From "oblivion" to "national reconciliation" and from there to the "reflective processing" of the civil past: through this path one could say that the Greek Civil War was addressed in the Greek public sphere. Although for about forty years (1949-1990) there was no place for it in public discourse, and while it was overshadowed by the narrative of the "national resistance", the Civil War did not cease to be a present past. In fact, since the 1990s, it has been repeatedly and explicitly inscribed in the "wars of memory" regarding the 1940s and thus in the broader final question of "on what terms does society 'remember' and 'forget' its past". Since then, protagonists, activists, political parties, governments, intellectuals, artists, journalists, historians, and social scientists have not only brought the Civil War out of oblivion, but also argue opposingly about how and why, thus transforming collective and intergenerational grief into a cultural trauma.

Constituting the dramatic elements of the trauma, in this public reflective process, memory, emotion, and identity interact within the framework of the pervasive crisis experienced by almost the entire Greek society. With fewer illusions, the different interpretations of the Civil War help us understand not so much the past but mainly the present and the mechanisms through which the expectation of the future is formed.

Based on the theory of "cultural trauma", this book covers hidden and forgotten aspects of the Greek Civil War using alternative conceptual tools and posing new questions.