Children of the Greek Civil War: Refugees and the Politics of Memory by Loring M. Danforth, Riki Van Boeschoten (review)

Studies on the evacuation/displacement of children from across various European countries during World War II have lately proliferated, enriching the field of Childhood Studies and paving the way for gaining new insights into factual childhoods and children’s experiences under extreme conditions. Loring M. Danforth’s and Riki Van Boeschoten’s meticulously researched study Children of the Greek Civil War: Refugees and the Politics of Memory can be described in this context. Drawing upon a wide array of theoretical tools, ranging from ethnography, anthropology, social history to oral history, memory and refugee studies, and using numerous unexplored archival sources along with the hitherto published historical studies, Danforth and Boeschoten set to explore a highly contested episode of the Greek Civil War: the “children’s war,” which was the displacement/evacuation of children from their native villages in northern Greece either to the Eastern Bloc countries by the Communists, the defeated side of the civil conflict, or to paidopoleis, special institutions set up by the queen of Greece, Queen Frederica, in areas away from war-torn northern Greece. Equally important for their study is the exploration of the ideological use of the evacuation in the formation of memory communities at present as well as the role evacuation played in identity formation.

The study comprises three parts. Part 1 (chapters 1–3) delineates the historical circumstances that led Greece at the end of World War II to the Civil War and forced the Communists and the right wing government along with the queen to implement two parallel evacuation programs. The authors explore the cultural background and the geographical origin of this displaced child population; they discuss at length the repercussions the Macedonian ethnic origin of half of the children evacuated abroad had at a personal but also at the political and national levels, since their evacuation became part of the rhetoric on the “Macedonian question” in recent years. Danforth and Boeschoten then give a detailed account of the two evacuation schemes, looking into the children’s lives either in the institutions that received them in Eastern Europe or in the paidopoleis, their education, and the indoctrination attempted in each case. They insist on shedding light on whether the evacuation was forced or voluntary, suggesting that a whole spectrum of reasons explains the children’s transport: humanitarian motives, fear of persecution, political affiliations, personal choices, and children’s initiatives. Part 1 concludes with a comparison between the two schemes, clearly pointing out that the real stake was not to safeguard children’s lives but rather to win their minds so as to serve the best interests of each opponent in the near future.

If part 1 traced the rhetoric and the action of the two rivals, part 2 (chapters 4–5), “following the life trajectories” of real subjects, offers seven life-histories that illustrate diversity of ethnic origin (Greek-Macedonian), of experience (evacuation abroad or to other parts of Greece), and of geography (children from different places across northern Greece, from Thrace to Western Macedonia). Part 2 is, indeed, very significant as the children’s odysseys throw into question the certainties of the master narratives employed by the Communists and the nationalists. Through these life histories—chosen from among 114—the authors skillfully reveal similarities between the two different groups of evacuees but also discrepancies within the same group of evacuees, thus making a strong case of refuting the master narratives and stressing the uniqueness of individual experience. They argue convincingly that the experience of expatriation in Eastern Europe stamped children’s lives far more crucially in comparison with their counterparts interned in the paidopoleis for a much shorter period, usually for two years.

Part 3 (chapters 6–8) explores in depth the fortunes of refugee children. It further touches upon the issue of “homecoming” made impossible for many [End...