Children of the ‘Silent Migration’: Child Adoptions from Greece to Countries Overseas in the 1950s-1960s

This talk discusses an unknown chapter of Greek history: the mass adoptions of Greek children to the USA and to the Netherlands starting in 1948 and lasting through the 1960s. Their number totals some 4,000 children and many of them have been searching for their records and roots to this day. Adoption intermediaries played a critical role in the earliest waves of this historic overseas adoption movement, for devising the blueprint of mass international adoption and, regrettably, for letting some of its systemic mistakes happen. My presentation will cover the history of this adoption movement, the genealogical challenges it entails, and also the ways in which questions of the past may still be resolved.

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