Grounded in Greek Roots with Gonda Van Steen, Maria Papadopoulou, and Alexis Zeluff

Three guests share their part in a journey that involves reuniting with family in Greece.

Gonda Van Steen is a researcher, author, and the Koraes Chair of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language, and Literature at King’s College in London. In this episode she explains a piece of Greece’s history that is not super well-known. For the past ten years she has been researching the adoptions of thousands of Greek-born children sent to the United States and to the Netherlands in the 1950s and 1960s. She has also helped several of those Greek-born adoptees learn about their roots and connect with their families. Today, she continues to work on encouraging Greece to acknowledge these individuals as citizens of Greece. A mother and daughter she’s helped are Maria Papadopoulou and Alexis Zeluff. They share their struggles with the paperwork, how they're embracing their heritage, and the emotions and joys of uncovering the truth of Maria’s adoption and reuniting with their family in Greece, specifically with Maria’s birth mother.

Learn More: 

• Book: Adoption, Memory, and Cold War Greece: Kid pro quo? By Gonda Van Steen (Ekdoseis Potamos published the Greek translation in November 2021)
• Article: “Opinion: Bring Them Back!” By Mary Cardaras and Gonda Van Steen 
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Gonda+Van+Steen
• Email: gonda.van_steen@kcl.ac.uk 

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