How many pieces of research, works of art, inventions and discoveries, come about by chance? ‘Oh, I've got some old family papers in a box in the attic’ – ‘That's an intriguing tune’ – ‘What an unusual juxtaposition of colours’… In the case of the material in this book, as the author recounts in the Introduction, the topic ‘found her’, starting with an email in August 2013 from ‘Mike’. His mother was one of the daughters (at that time seven years old) of a man executed in Greece in 1952 for supposedly being a spy. She had been adopted in the USA in 1955. Mike had sent the email to Gonda Van Steen, then President of the Modern Greek Studies Association, hoping that she could help fill in details of this past, which, thanks to the internet, and contacts in Greece, she was able to do.
From this beginning, the topic expanded, and as the title and subtitle of the book hint, it covers the memory (but also forgetting – and expunging) of the past, particularly that of the aftermath of the Greek Civil War and the context of the Cold War and anti-Communism. The ‘adoptions’ of ‘kids’ (babies and children) were not only those of orphans, but of illegitimate children in ‘homes’, and of those whose parents were in prison or exile for left-wing activities or sympathies, real or supposed. Many of these had taken part in the left-wing resistance organizations during the Occupation, organizations which were then declared illegal, with those involved vilified, imprisoned, exiled, even executed.
The placing of Mike's individual story, and the stories of others, in the context of post-war Greece and in the context of the fear of the spread of Communism (indeed, of Socialism) widens the topic and truly illustrates the adage that ‘the personal is the political’. It resonates with many other cases: of Chilean children taken from their parents, of Irish babies removed from their unmarried mothers, and illustrates the control of institutions and the state over the lives of citizens, and the deliberate suppression of records and memories. A huge amount of detailed research forms the bedrock of this account, told with broad and deep scholarship and enormous human compassion, care, and understanding. As she writes: ‘How can one possibly remain a distant researcher when given the opportunity to touch lives?’ (xx).
What was the ‘pro quo’ that the sub-title points to ? Not just the gain of couples and families able to welcome an adoptee into their family (and these were not always loving homes), but the co-operation of Greek organizations (and of entrepreneurs in the private adoption business, who often accumulated ‘donations’ towards costs and travel fares) with those in other countries, and the relationship of Greece with the United States, and with the associations in the USA of migrant Greeks. One of these, AHEPA (the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association) played an ‘important if not unblemished role’ (John Iatrides, Foreword, page xiv). Many of the cases here of the over 3000 adoptions (mostly into American homes, but there were also adoptions in the Netherlands and Sweden) are anonymized, or given pseudonyms, or identifying details are deliberately blurred – but some adoptees (and adopters) wanted their stories to be known. The testimonies of some of these (seven men and four women) are given in Part 3.
As someone who interviewed, in the 1990s, some of those who had been imprisoned or exiled during this period and earlier, I found myself in tears when reading parts of this book, and in other parts I was in awe of the careful research and scholarship which had gone into tracking down documents and evidence. The book begins with an Introduction (in four sections). Here a key aspect of the writing and presentation of the material is presented. This is ‘writing in the middle voice’. Scholars of ancient Greek will recognise the ‘middle’ as a verb form in which the subject is both the agent of an action and affected by and involved with it. Writing in the ‘middle voice’ blurs the distinction between insider and outsider, as Mike found as the story of his family became, for him, part of the story of post-war Greece, and the author uses this ‘middle voice’ throughout her text.
After the Introduction there are three main parts. Of these, Part 1, ‘The Past that Has not Passed’, consists of seven sections, dealing mainly with the political background (the Greek Civil War and its aftermath) to Mike's story. Part 2, ‘Nation of Orphans, Orphaned Nation’, has 16 sections concerning the legal and other mechanisms for adoptions. One aspect of the ‘demand’ in the USA for Greek children to adopt was that Jewish couples on the East Coast were anxious for adoptees ‘who looked like them’ (page 133). Part 3, ‘Insights from Greek Adoption Cases’, also has 16 sections, of which eleven are the testimonies referred to earlier. The Conclusion, ‘Greek and Greece, Where Home and History Rhyme’, is followed by a number of appendices, including one which provides ‘Practical Information for Greek-born Adoptees’.
This is a compelling and thought-provoking book, raising important and provocative issues not only for this past but for our present too.
