Georgios Karadzos

“That happened to be just after they expelled me from the communist party - I had been there two years, because they wanted to have their own young blood. I was some eighteen years old, and my dad said to me: ‘For goodness’ sake, they see a lot in you, you’re a university student.’ And I said: ‘But Dad, what’ll I do there?’ I went because of him [...] and secondly, all the oldies would meet there [...] and they’d chat and basically keep on about the same old things. [...] The meeting started with the chairman reading some decision of the central committee, that took up some twenty, thirty minutes. And then every member, and there were about three hundred of them, stood up to say his bit in reaction [...] of course everyone agreed [...] on and on. I got angry one time, and I said: ‘What are you jabbering about, for God’s sake, why do you keep on saying the same thing? I say, if you want - because against the capitalists and the fascists - I say, go back home and fight.’ What an uproar. I said, and I said that sentence, that cost me my membership, I said: ‘You know what, you’ll all fill up the cemetery back here, and none of you will return.’ ”

“Dad came home and said: ‘Well, I have to tell you something now, and make your mind up. [...] The people at the central committee want to send you to the faculty in Athens (I was in my second or third year at the time), to work undercover for the communist party, but they’ll secure you a spot to study at the medical university in Athens.’ I said: ‘Me? Me with my face? Goodness, they’d shoot me at the first opportunity. Me work undercover for the communist party - why? What, how did they help me, that I should sacrifice myself for them?’ He said: ‘I just told you, that’s all. If you want to, you can, I don’t endorse it.’ ”

“It was interesting that the members who were for Zachariadis, as it seemed in the situation, it seemed almost everyone was for. Then when it came to light what sort of person he really was, they were against him. [...] But agitators from the central committee heaped so much information on them, that they were for [him] again. [...] So the people who were basically illiterate, some had education, some didn’t - they grew up in the school of life - they began to believe in someone who came along anew. So it was all so messed up in such a huge way, that it ended up with a crash.”