In the 20th century, authorities in Switzerland placed over 100'000 children and adolescents in homes and foster families. The measures were implemented mainly for moral reasons and affected socially marginalized families in particular. The parents had hardly any success in legal proceedings against these decisions. Instead of fighting poverty, the state fought the poor. In the participatory ethnographic documentary "And then we were taken away", two men in their sixties talk about the administrative foster care they experienced as a child. They lead the audience to the homes, locations of their tumultuous youth and to their favourite places. Through their biographies, the men document how out-of-home placements shaped their childhood, youth and present.