Hospotar Michael Soutsos, last Greek Prince of Moldavia Hellenism in Romania, Romania has always hosted an active and prosperous Greek community, one that has served as a bridge between Athens and Bucharest -   article published in The Athenian by Deborah Renee Killian, December 1, 1992. " It was the summer of 1949. The eight-year-old boy found himself being herded across the Greek-Albanian borders along with hundreds of other children, as the remnants of the defeated Greek communist armies in the civil war fled behind the Iron Curtain. His younger sister, only six months old at the time, died in his arms. Young Sotiris Fotopoulos was soon sent on from Albania to Romania, ending up as one of the exiled members of the Greek community there. Ultimately, Fotopoulos was to become today’s President of the Union of Greeks of Romania, thereby following in the tradition of a community that has played a key role in the progress of this Central European nation." Read the entire a...

 Interesting new collection added to the Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection at the University Library at California State University, Sacramento - Below is the email received from George I. Paganelis, Curator, Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection. ----- Dear Friends of the Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection,   I am pleased to announce that the Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection has acquired the papers of  Charles Maxton Schermerhorn . The American Charles Maxton Schermerhorn (1901-1985) attended Princeton Theological Seminary in the early 1920s and became a social worker during the 1930s. In 1946 the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) sent him to Greece, but he was shortly thereafter employed by the Near East Foundation in Thessaloniki and by UNICEF, where he was the only civilian (native Greek or foreigner) running humanitarian food distribution campaigns throughout 170 war-torn northern Greek towns and villages between 1946-1951 during and after the Greek...

  The book "Children of the Greek Civil War:  Refugees and the Politics of Memory" was authored by Loring M. Danforth and Riki Van Boeschoten and published in 2012 by The University of Chicago Press.   Below you will find a Description of the book, Table of Contents, and a  list of the 83 names mentioned in the book . Description : At the height of the Greek Civil War in 1948, thirty-eight thousand children were evacuated from their homes in the mountains of northern Greece. The Greek Communist Party relocated half of them to orphanages in Eastern Europe, while their adversaries in the national government placed the rest in children’s homes elsewhere in Greece. A point of contention during the Cold War, this controversial episode continues to fuel tensions between Greeks and Macedonians and within Greek society itself. Loring M. Danforth and Riki Van Boeschoten present here for the first time a comprehensive study of the two evacuation programs and the lives of ...

MAKRONISSOS DIGITAL MUSEUM -  https://www.makronissos.org/en/ From 1947 until 1961 the island of Makronissos was used as a space of confinement and exile for over 40.000 Greek citizens who were discriminated by the anti-communist State for their political beliefs. The ASKI Digital Museum offers a unique insight in the exile experience illustrating the everyday conditions, the politics of repression, and the traumatic legacies of this important  chapter in the lenghty history of state-organized persecution. The establishment and operation of a military compound on Makronissos marked an upturn in conditions of exile existing at the time: an uninhabited area would be “settled” exclusively by exiles, citizens and soldiers, to be “rehabilitated” through an unprecedented programme of propaganda, psychological warfare, and physical and mental torture. The plan had two aims – the professed goal of reinstating the prisoners to the “healthy national body” a...

KOSTAS:  MY STORY,  GANIAS' GREEK CIVIL WAR MEMOIR Author:  Konstantinos N. Ganias Literary Review by Eleni Sakellis Published in The National Herald, April 6, 2019 ------------------------------ I am excited that  The National Herald  has given Hellenic Genealogy Geek the right to reprint articles that may be of interest to our group.  ------------------------------ The Greek Civil War continues to haunt many to this day. For those who lived through the horrific events that took place in Greece during and after World War II, the images and experiences have left their indelible mark and indeed have influenced the course of Greek history and current events.  The reconciliation so longed for and needed has been continually put off, delayed by the natural tendency of most people to keep silent about traumatic events in life, to hide the uncomfortable emotions, shame, survivors’ guilt, and just pretend that everything i...

WHEAT SONGS:  A GREEK-AMERICAN JOURNEY Non-Fiction book authored by Perry Giuseppe Rizopoulos and William A. Meis Published by Academic Studies Press, 2018 Description: Wheat Songs  is a memoir of two interconnected Greek-American journeys―an actual physical journey for the grandfather, Pericles Rizopoulos, and a philosophical quest by the author, Perry Giuseppe Rizopoulos. When the grandfather, Pericles Rizopoulos, a proud old man, tells his fascinating, tragic and true stories of the Nazi occupation of Greece during World War II and the following Greek Civil War, to his twenty-something grandson, Perry Giuseppe Rizopoulos, Perry’s philosophical reflections on his grandfather’s stories along with his own memories of growing up in his extended Greek/Italian/American family in the Bronx combine to create an enduring story about the strength created by a tightly-knit family and the powerful values passed down from generation to generation. Available on...