Extending innovative historical approaches to Greece, the contributors explore how war and civil war affected the family, the law, and the state. They examine how people led their lives, as communities and individuals, at a time of political polarization in a country on the frontline of the Cold War's division of Europe. And they advance the ongoing reassessment of what happened in postwar Europe by including regional and village histories and by examining long-running issues of nationalism and ethnicity. Previously neglected subjects -- from children and women in the resistance and in prisons to the state use of pageantry -- yield fresh insights.

Focusing on episodes such as the problems of Jewish survivors in Salonika, memories of the Bulgarian occupation of northern Greece, and the controversial arrest of a war criminal, these scholars begin to answer persistent questions about war and its repercussions. How do people respond to repression? How deep are ethnic divisions? Which forms of power emerge under a weakened state? When forced to choose, will parents sacrifice family or ideology? How do ordinary people surmount wartime grievances to live together?