“Greek babies for adoption”: Finding my roots [English voice over] | Sunday 02 July 2023

The only thing Karin knew about her origin was that she had been adopted from Greece in 1963, after being found on the doorstep of an orphanage in Athens. That was until she started looking for the true story behind her adoption. Karin never expected what she would discover.

Interviewee:Karin Abeles
Interview by: Charis Pagonidou
Producer: Charis Pagonidou
Sound Designer: Iasonas Theofanou
Sound Editor: Giorgos Gkanidis
Photos:Alexandros Papathanasopoulos

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 easily 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.