Refugees of the Greek Civil War in Czechoslovakia and the World
Refugees of the Greek Civil War in Czechoslovakia and the World

Summary/Abstract: The author of this review compares and contrasts three publications on the exodus of refugees from northern Greece to the countries of the Soviet bloc in consequence of the Greek Civil War, from 1946 to 1949. Whereas the Danforth and van Boeschoten publication concentrates on the children evacuated from areas threatened by war at that time, and seeks to chart out these events to their full extent, the two Czech works limit themselves to a consideration of the wave of Greek children and adult refugees to Czechoslovak and their later life in the host country. The first two publications make extensive use of the recollections of eyewitnesses, though the publication by Danforth and van Boeschoten is more advanced in the application of the latest methods of oral history and is theoretically more useful. Nevertheless,the essay collection by Kateřina Králová, Konstantinos Tsivos, and others, whoseitle translates as ‘We have no tears left to cry: Greek refugees in Czechoslovakia’,achieves its aim of providing a vivid, if incomplete, picture of research on the topic.Both in its aims and in its methods the work authored by Tsivos alone is markedly different from the other two books under review. It is a historical study based on fact with a distinctive undercurrent of social history, and ignoring oral-history sources.

• Details
• Contents