Queen Frederica’s school
Starting in 1947 during the Civil War and as a response to the rise of the Left, the state under the queen’s supervision, initiated a nation-wide campaign of ‘reform’. Elaborated as a series of orphanages and quasi-centres for vocational education,‘Child Cities’, these camps were populated by violently displaced children from areas of conflict and their left-wing relatives, while their main purpose was to promote the growth of ‘patriotic’ Greeks. One of 53 of these ‘schools’ was setup in the naval barracks on the island of Leros, where thousands of ‘graduates’ became subjects of intense anti-communist, right-wing conservative religious propaganda.
