Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

Life stories of Greeks who were children during WWII reveal how forests and landscapes shaped survival, memory, and identity, forming “naturescapes” where personal and collective wartime experiences intertwine.

Paper long abstract

This paper explores the life stories of Greeks who were children during the Second World War, focusing on their relationship with the natural world. These narratives act as cultural and historical testimonies, highlighting the interaction between personal experience and collective memory of the war. Central to the analysis is the concept of “naturescapes,” referring to both the symbolic and physical dimensions of nature in shaping remembrance. Forests are recalled as shelters from Nazi persecution and as vital sources of sustenance, while narrators sometimes anthropomorphize nature. The Pinios River, for example, is depicted as Saint Pinios, who drowned German troops and saved villagers, and domestic animals are remembered as companions who alleviated children’s loneliness.

The study explores two research questions: How is nature represented in personal narratives? And how does it contribute to the formation of memorial naturescapes, in a reworking of Appadurai’s term? Employing a qualitative methodology, the research applies secondary phenomenological narrative analysis to 28 life-story interviews preserved in the Life Stories Archive of the Department of Pedagogy and Primary Education at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.

Findings highlight how these narratives illuminate diverse childhood experiences of war while conceptualizing the natural world as both a place of survival and a symbolic arena where childhood identities are forged.