Amidst the aftermath of the Greek Civil War and the changing dynamics of the global Cold War, over 3,000 Greek children were brought to the United States and adopted through fast-track procedures, ranging from legal to highly irregular. Was it a humanitarian rescue or a quid pro quo? Or perhaps both? Historian Gonda Van Steen delves into the blueprint for the first large-scale international adoptions, providing crucial insights for the hundreds of adoptees and their descendants whose lives are still affected by this history today.
Interviewee: Gonda Van Steen
Ιnterview: Maya Filippopoulou
Producer: Maya Filippopoulou
Sound Designer: Dimitris Patsaros
Sound Editor: Dimitris Papadakis
Istorima is the largest project for recording and preserving oral histories of Greece. More than 1,000 young researchers find narrators, listen, collect and preserve stories of people from all over Greece: Stories of their hometowns, stories of love, stories that changed Greece or defined it, modern or old stories. Stories that are not recorded in the history books and that could be lost in time. It was created by the journalist Sofia Papaioannou and the historian Katherine Fleming and is implemented with a founding grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), as part of its initiative to Restart and Empower Youth (see more on www.snf.org). More than 20,000 stories are gradually being published in full on www.archive.istorima.org. Excerpts of the stories are published in the form of podcasts, videos, or written stories on www.istorima.org.