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This essay examines relationships between adoptees and the (extended) adoptive family, focusing on the inheritance rights of adopted persons as entry points into levels and cycles of their belonging and un-belonging. The essay contextualizes a case report (or summary reports) on the kind of estrangement in the adoptee world that is fueled by inheritance disputes. It delves into postadoption perceptions and thus into the “unwritten” truths about adoption and its possible fallout. It draws from archival sources, semi-structured interviews (life-story interviewing), and life writing by adoptees, and also from a sequence of real-life exchanges dating back to 2018. All these sources focus on the contested inheritance of children, now older adults, who were adopted from Greece in the 1950s–60s and who became (or should have become) subsequent heirs to the estates of their adoptive parents and/or relatives. The Greek out-of-country adoptions of the postwar and early Cold War era involved more than 4000 children, most of whom were sent to the United States. The various testimonies and sections reflect critically on the continuing trend to infantilize the adopted persons, forever the adopted children, to push their origins back into the past and into geographical distance, to untie the family connections they have forged over the course of half a century. The examples take the reader from the adoptive family’s pre-adoption attempts at disowning the child through the postadoption stage of the end of an adopted lifetime, including cases of the extended adoptive family’s attempts at “de-adopting” the adopted person. This essay includes various sources of life-cycle documentation, among them an extensive case study and online obituaries. It adheres to truth and authenticity by incorporating fairly long original quotations, which, in the case study of the second half especially, assist the reader in comprehending much historical information in a question-and-answer format. This bolder structure offers the advantage of taking the reader step by step through the transactions of a prominent Greek adoption scheme (Rebecca and Maurice Issachar) and also through the various layers of the postadoption mindset and minefield. The material presented here is intended to raise awareness that change can and must still benefit the Greek adoptees today, whose lives may have been permeated by conditionality and nonlinearity. I conclude that, in the cases discussed here, the child’s orphanhood may well be a perpetual state, with the adoptee being orphaned of individuality and of a protective family on more than just one occasion.
1. Introduction: Never Not Adopted
The idea of being a stranger within your family is not limited to children and parents. In my experience, the wider family feels it too. You are a cuckoo in their extended family nest, treated with suspicion, your provenance a mystery.
—Adoptee Barbara Sumner, “Consider Yourself One of Us,” 15 January 2019 (Sumner 2019)
This essay delves into issues of inheritance that can expose the fragility of long-term practices of child adoption. It does so with ample recourse to materials from the “historic” intercountry adoptions from Greece to the United States that took place in the 1950s–1960s. These adoptions involved some 4000 Greek children who were sent to the States, while another 600 were sent to the Netherlands. The essay focuses our attention on the precarious, ever-provisional nature of adoption and on the ways in which it manifests itself in matters of inheritance. Adoptees can sometimes be seen as illegitimate or “unworthy” heirs, whether by blood relatives of the adoptive parents or by the adoptive parents themselves. This act of “de-adopting,” if we may call it that, can have a deeply traumatic effect on adoptees’ sense of self and belonging. The essay centers the discussion on related experiences of adult adoptees from Greece and on the impact of their fragile and “perpetual child” status on their personhood. More broadly speaking, this essay shares information on the Greek intercountry adoptions set against the backdrop of postwar and early Cold War international adoptions.The time when people expect to inherit seems to bring out the worst in families, and the adoptive family is, regrettably, no exception. This crucial moment in time is the subject matter of plays, films, and books, as in the bestselling novel written by the Norwegian author Vigdis Hjorth, titled Will and Testament (Hjorth [2016] 2019). The novel, first published in 2016, centers the trauma of blood family betrayal, which reignites childhood memories of abuse, in terms so poignant that they leave indelible impressions. Mary Beth Caschetta, an American writer and blogger, published two poignant essays in the New York Times, in which she reflected on estrangement that culminated in being disinherited by her father, only to be re-inherited by her brothers. The articles, “What Wasn’t Passed on” (8 December 2011) and “The Devastation of Disinheritance” (13 December 2023) elicited hundreds of comments, and they continue to resonate whenever they are rediscovered on social media (Caschetta 2011, 2023). The reason is simple: so many people recognize the dynamics surrounding inheritance that have dragged down their own relationships with blood relatives, but they have seldom mustered an author’s courage to speak and write openly about them.
Inheritance disputes can drive to the surface tensions that have long been simmering between parents and children or among siblings. They seem to be exacerbated when step-relations and/or adoptive ties come into play. I alert the reader to a new, autobiographical novel by Sofka Zinovieff, called Stealing Dad (Zinovieff 2025), which focuses on “bonus” family members competing for emotional access as well as other, expected ways of communication at times of loss. As the author herself stated, “the book stems from emotional truth” (Facebook post, 29 December 2024). The term “bonus family” was popularized by the Swedish TV drama of the same title (Herngren et al. 2017–2022), which did not hide the irony of the phrase, let alone the inheritance issues that inevitably come up early in blended families. Again, the same phenomena underpin conflicts and disparities in adoptive families, and the root causes may well run even deeper—and they are not a matter of fiction.
Media stories tend to romanticize adoption from war-torn countries to the United States, inserting these adoptions in the postwar narrative of humanitarian aid schemes and decisive American generosity, rather than using the experiences of the adoptees to particularize and challenge this narrative. The adoptee is “desirable yet discardable”, in the potent expression of SunAh M. Laybourn (2024, p. 4). In the context of intercountry adoption from Korea, Laybourn provides the incisive theoretical framework of the adoptee’s status of “exceptional belonging”: This is an at first sight privileged belonging that can, however, be dissolved without notice. Laybourn explains the concept as “the condition of being extraordinarily equipped for inclusion through culturally constructed narratives of deservedness while also being routinely identified for exclusion whether through formal policies, informal practices, or interpersonal interactions” (Laybourn 2024, pp. 8–9).
In an oft-quoted phrase, borrowed from Pauline Boss, adoption equals “ambiguous loss” (Boss 1999, p. 20), not only on the part of the birth mother who gave up a child but also on the part of the adoptee, who, in an intercountry adoption, was severed from the birth family and community, and from the language, religion, nationality, and culture of origin. Even before the adoptees made the journey-of-no-return to their new, adoptive country, they had already been disinherited (legally as well as psychologically) by a family, a society, a nation (for the better part of the twentieth-century, Greece did not protect the inheritance rights of illegitimate children (which, generally speaking, was not exceptional up until the early twentieth century). Such a status of drastic first identity loss was often exacerbated by the loss of records and the related loss of dignity, when the adult adoptee went in search of even the most basic pieces of early childhood-related information and was at the mercy of strangers—and inconsistently applied laws—to obtain results. But the most unambiguous loss must be to have that disowned state reconfirmed in later life, in cases in which disinheritance rears its head again in the adoptive family and material disowning follows emotional disowning. The case study below (Section 2.2), of the extended adoptive family’s aggressive attempts at disowning “Andrea”, is a reminder of the need to reiterate the simple fact that, for Greek as well as for US law, the adopted child is granted the same rights to inherit from the new legal parents as any of their biological children. The vast majority of Greek and US adoption acts restate that fact, to eliminate any ambiguity.
For further theoretical framing, I expand on Ryan Gustafsson’s recent article on Korean adoption and the concept of (in)commensurability, titled “The Irrational Math of the Heart: Korean Adoptees and Experiential Incommensurability (Gustafsson 2024). The author takes a phenomenological approach to the Korean adoptee experience and the constant pressure to draw up the metaphorical balance sheet of what is gained and what is lost in intercountry and interracial adoption. Gustafsson’s critique of Korean adoption as that matter of math and gain that remains disconnected from the emotional reality of losses and “the complexities of not knowing” (Gustafsson 2024, p. 199; their emphasis) may, mutatis mutandis, be applied to the fallout of some postwar adoptions from Greece to the United States. Transposed to my topic of the historic Greek adoptions and the figurative accounting for commensurability, the framework of additive versus subtractive calculating may make sense for adoption-outsiders, but it fails to account for emotional and psychosocial conditions of the longue durée. The many disputes about the wills of American adoptive parents and their Greek heir-adoptees attest to the fact that intercountry adoption can indeed translate into having—numerically—less, rather than more—and of not knowing that cultural as well as legal disadvantage was among the possibilities.
Amanda Baden, herself an adoptee, and Adam Y. Kim are currently working on the concept of estrangement (
A few more words of historical and political context are due on a topic as complex as the Cold War adoptions from Greece to the United States, which involved some 4000 children and which lasted until about 1975. Greece had suffered tremendous destruction during World War II and the ensuing Civil War (1946–1949). Many Greek children had lost their parents; many families found themselves homeless after their villages had been destroyed. Humanitarian concern drove the first push to place orphaned children with relatives, including Greek American relatives if they were able to assist. From the mid-1940s on, the United States also began investing huge amounts of relief aid in the reconstruction of Greece. In the Cold War spirit of the times, US leaders urged American couples to do their part by building traditional, conservative families. Childlessness raised intrusive questions, and the search for white adoptable children was on and only grew more intense during the years of the Western “baby boom”. E. Wayne Carp and Anna Leon-Guerrero speak of the “baby boom pronatalism that put a premium on family and home life” (Carp and Leon-Guerrero 2002, p. 210; also Zelizer 1985). Meanwhile, the rapid urbanization of Greece and waves of outward migration (to Germany, for instance) did little to stabilize Greek family life. Many young women who went to work in the cities and who became pregnant out of wedlock consented to giving up their babies for adoption. Thus, the Greek stigma of unwed motherhood met the American stigma of childlessness, and adoption overseas was presented as a “win-win” situation. But, in essence, Greek unwed mothers were not properly supported. The conservative Greek government did not invest in protecting poor children who might join the ranks of leftist sympathizers in later life (Van Steen 2019, pp. 28–29, 64–66). Also, it was not in Greece’s economic interest to expand the welfare sector, when other demands on the very limited state budget were equally urgent. Greek-to-American adoptions became a socio-economically viable solution that also greased diplomatic relations with the United States and placed the poorer partner state more firmly in the camp of the West. Soon any white and well-to-do American couple could petition to adopt a Greek child (or an Italian or Irish child, or later a Korean child). Greek adoptions gained the reputation of being “easy”, for not setting the bar on the petitioners very high. Personally, I consistently call the adoptions from Greece to the West a Cold War phenomenon rather than the aftermath of the Greek Civil War. After all, the peak of the Greek adoption “industry” occurred, not in the late 1940s or early 1950s, but in the late 1950s through early 1960s (Van Steen 2019). Thus, I trace a rapid evolution from crisis-driven mechanisms to patterns of exploitation catering to demand from, first, the United States, and, subsequently, the Netherlands and Sweden. In such haste to meet a consumerist demand for white, healthy infants, little attention was paid to properly preparing the adoptive parents. Some pursued a foreign adoption but apparently not an adoption for a lifetime. It is these exploitative situations, too, that this essay aims to expose.
2. Results
2.1. Inheriting Adoption: What Is Not Passed on
“I remember well how my sister raised the topic of her being the only biological child of my parents”, M. concurs. “And then her disbelief when she saw me become angry!” (M., personal testimony, 20 December 2020). “I was an only child that was always very much loved,” E. muses, “but the day that my last surviving parent died, my aunts and uncles started to treat me differently—as someone who did not belong in this family or even in this country, as someone unworthy of receiving a share of what my grandparents had accumulated, as someone who simply stood in the way of them and their own children getting more. Some of them actually stated that much. It hurts.” (E., personal testimony, 13 January 2024).
The instances of Greek-born adoptees being shortchanged upon the death of their adoptive parents are numerous. But it has taken decades for them to find the courage to speak out about what remains a painful family history. Mary Cardaras, a Greek-born adoptee and author of a novella based on true events from the postwar Greek adoption history, writes:
It was time for Dena [adopted from Greece] and Christos [her husband] to confront and sort out her [adoptive] father’s [Nick’s] affairs. There were issues with the estate and Nick’s brother, Pete, was going to challenge the will even though Dena was the sole legal heir to any inheritance beyond the will. He had already gotten money from his brother’s estate, mandated by the will, but now wanted even more. He wanted Dena’s house, the house she grew up in. Not my blood, not our blood, he thought about Dena. Because she was not of them, he thought, she was entitled to nothing.
(Dena and Christos cited by Cardaras 2021, p. 89)
Stella Nahatis, author of a 2022 adoptee memoir titled Taxi to America: A Greek Orphan’s Adoption Journey, shares about her Greek-American adoptive parents:
My mother had been clear that she had signed over all her property to her sister … after my mother’s death, my father did the same. He signed over his properties to his sister. I recall [a Greek friend] advising me to go to court to claim the properties from both parents. … I was young and not interested in going to court. It made me speculate that they did not consider me their child. Perhaps they felt they did enough by just adopting me. As I got older, I saw the adoption as a practical solution for them to have a caregiver in their old age.
(Nahatis 2022, p. 181)
An American couple petitioned to adopt a Greek girl in the mid-1950s. Their home study refers to the reactions of their extended family members as follows:
[T]heir thinking seemed to be: why should he not leave his possessions, wealth and so on to the members of his wife’s and his own family, rather than to adopting a stranger and giving her the fruits of all the years of his labor.
(personal papers of Greek adoptee K.G.)
A boy who was scheduled to be formally adopted by his Greek-American relatives in the late 1950s was in the end merely housed and “accepted” in their home. The social worker explained that the prospective adoptive father’s biological children “objected to having [the boy’s name] included in sharing future inheritance!” She resigned herself to the situation, perhaps all too easily, while keeping up the distinction between the couple’s “own” children and the newcomer from Greece: “Certainly it would be unwise for the [couple’s names] to do anything that might antagonize their own children against [the boy’s name]” (personal papers of Greek adoptee D.G.).
Time and again, the adoptees are called upon to prove their identity as genuine relatives and their status as true family members. They are repeatedly called upon to establish and re-establish the depths of belonging to the adoptive family and to corroborate emotional, institutional, national, and legal belonging. In plain terms, the adoptees are not sufficiently adopted, not adopted enough. They are add-ons in the eyes of outsiders who hold them to terms and conditions that they would not impose on natural offspring. Also, adoptees seem to be permitted to be adopted children only, not adopted adults or just adults tout court with rights equal to all other members of the adoptive family. Resisting ever-deferred adulthood, the adoptees may make their presence persistently known, standing tall in front of new and old questioners who display insensitive judgment. But they will always be the child to whom fewer family members grant true belonging. Legal and symbolic expulsion from the family follows after actual expulsion or disaffection.
“My adoptive family self-combusted after my adopter died. I wonder if adopters would still adopt if they knew that the ‘family glue’ that binds ‘their’ children would have zero stickability after they pass away?” The adoptee who called for forethought with this statement chooses to remain anonymous, but his question, expressed verbally on 2 December 2020, is to the point. It foregrounds the precarious nature of adoptive relationships after the death of the adoptive parents. “My adoptive mother made sure that I was not included in her will”, D. confided on 16 February 2025. “And none of my three siblings, who are the adopters’ biological children, felt that they should have to correct that decision by redividing what should have been shared equally among the four of us. They took their perks and forever compromised our sibling relationship. I am left with a complete sense of betrayal—by all of them”. D. has pondered the implications for the status and feelings of adopted adults. Also, long before she had found the words for it, she insists she had grasped the provisional nature of adopted people’s lives and selves. She also learned that her biological mother would have kept her if she had found the proper support within her own family. The best-laid schemes of mothers and men often go awry when they are indeed just that: plans that did not involve the children, the birth families, nor the extended adoptive families. I hasten to add that this kind of broad involvement is not often practical, but consensus is, on the other hand, all too easily assumed.
Adoption is a myth-buster, which sheds dim light first on the disposability of a child, of a master narrative, then on the adoptive relationship. Adoption often started where the myth of the Greek family left off—or simply fell apart. Like any other adoptions, the Cold War adoptions from Greece to the United States (some 4000 cases in total from 1950 until 1975) have deconstructed families and construed others; they both trumped and created. The formal act of adoption, issued by the Greek court system of the time, was not the end but merely the beginning—and not necessarily the beginning of the making of a new, united family. Adoptions dating back to this Cold War period are still a taboo topic in Greek society (for being associated with low standards and with the shame of a country as well as of the blood relatives who gave up children), despite the growing literature on the subject (Van Steen 2019), which includes the voices of the adoptees themselves (Cardaras 2023). Nevertheless, the adoptees’ struggle for their identity rights (access to their adoption records and the restoration of their first, Greek nationality) persists in the receiving country as well. At times, however, the extended family, no less than official history or the state, may well take the lead in denying people ownership of their identity and subjectivity, of their differences. Not infrequently, extended family members have disrespected the family of choice, depriving it of the recognition that it is owed. Their dismissal has only thinly veiled efforts to unprovenance or de-adopt the foreign adopted child (see Section 2.2). They have rewritten the family narrative to effectively write the adoptee out of the story of the family by design. Such circumstances force the long-adult adopted child, which is being legislated over as if a child, into the awkward position of having to assert adulthood as well as agency. Also, such circumstances signal the possibility that those adoptees who were not born as US citizens may lack the protection of legal belonging and may not even resort under the state’s comprehensive authority.
2.2. Τα εν οίκω μη εν δήμω, Do Not Air the Dirty Laundry: Un-Adopting the Perennially Adopted Child
Some are more adopted than others …
—Greek adoptee who wishes to remain anonymous
The more extensive section below presents a near-verbatim exchange about a contested Greek adoption, but in effect about a contested estate. The disadvantaged party contacted me out of the blue in the hope that the adoption of an “Issachar baby” but now adult American might be proven illegal, which would invalidate the adoptee’s claim to the inheritance left behind by an intestate half-brother and his wife. Would the legality of the adoption ever have been questioned if the disadvantaged party stood to inherit from the adoptee herself? Most certainly not. In the abridged exchanges below, I have resorted to pseudonyms to protect the anonymity of this family’s informants, and I have also altered a few of the dates. I use the material with stated permission. Also, the fairly long quotations must add to the reader’s understanding of how adoptions from Greece to the United States worked. They illustrate the cases handled by Maurice and Rebecca Issachar, and they highlight how low-bar adoptions delivered children to the adoptive parents, who were inadequately screened, in a shorter amount of time but with higher risk of painful consequences for the children. The various mechanisms that underpinned the historic Greek adoption movement merit further research and urgent exploration, especially in the light of dwindling numbers of informants and archival source materials.
Sol Gardner, a widowed New Yorker, died in the mid-1990s. He and his late wife Bessy did not leave any biological offspring, but Sol had a son Edwin from his first marriage. Back in 1959, Sol and Bessy had adopted the three-year-old Andrea from the Patras Orphanage, where she was being cared for as a child “of unknown origins.” Maurice Issachar, a Greek Jewish lawyer, handled the girl’s case on behalf of her Jewish American parents, and he obtained the act of adoption from the Athens Court of First Instance. The official translation of the 1959 adoption act refers to the minor as “the underaged and abandoned, of no other known details and of unknown parents, … approximately 3 years old in age child … under registration number 10[###].” Within a few months, Andrea became Edwin’s half-sibling halfway across the world, but their paths would not cross until the day of Sol’s funeral. When Edwin, too, passed away without leaving a designated heir or a will, his first cousins contested Andrea’s right to inherit from her half-brother on the ground that she was “obviously” illegally adopted and could not, therefore, be recognized as next of kin. By then, the foreign adoption lay sixty years in the past, but the notoriety of the low-bar 1950s adoptions from Greece lived on. What started as an intimate family matter soon took on broader dimensions.
Email message of 20 September 2018
Subject: Question for Professor Gonda Van Steen
Dear Sir or Madam,
I am writing to ask if you would be able to provide me with the email contact for Professor Gonda Van Steen … I am interested in her research on Greek adoptees sent to the U.S.A. during the 1950s and 1960s. … My inquiry does not stem from any scholarly publication I am working on; rather, it has to do with a family matter.
(1). I am interested in finding out what the Greek laws were in 1959 for international adoptions and where I can find these actual laws. Some questions I have and was hoping the laws would answer are:
(a). Was there an age restriction on the adoptive parents?
(b). Were adoptive parents permitted to have other, natural-born children or would they have to be childless?
(c). Would an unmarried couple be able to adopt?
(d). Were Jews allowed to adopt or were they told by lawyers to pretend to be Christian?
(2). In Professor Van Steen’s research, has she ever encountered the name of a lawyer called Maurice Issachar, who represented (by proxy) many adoptive American parents in Patras? I have found that he was indicted in New York … for the illegal sale of Greek babies. …
I am trying to find out if a relative of mine was illegally or legally adopted from Greece in 1959. The more I read about it, the more I feel that numerous illegalities appear to have occurred in her case. I have her original adoption document from 1959. She was adopted in Athens, but was listed as coming from the orphanage in Patras. The information on the adoption paper is so minimal (no name except a nickname, no date of birth—only a general statement that she was about three years old—, no description of the child, no listing of parents or family). After having read about Issachar, her American parents’ lawyer, and about the plight of many other adoptees from Patras in that very time period, I am seriously wondering if the young girl was put up for adoption illegally.
I thank you very kindly for your assistance.
Sincerely,
Lia Y.
23 September 2018
Dear Lia,
As you can see, your message found the right people who cared to send it on to me. … Issachar had a bad record (but no worse than some Greek-American lawyers) and yet he and his sister Rebecca were never convicted. Issachar represents, in other words, a classic case that points up the differences between licensed and private adoptions from postwar Greece: both types of adoptions were vulnerable but the second group especially so, because there were minimal procedures in place, let alone mechanisms for recourse after the fact. For the adopted children, private adoptions meant that there are, to this day, very few records to be found. Your relative’s case is entirely typical … Let’s discuss how you would like me to go about answering your questions. Would you like me to take a look at the adoption paperwork in advance? … Is your relative eager to participate in this conversation? …
Best wishes,
Gonda
28 September 2018
Dear Gonda,
Thank you very much for offering to look at the adoption document and to speak with me. Before we talk, I wanted to explain to you why I contacted you. …
My mother is involved in an estate case, and we need to know the legality/validity of the adoption of the girl called “Andrea” in the adoption papers that I’ve attached. Some family background: in June 2017, my aunt (my mother’s sister) passed away; one week later, her husband (my uncle), Edwin Gardner, also died. We had a very close relationship with my aunt and knew my uncle well. We knew that Edwin was an only child. Neither had a will … In September 2017, a woman named Andrea Gardner came forward to the city’s Public Administrator’s Office stating that she was Edwin’s half-sister, and she had been adopted from Greece by my uncle’s father [Sol Gardner]. … This was a total shock to us and to my uncle’s cousins (his remaining heirs …), because no one had ever met or heard mention of a possible half-sister. We knew from Edwin that his father had abandoned the family when he was a little boy and that the mother and the child never had contact with the father again.
In June 2018, after many months of waiting and wondering about this possible half-sister, we received a copy of the adoption document that she had presented to the Public Administrator’s Office for inclusion in the kinship report. I have attached a copy of those adoption papers, in the original Greek and in the English translation. In the full kinship report, Andrea states that she did not know she had a half-brother until after her father died, i.e., that she first saw Edwin at Sol’s wake and funeral.
My brother and I immediately noticed several things that seemed strange to us, when we actually sat down to read the adoption document and the other information that Andrea was presenting. First, she herself notes that there was never a re-adoption or a legalization of the adoption done in the US, and there is no record of the Greek adoption with the Department of State. No birth certificate or amended birth certificate was presented. An application for naturalization was included, but it mentions only that Andrea was holding a green card. There is no indication that she ever received American citizenship. This all seemed very odd to us. So I just casually googled a few terms and then, out of the blue, came so many articles (from the New York Times, People magazine in 1996, etc.) about Greek children who were illegally adopted. Some of these adoptees mentioned that their lawyer had been Maurice Issachar. When I went back to read the adoption document more carefully, I realized that … the same Issachar handled Andrea’s adoption.
Being an academic, I wasn’t really satisfied with the newspaper articles and I thought to myself: let me find a research book or article on this topic. Well, I searched and searched … until I found postings of the talks you had given … Then I read about your forthcoming book and I thought: I really want to read this scholar’s work! If you have written any articles on this topic, I would love to read them. … I am very happy to be in contact with you now and, if you don’t mind, I want to send you some of the questions we have. …
I am trying to find sources that discuss the actual Greek adoption laws of 1959, and especially the requirements for adoptive parents from abroad. For example: Would the adoptive parents have to prove that they were legally married? Did they need to be Christian or Orthodox Christian? Could they be Jewish? … Also, how were children who had no birth certificate, as in the case of this half-sister, legally flown out of Greece and into the US? What kind of documents were issued to them? Was the entire planeload of children just issued refugee visas?
Here is all we know about the half-sister’s adoption:
-. Occurred in February 1959 in Athens, but the child was from the “Municipal Nursery in Patras”.
-. Presiding judges were [three names].
-. Girl was only described as being “around 3 years old”.
-. Assigned number 10[###].
-. Named “Andrea,” but the name is given in quotation marks in the original Greek, so it doesn’t seem to be her legal name.
-. Girl was abandoned and of unknown parents.
-. The adoption document states that no other information about the child is known. … I guess they mean: no date of birth, no birth certificate … Strangely, though, the adoption document ends by stipulating that the decision concerning the adoption should be registered in all birth registries … But perhaps this is just a standardized sentence used for all adoptions, even if the child is being presented as not having a birth certificate? Another anomaly is that the application for naturalization presented by Andrea’s daughter does state a date of birth. We are wondering how the adoptive parents arrived at that date of birth if there is no record of a birth certificate in Greece and if there is no record of an amended birth certificate in the US. Also, regarding Andrea’s name, when and where was her name officially changed? The adoption paper does not register a name change (she shows there as “Andrea”), and there is no registration of her name change in the US.
-. The adoption document states that, prior to the adoption hearing in Greece, the adoptive parents went to the Greek consulate in Chicago to swear that they both agree to adopt the child.
-. I have read that other adoptees arrived by plane all together and were then picked up by their adoptive parents. Did they have special refugee visas? But if all these parents adopted by proxy and had never seen the children in person, and if a child like Andrea had such minimal descriptive information on her adoption papers, how did the parents know they were picking up the right child? I assume a planeload of children carried more than one girl of about three years of age …
Basically, in a nutshell:
Is there a way you can directly determine if this adoption was illegal?
What info would prove legality/illegality of the adoption?
What are the steps to find out the truth about this adoption?
What Greek legal procedures are involved to find out if an adoption was performed lawfully in Greece?
Would this adoption be deemed illegal simply by virtue of Issachar being involved?
What application information were adoptive parents required to submit in 1959?
Would the adoption still be considered valid if the adoptive parents provided false or misleading information or names?
Thank you very much for your time.
Kind regards,
Lia
29 September 2018
Hello Lia,
Your family’s case is most interesting, but I understand that it must also be pretty painful. I sympathize with your side of the family, but here is the catch: despite the known irregularities in Issachar adoptions (more than two hundred adoptions roughly between 1957 and 1962), the cases themselves were not successfully challenged in court in 1959–1960 and would probably not be successfully challenged today, either. I want to put that up front, and my sense is that you already realized that, given that Maurice and Rebecca Issachar walked free, as did the Greek American Stephen Scopas, then New York City judge, whose case lingered on until 1962 only to be dismissed. The absence of a criminal prosecution then set precedent for a few subsequent cases. The reason is that the US courts could not challenge a Greek court’s act of adoption, which was good enough for Greece but also for the US Embassy in Athens in the early years of international adoptions from Greece. Both Scopas and Maurice Issachar were smart enough to have the acts of adoption finalized in Greece. The US courts had to leave it at that, honoring the well-established principle of comity or reciprocity, in the same way that they would not have questioned a marriage or birth certificate from another country if it did not raise any suspicion. Years later, it is nearly impossible to unravel what occurred before the Athens court issued the act of adoption, meaning: Was the child really a foundling and no parents were known? Or did Issachar make that up to see the adoption through faster (for not having to seek the consent of the birth mother or parents)? The latter scenario occasionally happened, but there is no way of proving that unless you can find the birth mother. Even then, the mother’s story would not necessarily invalidate an adoption some sixty years later, I think, but I am no legal expert. Also, it often happens that birth mothers, when they finally meet their adult children, whitewash their own actions of the past: they do not want to admit that they really did abandon the children—and many of them, young and unmarried, did relinquish children anonymously. Having an illegitimate child was a huge stigma in those days in Greece. Single mothers had very few options and received very little support.
Now for a closer look at Andrea’s paperwork: her case is entirely typical, if I may say so after having seen hundreds of these adoption acts. Here is the “Issachar baby plot”, as I call it: foundling, born in or near Patras, is admitted to Patras Orphanage (“nursery”) and given entry number; foundling is declared “of unknown parents”; child x, now named by orphanage, is put on international adoption track through Maurice/Mavrikios Issachar; Issachar receives adopters’ petition and submits required paperwork to Athens Court of First Instance; court approves adoption; child is issued temporary passport under new American name; child is granted “orphan visa” by US Embassy; child travels from Athens to New York with small group of other adoptees, accompanied by chaperone; child and new parents meet for first time. All supposedly live happily ever after.
The Greek courts reluctantly granted adoptions to Jewish couples. They preferred Americans of Greek descent, but that pool of adopters was finite. Most of the Jewish petitioners for Greek children lived in the greater New York area. Many of them worked with either Scopas or Issachar to carry out the foreign adoptions. Rebecca Issachar, Maurice’s sister, cultivated a Jewish clientele in New York City, and the news about available Greek children spread rapidly by word-of-mouth. The Issachars and Scopas represented just two of the routes that applicant parents of the mid-1950s through early 1960s could follow, but their adoptions have drawn most attention since.
All the procedures described in the “Issachar baby plot” could be wrapped up in less than half a year from the time when the American couple first petitioned for a child by contacting the Issachars. In some cases, the adoption process took less than three weeks! Prospective parents of the late 1950s did not have to arrange for a home study when using the Issachars’ private services. They did not have to prove much more than that they were financially secure, that they were married, and that both husband and wife agreed to the adoption (as the Gardners did before the Greek Consul in Chicago). Andrea’s Greek act of adoption, including the substitution of some judges by others, is again entirely typical. Before the 1960s, there was no stipulation in place that the child be re-adopted in the US. No new birth certificate was issued, although some adoptive parents still pursued one. Ideally, the new parents would naturalize their child but some failed to do so, even though the process was relatively easy and could be started two years after the child’s arrival in the US. American legislation (more so than Greek law) made this fast-track adoption process possible and legal through the 1953 Refugee Relief Act and its various extensions. The children received “orphan visas”, whether they were technically orphans or not. Some American couples followed the same channels to petition for two Greek adoptees simultaneously, which was again permitted. Many adoptions were “successful,” but some involved child abuse that went unchecked for years.
One more point that is very compelling to me: Andrea’s entry number of 10[###] is chronologically correct. I promptly checked it against my database of names and numbers of children from the Patras Orphanage (“nursery” or “asylum,” depending on the translation). This means that her number follows the strict sequence of admission numbers that the orphanage assigned over the course of many years. It is not a number one could make up and hope it would be precise. Andrea spent time in the orphanage until she was earmarked for adoption abroad by the orphanage administration in collaboration with Maurice Issachar. Patras proves to be one of the most common geographical sources for the American adoptees of Greek origins. Andrea’s adoption took place in 1959, a peak year in this movement.
This is the summary version of the Greek adoption history centered on the Issachars. Since you are keen on reading scholarly work on this adoption movement, and little serious reading material exists, I’d be most happy to share my book manuscript with you.
All my best,
Gonda
29 September 2018
Hello again, Lia,
A few more answers to your specific comments and questions show below:
-. Girl was only described as being “around 3 years old”.
Yes, since Andrea was an anonymous foundling, the Patras Orphanage had no firm date of birth for her. Its doctor estimated what her age might be and then counted back in time to give her a conjectured birth date. Very common procedure.
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-. Named “Andrea”, but the name is given in quotation marks in the original Greek, so it doesn’t seem to be her legal name.
Because Andrea was a foundling without any identifying markers, the orphanage by law had to assign a name to her. This name could be anything, but St. Andreas is the patron saint of Patras. “Maria” is the far more common name for girls. The Greek first name pool is rather small, to this day. The change of the child’s last name occurred at the moment that the Greek adoption act was issued. Sometimes the first name was changed (or actually given) at that time, too. Most often, however, the first name was altered (Americanized) when the adoptive parents petitioned for the child’s naturalization. Andrea traveled from Athens to the States as Andrea Gardner. A certified copy of the foundling record accompanied her and substituted for the birth record. The adoption had to be noted on the foundling record, the original of which was kept at the Patras Office of Vital Statistics, just like the birth registries.
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-. The adoption document states that, prior to the adoption hearing in Greece, the adoptive parents went to the Greek consulate in Chicago to swear that they both agree to adopt the child.
Entirely typical and procedural. The adoptive parents do not have to appear in person in the courtroom in Athens, but they each have to state their consent to the adoption before the Greek consul, at the consulate closest to their home location. That means, the new parents consent to the adoption both together and separately, in case one of them were to die or a divorce would intervene. Such circumstances did occur, and they did not automatically annul the adoption. Maurice Issachar acted with the adopters’ power of attorney in the Athens court. Adoption by proxy was still legal in the late 1950s.
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-. How did the parents know they were picking up the right child?
The groups of children arriving were seldom larger than ten. Pictures were exchanged. Chaperones hopefully kept track. One mix-up did happen and is documented in Texas newspapers. It was quickly corrected.
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-. Is there a way you can directly determine if this adoption was illegal?
Issachar’s name sends up red flags, but he did obtain the necessary act of adoption from the Athens court. Proof of illegality would be a statement under oath from the birth mother testifying that her child was taken from her without her consent. But this solution only applies if a sixty-year-old adoption can legally be challenged in the States. Personally, I have my doubts about that. Besides, only the adoptee herself can request personal information from the Patras Orphanage and from the court archives. Current Greek law does not support third parties in their search for information about adopted children. Third parties include most members of the birth family.
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-. What Greek legal procedures are involved to find out if an adoption was performed lawfully in Greece?
The Greek authorities will probably hold to the Athens court’s act of adoption as final proof of a lawful adoption. They did so in 1959–1960 already, in response to the American investigations of the adoptions carried out by Scopas.
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-. Would this adoption be deemed illegal simply by virtue of Issachar being involved?
His name raises suspicion, but it is nearly impossible to reconstruct what happened in this particular case before the court issued the adoption act. This quest cannot be pursued if the adoptee does not want to cooperate—as we have to presume in Andrea’s case.
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-. Would the adoption still be considered valid if the adoptive parents provided false or misleading information or names?
Occasionally adoptive parents did provide false data. Some middlemen did, too. The dense cloud of confidentiality (secrecy) that has long enveloped Greek adoptions served as a perverse incentive for some people to tamper with the records. Who could go back to the papers and check them properly anyway? The adoptive parents were far away, did not have the wherewithal, or would not gain much from such access. The adoptees and the birth parents were barred from access altogether. But then again, can an adoption be undone after more than sixty years when the minor in question was not the party at fault? This is a query for a US lawyer to answer.
All my best,
Gonda
3 October 2018
Dear Gonda,
Sorry I didn’t get back to you earlier, but I’m still trying to absorb everything. …
Regarding the validity of Andrea’s Greek adoption: in the few other estate cases we have read about, in which the situation was similar (i.e., an adoptee from Greece), and in the specific case of intestacy of the deceased, the threshold required to prove the adoption’s validity for estate law can be different, that is, it tends to be higher than the threshold set for naturalizing the adoption. It all depends on the individual US state estate/property laws and how they are interpreted by the individual judge. Now, of course, each case is different … Our line of thinking is the following: if we can demonstrate the high probability that fraud did occur during Andrea’s adoption process in Greece, then the adoption’s validity could be questioned for the purposes of US property laws. Fraud could stem from just the illegal dealings of the lawyer, Issachar …
Also, if we were to underscore the utter lack of documentation on the Greek adoption act (no real name, no date of birth, no identifying description of the child and also misrepresentation of the parents’ names), then we could assert that the adoption was “contrary to public policy.” I realize that proving that this Greek adoption went “contrary to public policy” is a nuanced approach. But if we can get a copy of the actual Greek adoption laws that were on the books in 1959, and then examine the procedures followed in this particular adoption case to see if anything irregular occurred… Together with the information we have gathered thus far, that might be enough to convince the judge on our case to demand that Andrea prove her status of adopted half-sister with greater clarity, at a formal kinship hearing. And that demand may be enough to make Andrea change the position that she has taken. We have been told (and we have seen from the initial motions of our case) that this particular judge urges parties to settle whenever situations become contested. So, when faced with the prospect of needing to dig into her past with a fine-tooth comb, Andrea may choose to work with us and with my uncle’s cousins rather than against us. By doing so, she herself might be able to avoid a more intricate kinship hearing. …
Basically, our position is that … the Greek adoption act, with such paucity of information on the child, would not be the type of document that a US Court would uphold: it would fall below the legal standard. That is, a similar document drawn up in the US at the same time would not be admissible in court if it were presented as the only piece of evidence. If, on the contrary, the adoptive parents had legalized Andrea’s adoption in the US or had re-adopted her, or had at least issued an amended birth certificate, then the point would be moot. But they did not … probably because they did not have the necessary documents (such as a birth certificate). I should note that the arrest of Scopas [in May 1959; Van Steen 2021] occurred just one month after Andrea’s arrival in the States. The Gardners must have been aware of that court case given that they were living in New York and the scandal was New York Times front page news. They probably wanted to keep a low profile and not re-adopt their new daughter at that time, for fear of needing to dig up her past, at the risk of losing her.
Our plan is to present all the questionable aspects of Andrea’s Greek adoption to the US judge. The judge will then decide whether the alleged half-sister will need to provide more information at a kinship hearing. That would be our goal. Given that the estate’s inheritance is contested, the judge will more than likely require that all parties present more specific information.
A few more questions, if I may:
… How would anyone be able to prove that Andrea is the same person as the little girl on flight x, without picture, visa, fingerprint record, birth certificate, or a complete record of name changes? On this point, could you kindly send me the article about the mix-up that happened in Texas? …
Thank you again for your help and your patience. …
Kind regards,
Lia
3 October 2018
Dear Lia,
I am a bit overwhelmed by your message, and I must apologize for not answering it.
As I said from the very beginning, I am not a lawyer. I can point you in the direction of the 1946 Greek Civil Code (Astikos Kodikas, dated 23 February 1946), which covered adoption in articles 1568 through 1588. Issachar followed the Greek law (he was trained in it). That is also the reason why New York State could not fault either the Issachars or Scopas in 1959–1960. But the various articles of the law do not say much at all about international adoptions. The reason is simple: in 1946, such adoptions were not yet being practiced; they would only start for real in 1950. And then it took years to have the laws updated.
I feel I enter into tricky legal territory here and may well be called into court. But more importantly, I have seen so much pain among Greek adoptees that my sympathy naturally goes out to them. I really don’t approve of efforts to prove that Andrea’s adoption of 1959 falls short of the modern standards for international adoptions (which it does, but then three more decades of adoptions probably do, too).
Thank you,
Gonda
Lia’s intense questioning captures society’s willingness to move adoptees from abroad back in limbo, decades after the exit visa and admission to the United States were granted. But Andrea’s paperwork is real, even if the genesis of the record, true or false, cannot be reconstructed. Adoptees’ personal writings and deliberations attest to these repeated, often oblique acts of unmooring, to others’ selfish intent to de-territorialize the new arrivals, and to their relative success, nefarious enough to cause permanent damage. Many an adoptee has struggled to cope with the reality of being ever-transient to the new family, and to be reminded of this harsh truth by relatives’ words and deeds. Power strife within families tends to be more insidious for being conducted in close quarters, once the gloves have come off. Inheritance disputes, for one, only thinly veil the familial crisis behind the legal crisis. The degrading rhetoric and prejudice that permeate inheritance cases are not necessarily unique, but they enact themselves with a vengeance when adoptees of perceived “poorer” countries are involved, who seem to have fallen into more “luck” than they deserve. And if they did not, that “failure” may well be cast as partly their fault, because of some innate “bad” disposition. Thus, foreign adoption mimics imperialism and colonialism, chasing after money and means, calculating advantage and putative “luck,” and laying the blame back onto the victims.
The adoptee is repeatedly subjected to the assumed fallibility of records, to others’ attempts to immaterialize existing records and to make non-existing ones miraculously appear. It is most humiliating to the adoptee that documents that were once adequate are found to be lacking when convenient, by people who have no knowledge of the system that produced those documents but surely stand to gain something from its perceived flaws. In this case, too, the adopted adult is forced to live and think in retrograde. She is persistently called back to her childhood, which is precisely the time period over which she herself could not exert any control. She is being challenged to demonstrate the validity of protocols in which she had no agency whatsoever. The adoptee’s earliest years remain the unshaken point of reference for many people in her surroundings—often the sole point of reference. But even the adoptee’s early childhood is subject to the efforts of others to vacate her origins. Few take into account the sixty years of Andrea living the adopted life, of living the life of a foreign child to the new parents, in a blended family no less. Did anyone ask for her story? Long-time relatives measure her by the yardstick of how well she has “adjusted”, of how much she has gained, of how much more she stands to gain. They expect her to collaborate or yield. They expect her to continue to please, to disconnect herself from what she really wants. American adopters and their relatives expect the Greek “orphan” to be the quintessential grateful adoptee. She then partakes in “exceptional belonging” (Laybourn 2024, pp. 8–9), which nonetheless proves to be the kind of belonging that can easily dismiss the adult adoptee while it may have welcomed in the “child version” of the same person. Kimberly McKee has discussed the “demand for gratitude” that pervades the mainstream adoption discourse (McKee 2019, pp. 8–13). The demand for gratitude, however, poorly concealed the older demand for children (Van Steen 2025). Mike Milotte explains, in the context of Irish-to-American adoptions, “the world of wealthy, powerful, self-assured, middle class, white America. They were the victors of the Second World War. Whatever they wanted seemed to be theirs for the asking, Irish babies included” (Milotte [1997] 2012, p. 14).
The feelings of loss, ever-pending rupture, and having-to-earn-belonging prove to be crucial components of many international adoption stories as they are of the above-described Greek experiences (Cardaras 2023; Laybourn 2024). Such elements might well be subsumed into embellished accounts of unity and continuity, of the adoptive family and of the adopting country alike. But the callouts of still-not-belonging fester under the surface, and they take many forms. The micro-aggressions of un-adopting cover the full range from protracted, later-in-life lawsuits to the relentless questions of “But where are you really from?” and “How does it feel to be adopted?” (Baden 2016). Some adoptees would include the external pressure to belong “just about anywhere”, which must cover for “actually, nowhere”.
2.3. Deceased and Still Adopted: Exposed in Eternity
Sometimes the worst reminders of the “poor little orphans’ rescue” by way of American adoptions come when the adoptees are deceased and can no longer object to the wording in which their status is described—and made visible online. Obituaries of adoptees offer a sinister, grievous reminder of not only the eternity but also the extraordinary public visibility of their adopted-child status in what me might consider to be ordinary life-cycle documentation. One could argue that the adoptions were transformative and needed to be mentioned, but one would hope that decision was left to the adoptees who have passed away—often far too young (I dare say, for not knowing their genetic and therefore their medical histories). The following lines from obituaries of Greek-born adoptees remain accessible online, but I can, at the very least, protect their privacy by not providing the links. I wish to treat them as intimate sources, based on my own sleuthing by way of keyword searches. I do not seek to create more visibility for them, but I do acknowledge the mixed feelings in many of them.
Some obituaries mention the adoptions from Greece in a subtle manner and acknowledge the tender love between the adoptive parents and the child from abroad, while recognizing the challenges involved in building such affectionate relationships. The obituary of a Greek-born woman who died too young on 4 September 2014 refers to her as: “She was born March 26, 1949 in Greece. After traveling across the ocean at a young age with her sister, [name,] and her brother, [name,] she started a new life in America with the loving [adoptive family’s last name] family”. Another Greek-born woman who died on 21 May 2021 is remembered as “Born in Athens, Greece, [name] was adopted by [names] of Lynn and came to the United States in 1956”. The obituary of another female, who died on 26 January 2019, reports: “Born in Patras Greece and adopted by her two loving parents, [names], she now rests in peace with the two of them.” A man who died on 27 January 2016 is remembered as: “[name] … was born June 16, 1951 in Pikri, Greece. He came to the United States in 1957 to be adopted by [names].” Similarly, a man who died on 1 May 2009 is reported: “[Name] was born [Greek name] in Patras, Greece, and was adopted into the [name] family in 1958.” The obituary of a man who passed away on 5 October 2012 provides more context: “[Name] was born on March 1, 1953 in Sparta, Greece to the [name] family. … His parents died when he was very young, subsequently [name] was adopted and brought to San Diego, California by [names].” The death notice of a man who died on 11 September 2017 enters into value judgments: “born in Corfu, Greece on May 1, 1961 … [he] was blessed to be adopted by his loving parents, [names] of Layton, Utah.” Another man is introduced as “[Name] passed away on December 23, 2022. Born in Petras [sic], Greece on November 17, 1948, [name] was brought to the United States at 8 years old by his adoptive parents, [names]. He assimilated into American culture learning how to speak English, however, he forgot how to speak Greek.” The obituary of another male, who died on 17 April 2024, reads: “[Name] was born as [Greek name] on February 17, 1951, in Edessa, Greece, to [first parents’ names]. By the time he was 8 years old, he and his siblings ([names]) had been adopted by [adoptive parents names and place of residence]. He attended [name of high school], where he was known as a smartass and troublemaker alongside his best friend, [name]. After graduation, he joined the service and spent 13 months in Vietnam during the war.”
Some adoptive parents are introduced at the time of death—and likely long before in other contexts—as having adopted children from Greece: “In 1956, they adopted their first child, [name,] from Patras, Greece. In 1963, they adopted their daughter, [name,] from Athens, Greece”. In another case of an American mother passing away, the death notice reads: “Surviving are her husband of Kaysville; two adopted children [from Greece] …” An American father is reported to have “married [name], now deceased, and they adopted, through the Order of Ahepa [American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association], two children from Greece”. Another is remembered as: “During his military service, [names] adopted their son, and later their daughter, from Greek orphanages. The young family especially enjoyed their post in Naples, Italy, where they lived until returning to the States 1966”. The notice of another American father refers to a family tradition of adopting, from Greece and elsewhere: “When [couple’s first names] had five children, all boys, they decided to add to the [last name] tradition by adopting three girls”.
Despite the manifest grief and tenderness that these obituaries exhibit, some still raise a sense of the adoptees’ indebtedness even in death. The death notice is the moment in which the adoptee’s life well-lived is once more credited to the adoptive parents. On the recent and sudden death of one of the Greek-to-American adoptees in May 2021, I was stunned to see the obituary mark her as the adopted child of her American parents, with patronizing wording to contribute to the greater glory of the parents. Already the second sentence of the obituary mentions the adoption from Greece. The adoptee herself was a dynamic businesswoman, who had made a name for herself in local and regional charitable work. Did she really have to be labeled as an adopted child after her passing at age 66?! Does she really have to be remembered as the perpetual child? I personally refuse to do so, and I have honored her input and writing also in other contexts.
3. Discussion
The above-described situations and incidents do not represent the majority of the adoption cases from Greece in the 1950s through early 1960s. Numerous American adoptive couples approached the adoption process with love, understanding, and generosity. I hasten to concur with that more positive image, and I realize that parts of this article may be triggering for adoptive parents who have given their all. I respect them and value their lifelong commitment. But those are the constructive attitudes that have colored the popular narrative surrounding intercountry adoptions, especially the “historic” adoptions of the first waves. Significantly, the “master” narrative has drowned out other experiences, of the type presented in this essay, which are no less real. Also, in the Greek case, it remains impossible to quantify and assess the “good” versus the “bad” adoption experiences, and to weigh the opinions, motivations, and behaviors of the adoptive parents against those of the adopted persons.
Additional evidence that provides insight in the tangled web of inheritance questions and “historic”, out-of-country adoptions may be found in legal casetexts pertaining to the contested inheritances of Greek-born adoptees, such as, most infamously, those of Christoff Estate (1963,
Even if those alternative realities are not numerically the most frequent ones (a fact that can no longer be verified), their qualitative value as a corrective to the master narrative cannot be ignored. The analysis of these realities is meaningful because it lets the reader add nuance to the conventional accounts of US adoptions from poorer partners during the tense Cold War era. Therefore, my aim has been to present a more fine-grained picture in which more negative attitudes may be discussed as well—and these invite further debate. Also, a comparison with data from the Korean and other intercountry adoption histories would be useful. However, space constraints and the absence of sources on related cases on the Korean side currently prevent me from pursuing such a comparative study. Again, the numerical proportions of different sets of behaviors, if they can even be quantified or separated out, are hard to establish. But the texture of postwar adoptions from Greece, as from other sending countries, would be incomplete without the ones described in this report. Additional research in the Greek adoption domain and comparisons with other historic adoption movements will be required. But, again, for the intercountry adoptions of the 1950s through early 1960s, steeped in postwar humanitarian theory and praxis, that window of opportunity has closed.
One case of an Italian adoption gone awry remains open for discussion, partly because the adoptee’s ambiguous status as heir has been exposed for the world to see and read about. In 2003, Caroline Moorehead published her biography of Martha Gellhorn (1908–1998), the American novelist, journalist, and war correspondent. Gellhorn visited Italian orphanages and adopted a local baby boy as early as 1950. The adoptive mother-celebrity came to motherhood with little experience but with disproportionally high expectations (Gellhorn 1950). A difficult mother-son relationship developed that reached a new low in Gellhorn’s eccentric and infantilizing stipulation in her will that her son’s share would be “dependent on his weight” (Moorehead 2003, p. 376).
4. Materials and Methods
Archival research, confidential correspondence, and semi-structured interviews seeking contextualization may bring a historic adoption movement to life, as in the case of the post-WWII adoptions of some 4000 Greek children who were sent to the United States. This empirical essay is based on twelve years of related historical research, mixed-methods interviews, numerous meetings and email exchanges with Greek-born adoptees aimed at better understanding the results, and a close reading of their written as well as spoken contributions. Also, this study links to other creative efforts and committed projects, such as an adoptee-initiated volume, Voices of the Lost Children of Greece (edited by Cardaras 2023). I have kept confidential what the adoptees themselves have indicated is not (yet) for publication. I have also consulted historical newspaper archives through the search tools of newspapers.com. As noted, to find the obituaries of Greek-born adoptees, I spent hours of online searching using keywords.
This approach cannot promise to be exhaustive, and the results are therefore more qualitative than quantitative. The findings offer a corrective to the established grand narrative of US adoptions of Greek children. Also, some more general observations about Greek-born adoptees and adoptive relationships are not based on scientific studies of my own or on any other measures or studies of cultural assimilation. My observations are, rather, empirically informed by archival and oral testimonies. My overall aim has been to add important nuance to the portrayal and self-portrayal of American adoptive parents, whose wish to adopt an orphaned or abandoned foreign child has typically been depicted as driven by philanthropic motivations only. Also, most adopted children who were the victims of detrimental situations have been silenced in this master discourse, which has been conducted by the adoptive parents and the intermediaries or agencies involved in the adoptions. Hence my choice of the title of this essay: a contribution to the agrafa, to the “unwritten” parts of adoption, in the hope that they can be spoken and written about in the future. As such, this essay builds on a previous publication (Van Steen 2025) and may be considered “part 2” of the agrafa of the Greek adoption realm.
In addition to the above-stated limitations on our materials and methods, it must be reiterated that time is not on the side of the researcher of the historic Greek adoptions. Today’s researchers come too late to interview a representative sample of prospective adoptive parents of the postwar era: If these parents pursued foreign adoptions in the 1950s, that timing implies that they were already in their thirties, if not forties when petitioning for a child and that they have by now passed away. More important, however, is the question of whether the attitudes of the adopters’ later-in-life disenchantment should be read as indicative of the entire, lifelong relationship with the children that they adopted from Greece. But that question falls outside of the scope of the current essay, which is only a pointer to the additional research required. A comprehensive investigation studying attitudes in prior decades, or the very evolution of attitudes on the individual and/or the communal level, will have the advantage of being able to interview more adoptees and extended family members and come to more holistic conclusions.
5. Conclusions: Adoption Is Stranger than Fiction
They talked about me in front of me, as if I wouldn’t understand. But I was just traumatized. I am no longer a child and I am prepared.
—Greek adoptee who wishes to remain anonymous
This essay opens a window on dimensions of the adoptee world that have traditionally been neglected. These dimensions include estrangement and the various ways in which that estrangement expresses itself, especially in times of crisis or loss. Some adoptive relatives upturn the expected sequence of relinquishment, adoption process, and postadoption experience. An otherwise linear sequence may become a circular one, and new relinquishment or rejection on the new family’s side may become part of the adoption journey. The experience is then one, not of more closely belonging to a family, but of falling victim to an externally imposed estrangement—an estrangement that obliterates the adopted person’s adoption, personhood, right, and ultimately truth. Laybourn’s concept of “exceptional belonging” (Laybourn 2024, pp. 8–9), which frames this article, reinforces the point that exclusion on an interpersonal level comes as readily as belonging. Such occurrences remind us, time and again, to move beyond the focus on childhood and the adjustment period, since the adoption experience may never have reached closure or can be reopened at will. Some adoptive relatives can and will invoke deep-running rifts related to the historic adoptions and will challenge their validity. Also, statements to the effect that adoptees should just be grateful for what the foreign adoption has given them all too easily become a world-weary refrain.
The above reports puncture any sense of conventional commensurability and even dislodge the incommensurability that has become part of the lived experiences of many intercountry adoptees (in the conception of Gustafsson 2024). They collapse synchronicity and diachronicity and open a chasm between a childhood protracted by the deep-seated trauma of parental loss and the struggle for adult identity, one that must bridge social, legal, and cultural divides. Synchronic and diachronic, too, are the emotions that follow the intercountry adoption, for which there is no clear set of tenses, for which the present and the past are not sharply delineated. Rather, the adoptees’ temporality is one of indetermination, of infinity, in the same way as they remain trapped in the margins of national space or of “unwritten” space—the agrafa. The atemporality of the adoptees’ archive of the emotions supersedes the temporality of their paperwork. Only the paper archive is usually afforded a contemporary existence, all the more so when legal and logistical acts of the past, related to the adoption, are questioned—as in my extensive exchange with Lia. Documents have a memorializing function, of course, even when they cover parts of life and its communications that should long be forgotten. Documents thus become material traces of the past that link different episodes of the adopted life together, physically, psychosocially, and discursively. Emotions, on the other hand, are omnichronic, or chronic tout court. This essay has shown how the emotional/psychosocial and the documentary/archival intersect in the space and time of voicing and writing the agrafa: of finally expressing those elements of adoption that render it stranger than fiction.
The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and approved by the Institutional Review Board (or Ethics Committee) of KING’S COLLEGE LONDON (protocol code LRS/DP-22/23-36895 and date of approval 7 August 2023).
Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.
Data is unavailable at this time due to privacy or ethical restrictions.
I thank the many Greek-born adoptees who, over the course of a dozen years now, have engaged in meaningful dialogues with me. I appreciate that they let me use their names, initials, data, and pictures, as per their personal preferences.
The author declares no conflicts of interest.
Footnotes
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