

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) came into being two years earlier, to combat famine and disease across the war-torn landscape of the shattered continent.

The radio documentary focuses on the testimony and suffering of children themselves, in their own words, with eerie resonance for the children caught up in today’s long-running conflicts, such as Syria and Yemen.

Duration: 29’52”

Music credits:

Chopin: Waltz in A Minor Op 34 No 2, by Nico de Napoli, piano

The Old Country, by Stephan Siebert

“Between the Dark and the Daylight” came from the UN Audiovisual Library. Sample the full range of historic audio at unmultimedia.org/classics.