Pečovat a usměrňovat. Oficiální přístup a lokální vztahy k dětem z Řecka v Československu v letech 1948-1953

• Authors: Lubomír Nenička

Title variants

EN

To provide care and regulate: the official approach and local relationships to Greek children in Czechoslovakia 1948-1953

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

Among the more than 12,000 refugees that arrived into Czechoslovakia from Greece at the end of the 1940s as a result of the Greek Civil War, there were also a significant number of children who were placed in children’s homes. They spent the first years of their stay in the new country in this environment, which was the same policy as in the other states of the “ Eastern bloc.” Accepting these children from Greece was considered an expression of politically-motivated solidarity that was supposed to demonstrate the position of the people’s democracy of Czechoslovakia in the divided world of that time. Calls to help Greek children were among the typical elements in reports in the Czechoslovak press about assistance to children from the war-stricken country that were intended to influence opinions and behavior. Official reports from the late 1940s and early 1950s, however, also testify to questioning of officially-enforced solidarity in some places where care was directly provided for children. Archival sources also remind us of problems associated with the collective upbringing of child refugees. The present study will focus on the above-mentioned discrepancies in the approach to the Greek children that appeared at a local level, particularly in cases of large children’s homes. The aim of this article is to present the way the approach to children from Greece who lived in children’s homes differed at the central and local levels during the first years of their stay in Czechoslovakia. The article shows the repeatedly-expressed efforts at official “regulation,” which was not only meant to apply to the children from Greece themselves (Greek- and Macedonian-speakers), but also to the local populations and the insufficiently “mature” employees of children’s homes.

Keywords

EN

refugees; children’s homes; childrearing; social care

Discipline

• HISTORY: HISTORY

• Publisher: Institute of History, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Slovanský přehled: historická revue pro dějiny střední, východní a jihovýchodní Evropy (Slavonic Review: Review for Central, Eastern and Southeastern European history)
• Year: 2024
• Volume: 110
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 121-158
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Lubomír Nenička

• Slovanský přehled, redakce, Historický ústav AV ČR, v.v.i., Prosecká 76, 190 00 Praha 9, Czech Republic