Children of the Greek Civil War: Refugees and the Politics of Memory

by Loring M. Danforth, Riki Van Boeschoten

At the height of the Greek Civil War in 1948, thirty-eight thousand children were evacuated from their homes in the mountains of northern Greece. The Greek Communist Party relocated half of them to orphanages in Eastern Europe, while their adversaries in the national government placed the rest in children’s homes elsewhere in Greece. A point of contention during the Cold War, this controversial episode continues to fuel tensions between Greeks and Macedonians and within Greek society itself. Loring M. Danforth and Riki Van Boeschoten present here for the first time a comprehensive study of the two evacuation programs and the lives of the children they forever transformed.

Marshalling archival records, oral histories, and ethnographic fieldwork, the authors analyze the evacuation process, the political conflict surrounding it, the children’s upbringing, and their fates as adults cut off from their parents and their homeland. They also give voice to seven refugee children who poignantly recount their childhood experiences and heroic efforts to construct new lives in diaspora communities throughout the world. A much-needed corrective to previous historical accounts, Children of the Greek Civil War is also a searching examination of the enduring effects of displacement on the lives of refugee children.

Genres: History, Greece, Nonfiction, Ethnography

352 pages, Paperback

First published October 28, 2011

Reviews

[Jim Jay · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some interesting parts but mostly turgid prose with badly-disguised political bias masquerading as "even-handedness". If you're looking for an unbiased description of this dark period in Greek history, when the very liberty of the Greek people was threatened, this time by Moscow-backed inside forces and even as World War II continued to rage in Europe, then don't waste your time on this revisionist apologia for the Greek communists.

As a Greek-speaker who has a good knowledge of Greece and its history, and someone who has lived in an ex-Communist country next to Greece for nearly 20 years and had many conversations about the horrors inflicted on Eastern Europe with people who lived through them, I can only thank Providence that the cradle of European Democracy and Civilisation managed to avoid such a disaster.

To equate those fighting for the freedom of their country after so many years of oppression and atrocity with those seeking to drag it behind the Iron Curtain simply beggars belief; the authors of this biased rubbish would hang their heads in shame if only they knew what that was....

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really well balanced account of a period of history of which I knew very little. The authors have interviewed people who were evacuated to Eastern block countries as well as people who were evacuated to Greek cities during the war between partisans and the Greek army after World War II. An extremely thorough and unbiased analysis of the issues and memories.