Deller's, Lori Weinstein, talked of the tragic past that drives her search.Īccording to adoption papers signed by an official at the American Embassy in Greece, Ms. Sitting around a dining room table on a recent Sunday afternoon in Queens, a friend of Ms. Now living in California, she is communicating on the Internet with 15 other Greek-Americans searching for their parents. In the last year in the United States, an informal network has slowly sprouted among Greek-American children of the 1950's to help one another find their natural parents.Ĭonstantina Altobello was adopted by a Westchester County family that was told that her natural parents had died in an earthquake on the island of Zante in 1954. Pantelidis said with a big grin, recalling his reaction when he first saw his brother. Finally, he found a document saying that his brother had been adopted, and he tracked him down. One document said he had been rebaptized as Paul another said he had died. Last year, he found a document in the Thessaloniki nursery saying that Yannis had been taken there by an unknown person other papers said he had been brought by his father. Pantelidis, 46, began searching records for his brother. Pantelidis's father went to fetch Yannis, he was told the child had died, too. She took Yannis with her to the clinic, where she died. Pantelidis's mother had checked into a clinic with complications after the birth of her son Yannis. Pantelidis's mission began last year after watching a television program on which a Thessaloniki lawyer revealed her suspicions of having been illegally adopted. In 1954, he points out, 1,400 adoptees sailed to the United States aboard one ship alone, the Greek liner Queen Frederika. He estimates that at least 2,000 Greek children were adopted by American families in the 1950's without their natural parents' permission. In Athens, Christo Pantelidis, who runs a photography studio, has been on a crusade of sorts, reviewing records at nurseries, compiling related documents and talking with those involved. Scopas that Maxine Deller's adoptive parents paid $1,000, according to a letter from him that her parents, now deceased, left in her possession. Scopas was charged with accepting payment for placing the children and for doing so without authorization.

In a scandal that captured front-page headlines, Mr. Wagner and who was active in Greek-American civic, political and religious circles, was indicted on charges of selling 30 Greek children to New York couples. Scopas, a magistrate who had been appointed by Mayor Robert F. That is what her papers said when she was adopted by a Los Angeles family in the 1950's.Ī hint of irregularity reached New York in 1959 when Stephen S. Balch, 45, who has been to Greece four times in the last 10 years, has put together a list of 35 children from the municipal nursery in Patras who were adopted by American families and whose suspiciously identical files, she said, reported that the children were illegitimate and had been abandoned.

In her search for the truth about her natural parents, Amalia Balch of Phoenix, who helped found the Patras arm of the Search for Children group, said she had faced 'lies, secrecy, denial, smoke screens, threats and much anger.' Their search has been complicated by the fact that most of those thought to have been involved, from doctors and nurses to priests and orphanage officials, are now dead. But association leaders complained that their efforts to obtain files were meeting resistance. Greek officials have promised investigations, and in February, the Mayor of Patras announced that all files in that city would be opened. Many families who could not afford to keep their children put them in the orphanages, some with the intent of eventually reclaiming them. In the 1950's, Greece was impoverished in the wake of World War II and a bitter civil war. Deller have formed an Internet support group as they search for their pasts. And from New York to California, Greek-Americans like Ms. In Greece, those who think they are victims of a scheme have formed a group, the Association for the Search for Children Adopted Without the Consent of Their Natural Parents, to unite adopted children and their natural families. Since then, hundreds of adopted children, their siblings and parents who put their children in orphanages have been poring over records in Athens, Thessaloniki in northern Greece and Patras, a sprawling port on the Peloponnesus.Īnd while the institutions in those cities are considered well-run today, suspicions run high that they operated a baby-selling racket from the 1930's to the 1970's. Last year, a national scandal erupted in Greece after several people told their stories of illegal adoption on a popular television show there.

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