Book Review: <em>Children of the Greek Civil War: Refugees and the Politics of Memory</em>

Abstract

The book ‘Children of the Greek Civil War’ makes several key steps forward in analyzing the politics and emotions surrounding the 47,000 child refugees of the Greek Civil War. Although the war was between the right-wing Greek Government and the left-wing Greek Communist Party, it drew in a large portion of the ethnic Macedonian population of northern Greece who had been promised greater freedom and ethnic recognition by the communists. Among the book’s key steps forward are its side-by-side and even-handed analysis of how the war affected both the Greek and Macedonian children, its discussion and comparison of the government-backed orphanages set up by Queen Frederica and the evacuation program to Eastern bloc countries and children’s homes by the Greek Communist Party, the reliability of its statistics about the children from both sides of the conflict, and the comparison of the education, training, and lifestyle of the children in both sets of institutions. There is also a ground breaking discussion of the claims of genocide by organizations representing both sides of the war. This review also highlights areas where more work is needed to investigate potential acts of genocide by the Greek Government against the Macedonian children.