PRESS
The Right to Find Their
Roots & Their Identity
Peloponissos Newspaper - May 2005 (Greece)
( Greek Version - Click Here )
Between the years 1955-1958, 350 children from the Municipality Foundling Asylum (Municpality Baby Center) of Patra, ages 2 to 8 were sent to America with the purpose of adoption. Some organizations sent representatives to Patra, who chose the children who traveled in groups to their new homeland, to the new parents who were waiting to receive the children that they had never seen before. The responsibility of these adoptions was solely carried by the then Mayor and administrator of the Municipality Foundling Asylum (Municpality Baby Center) of Patra, who assumed the responsibility of representing them in the brief procedures of adoption even though most of them never took place in a Greek court.
The city of Patra sent away her children, creating a class of people without vital statistics certificates (birth certificate), without name, without legal adoptions. The years went by and from the distant country of USA are arriving, at our office, applications of these adopted people who are looking to find their roots. These people someday, for a short time, they had the names like Maria, Katerina, Paraskevi, Kostas, Nikos, Alexandros and now they called Aileen, Judy, Robert, or Michael. They don't know our language, but mainly they don't know where their place is. Approximately they know that Greece is somewhere between Turkey and Italy, that it has islands and it is hot.
Their only hope is to find their identity, who is their biological mother, how they were found, a few days old infants, at the steps of the building of the Municipality Foundling Asylum (Municpality Baby Center) and how they were sent so far away to a world so different from our own world. Our office is representing them legally, it embraces them and tries to give them moral support.
The city hall of Patra has not understood yet the responsibility that it inherited from that time. The proceedings for the expediting of the applications can take 3-5 months, and the reason is the overloading of the legal system with other cases. The transfer of papers from one office to another takes time and naturally without meaningful results since the fathers were of unknown identity and these papers have only historic meaning for the interested party.
However, our subject is not the tactics and the indifference of the city hall, our subject is the indifference these people's mothers. Young women who gave birth to children unfortunately between 1947-1956, hid the fact and they got rid of their babies in any possible way without leaving a trace. Now in 2005, old ladies with experience and knowledge, the same mothers or their relatives have to rethink, to review. The years went by, but it is not possible that they forgot that traumatic experience. It is time to accept their mistake, to show courage. Yes, my child I gave birth to you!
They can call us, or write to us and they can be certain that their secret will never be revealed to people that should not know about it. Their children, of ages 40 to 50, have the right to this gift of knowledge, to learn the name of their mother, to see at least a picture of her and to feel that they belong somewhere.
Because at the end, how can these mothers face God one day, when they take their most private secret and make it a lie. It would have been easy for these people to go to the media and TV shows. Then the gossip and the ugliness of the private life of these old women would have created a real problem.
We believe in the human dignity and we fight for it. Let the voice of the adopted children be heard:
Unknown people children who without pity were sent away by their mothers and later away from their country, are seeking their identity, their name, the face of their mother. Help us grant this gift of love.
Written & Contributed by:
Roots Research Center (Athens, Greece)
- www.roots-research-center.gr
Greek Orphans Birthright Center (Seattle, WA - USA)
- www.GreekOrphans.org
( Greek Version - Click Here )
