Athanasios Vidras

“A ship arrived in Poland from Albania. They had boarded it there as if it was a cargo ship, no one was allowed on board. Dad said that the wait below deck was endless. They were shut up in those enormous halls, and they were forbidden to climb out, to make it as if the ship was carrying cargo. So that England and the other countries, France and goodness knows who, didn’t see that they were taking passengers. They drove to Štětín, and from their they were taken by trains to all over Czechoslovakia; some stayed in Poland. The relatives, they stayed in Poland. But we went on to Czechoslovakia, and there they preferred to put us somewhere into the border regions, where there were empty houses. The houses often even had furniture. The houses still had the furniture left there by the Germans. They had been allowed a suitcase only. Most Greeks lived in the border regions. And some of them, as soon as they learned Czech, some went to study - they spread all over Czechoslovakia.”

“Well mostly the people, basically illiterates there in Greece, I can’t really say right-wingers. The things they’d been told, and they believed them - that socialist countries are evil, that they don’t have any food to eat there. They asked us for instance: And did you have any food there? I started making fun of them afterwards, I would say: No, we always had this big cauldron in the town square, everyone had a spoon, and that’s how we lived. They realised then that I was making fun of them, so they stopped asking. They had been through the Balkan War, the First World War, the second one, then the civil war and The Junta. Those people hadn’t had the time to be on par, to study everything, go to school.”

“1968, Prague Spring, I remember it all very well, and I sometimes get angry when I read the newspaper or some such. I know how it was, I was sixteen in ’68 so I remember it all, I know how it was. When the Russians came in ’68, everyone wrote signs saying ‘Hide the geese’ [the Czech version rhymes with ‘The Russians are here’ - transl.]. Jenda Lampel did it, Blahuta, the policeman, and they wrote it on the road, on the walls. We were never interested in politics, me at least. I’d joined the Jiskřičky [Little Sparks], the Pioneers, but not the Youth Union at secondary school, I didn’t join that. My mum, my parents read the Greek news, they were interested in that, but they weren’t in any organisation. Uncle and Aunt were though, they were organised. My parents sympathised with the Russians in ’68, they never were against (the invasion). And the next year, in ’69, we were at secondary school in Ostrava with my brother, and that guy Blahuta, the policeman, came to them and said: ‘Mrs Vidras, are Sakis and Dimis at home?’ - ‘No, they’re in Ostrava.’ That was in 1969, one year afterwards, and someone was writing the slogans on the walls again, and they were trying to find out who. Mum said: ‘And what do you want?’ - ‘Well, someone wrote those slogans again, at it were probably your boys who did it.’ And Mum said: ‘How? They’re in Ostrava. How could they just come and go again - they’d stop by home, wouldn’t they?’ When I came home, Mum told me all about it, and I said: ‘There you go, and he himself wrote those slogans.’ And it’s the same today, that’s why I get angry. I know how it was. How everyone swore and were against the Russians coming here. And in 1969 they turned coats and pointed at the others - you were against the Russians. It’s the same now - saying so and so was with State Security [the secret police - transl.], but they were with them too. They stole themselves a fortune. At least that’s how I see it. I wasn’t here in ’89, ’90, but it’s just like in ’68. I never was in the (Communist) Party, and I never cared about communists, even though I vote communists in Greece now. I’m not organised anywhere, but I can see that they’re the only ones who are doing at least something for the common worker, that they care. The others are demolishing all workers’ rights. They want people to work just for a piece of bread, to live off that. Gives me a bad feeling. I read an example, last year it was. We get Czech newspapers there in the summer, so I always buy Dnes or Lidovky. And I read there about Zagorová that she wasn’t allowed to sing, that she had it forbidden (during communism). She’s from Ostrava too, I knew her brother. The only ones who were forbidden to sing were Pilarová and then Kubišová, who went away and then came back. And Vondráčková, Gott, everyone was feeding from the same trough as the communists. Oh how it’s turned round. I mean, they were everywhere, couldn’t get rid of them, the ones at the top. And then I read in the newspapers: So and so was such, and so and so was like that. Like when they said I was writing the slogans against the Russians in ’69. And yet I didn’t give a hoot about it. They said it, they wrote it - attacking is self-defence. That’s the only thing I don’t like about Czechs, that they don’t have any pride. Watch where the wind blows and turn your coat accordingly. Wherever they saw a lot of people, they quickly joined in. You could see that very nicely during the ’89 revolution, the velvet one: everyone rushed out with their keys. That’s pretty much it. Greeks have other bad qualities, but they have their pride.”

“If someone had the mind to study, and he was interested in something, he was always given that chance. If someone wanted to be a football player or some such, if he was really good, then he played football. He played in the First or Second League. Or to go study, it was always possible. In schools, in childhood, everything. Later on I worked in Czechoslovakia in dry-cleaner’s and laundries, or at the Vítkovice constructions with the Cypriots. We were working in the laundries in the centre, and we had lunch tickets. The firm paid a part of that. They don’t have things like that in Greece at all. Say in Germany they do have that, but only when you work for the city. And then, when I was in Germany or in the Netherlands, I found out that we were pretty much better off in our socialist system, as a worker - I’m not saying as a factory owner or hotelier - but as a worker, living was better, a Czech worker lived better than a German one. I mean, they had all sorts of bonuses. A woman could be on maternity leave for three years, and when she came back, no one had taken her place. That doesn’t exist at all in Greece. They haven’t the foggiest. If someone would start to tell them about it, they’d say he was from another planet.”