"When we were in Yugoslavia - we were there about a month - we begged for it to rain. When it rained, we went into the forest to collect slugs. We then cooked those in tins and ate them. That's how hungry we were in Yugoslavia."
"There was a lot of us in the monastery in Yugoslavia. I remember there was a great big church in the monastery with wire frames over the windows. And there were heaps of food in the church, sent by the Red Cross I guess, or by Yugoslavia. But the local leaders - Greeks - didn't give it to us. They kept it as a reserve. How do I know? Because some boys made themselves a ladder, climbed up to the window, got in and started throwing the tins out to us. They had some trouble getting themselves out though."
"Another time a mortar shell fell on the paved road between the villages and stayed sticking out of the ground, unexploded. The villagers covered it with bushes so that the children wouldn't find it. But we found out about it, and at noon, when the sun's at its hottest, us boys went and stole it. We rolled it behind one house and left it there. The second day we moved the shell a bit further. The adults at the pub that evening talked about how the partisans are such dare-devils. 'They came round at high noon and moved the shell away.' If they only knew. I later took the shell apart somewhere behind the village and took out the fuse. When Dad saw that, he took it from me and hid it somewhere in a wall. After some time I found out where the fuse was and took it back again. Being a child, I wanted something to play with, so I played with that. But the fuse blew all of a sudden, and I was left bleeding from twenty-one wounds."
"We did quite well for ourselves in the first children's home in Hungary. And while we had a Hungarian headmaster, we did well at the second one also. The Hungarian Red Cross must've been sending some funds, enough funds. But then we got a new Greek headmaster who was supposed to learn the ropes for 'when we return to our beautiful homeland' - they used slogans like that. But he was thrifty and he sent the funds back, saying we had all we needed. So we'd have half a slice of bread for dinner, with a bit of meat and some tea. Or a lump of lard. That's how we lived. There were 408 of us, and I was something of a firebrand. I wouldn't suffer anything I thought was unjust. One night I took another three children and we counted how many winter coats were hanging on the hooks. There were 380 of them, and 408 of us. So I went to the headmaster the next morning and asked for an explanation. So many of those coats were torn and damaged! All I had for clothes was a shirt and a jacket. No sweater, no t-shirts. We didn't even know those existed at the time. There were 28 children in my room. I was positioned at one end of the room, next to the stove. We got one bucket of coal for one whole day. At the other end of the room we would have tins with water - in the morning they'd be frozen."
"Some children didn't know their own name or where they were born. When they were making a list at the home in Hungary, the teacher asked me how old I was. I told him my whole birth date. Then he asked my brother the same thing. I answered him again. He told us to stand next to each other. Then another child came up and the teacher asked him how old he is. The boy didn't know, so he told him to stand between me and my brother. Then the teacher said: 'You're six years old, you're ten, so you'll be about eight.' There weren't any Greek records. Age... Name... Birthplace... Some children didn't know their own names. They knew their christian names, but not their surnames. They were too small."
Stylianos Kandaras was born on the 9th of May 1936 in the village of Foustani in northern Greek. In the spring of 1948 he and his brother left the country and fled to Yugoslavia, where they took lodgings at a monastery with other Greek children. They were then transferred to Hungary and placed in two different children’s homes. In 1945, he and his brother were sent to Czechoslovakia to join their parents in Dolní Libín near Šumperk. After graduating from a vocational school in Dolní Benešov near Opava, he became acquianted with his future wife (a Greek) and moved to Karviné. Stylianos Kandaras is a great narrator with many interesting memories especially from his childhood in Greece during the civil war and from his stay at the children’s home in Hungary. He also has stories to tell of his parents, who originated from central Turkey. He is not considering returning to Greece, as it would be impossible for financial and family reasons. He does, however, keep track of the situation in Greece, and his family upholds Greek traditions. Although he accepted Czech citizenship in 1989, he received an exception allowing him to retain his Greek status also.
