The Greek Civil War

The ‘Abducted’ Greek Children


Date: January 21, 1950
Source: World News and Views, Vol. 29, No. 44
Author: Unknown
Transcribed/HTML: RF, 2005
Proofread by: H. Antonn
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2005). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.


 

THE FORMER German princess and member of the Hitler Youth, Queen Frederika of Greece, has launched a world-wide campaign for the return of the so-called "abducted" children from the People's Democracies, and the whole capitalist press has taken up the clamour. But the fact remains that the children were not abducted, but were mercifully evacuated from Greece in 1948, to escape starvation and bombing, just as Spanish Republican children were evacuated in 1936 for similar reasons. At that time, it is interesting to note, Franco screamed "kidnapping" and " abduction".

When the United Nations Special Commission on the Balkans investigated an Athens list of 1,000 alleged cases of "abduction" in 1948, they did not find a single parent whose child had been forcibly sent abroad. Later, in a supplementary report, they do mention one father who says his child was sent abroad without his consent. But no details are given. It is thus not surprising that in 1948 the U.N. Assembly flatly rejected a Greek-French move to get a reference to "abductions" into the resolution on the Greek children.

Athens has informed the International Red Cross that it is preparing accommodation for repatriated children in camps on the islands of Leros, Rhodes and Crete, i.e., in places completely removed from parents and homes. And Queen Frederika told a press conference that if the People's Democracies will not send the children to Greece, they should send them to Sweden, Switzerland or Finland. (Interesting, however, is the fact that when the League for Democracy in Greece a long time ago offered to have some of the children in Britain, Athens never replied.)

It is clear from the above that Athens is not concerned with returning the children to their parents, but with a political campaign against the People's Democracies and Communism.