ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the reception of refugees from the Greek Civil War (1946–49) in postwar Poland and East Germany. While this was part of a coordinated action by the Eastern Bloc, the comparison brings to light national differences and explicates similarities. These can be found especially in the collectivist approach towards refugee children, who were supposed to be raised as future cadres for a socialist Greece but were marked by traumatic flight experiences. As a different take on this ideologically determined refugee reception, the chapter introduces the “stomach question” as lens for an integrated study of the refugees and their host communities. Bringing together refugee history with food history, this contributes to a multifaceted analysis of East Germany and Poland as places of refuge.
