Of Powdered Milk and Empowered Memories: Relief Worker Charles Schermerhorn in Northern Greece, 1946-1951

• Published in: Ex-centric Narratives : Journal of Anglophone Literature, Culture and Media Culture and Media, 2022-12 (6), p.71-91
• Main Author: Van Steen, Gonda
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: american aid to greece; milk distributions; postwar greece; school feeding; us humanitarian relief
• ISSN: 2585-3538; 2585-3538
• DOI: 10.26262/EXNA.V0I6.9086

Christina Dokou provided the eloquent testimony of her mother, who as a young girl growing up in a small village in northern Greece, benefited from the postwar food distributions made by American relief missions. But where do we find the direct mirror image of that American food aid—the logistical side of the milk distributions? Through fortuitous circumstances, the memoir of American social worker Charles Maxton Schermerhorn (1901-1986) has been preserved. He arrived in Greece on 17 May 1946, at a critical time: Greece had been liberated from a brutal Nazi German Occupation and was about to descend into a devastating Civil War (1946-1949). Charles was appointed by UNNRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration), subsequently by the Near East Foundation, and eventually by UNICEF. In five years, he saw intense American logistical planning for Greece, which became a hotbed of Cold War polarization.  Charles’ own appointment as an UNRRA child welfare specialist (and regional supervisor), and later as the person responsible for milk distributions to northern Greek villages, attests to a Western-imported humanitarian model that had to serve as an antidote to the rise of Soviet-style communism in the Balkans. Charles focused primarily on children in need, and his commitment penetrated the world of the young “Toula” Dokou, whose village fell under Charles’ purview. This article then provides background information to Mrs Dokou’s testimony, and presents, for the first time, relevant extracts from Charles’ hitherto unpublished memoir.