“The Greeks, and there were many of them, called us Czechs. Some would say my name, and to make it clear whom they spoke about, they would add ´that Czech,´ so that everyone would know they meant me. There were many of those who didn’t like us, claiming we were taking their jobs. While we were here, most of us became graduates of schools, or at least had some vocational training, they were able to do some work, whereas for them it was not so. We were better, we had schools or vocational training, and we could do the work better, and thus we were indeed taking some of their jobs.”
“In Greece there are no meals like goulash or dumplings, but my mom was preparing dumplings or pork with cabbage or goulash with dumplings. These are small things, but she hasn’t forgotten Czechoslovakia. From time to time she was cooking Czech meals, or when she was scolding me, she would also use Czech words.”
“The Soviet Union has gone so far with its policy that Czechoslovakia became a capitalist state. The top-ranking officials overthrew the government, common people were only watching it, they didn’t participate in this overthrow. They call it revolution, but there was no revolution, no velvet revolution here, that was far from a revolution. It’s not true that there was a revolution. Had there not been the overthrow of the government in the Soviet Union, nothing would have happened here. The same is true about the Soviet Union, people were only onlookers and it was the people at the top level who changed the situation.”
“In Planá the teachers were priests, and they didn’t treat us well. Our parents might have been considered as enemies, but we, the children, didn’t know anything about politics. They were receiving money and clothes from the Czechoslovak state for us, but they were not giving them to us. I remember that I had to share slippers with my brother: when he wanted to go out to play, he put them on and I had to stay inside, and vice versa. They didn’t treat us well there, but in the other children’s homes… When I learnt Czech, naturally we had to go to Czech schools, and obviously we learnt everything. Otherwise they treated us well, it was nice and we had everything, they were giving us presents for Christmas, oranges, sweets, and so on. These were scarce in the 1950s, but we had them.”
“When you hear since your childhood: ´You are a Greek and you need to go back,´ you will go back. We were brought up to be patriots. It was not aimed against other countries, like that they are somewhat inferior and we are a bit better. We were taught that we were Greeks and we had to live in Greece, that’s what I have been told since my childhood.”
Mr. Athanasios Kesidis was born in 1943 in the village of Akritas in northern Greece, near the Yugoslavian border. At this time his family was earning its living through agriculture. During WWII his father fought the Germans in ELAS and during the Greek civil war he was in the ranks of the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE). Mr. Kesidis’s older brother and sister also fought in this army, and both died in combat. In 1948 Mr. Kesidis and his mother and younger brother arrived in Czechoslovakia via Yugoslavia and Hungary. He lived in several children’s homes here while his mother was working in a children’s home as a janitor. When his father managed to come to Czechoslovakia later on, he worked in the Královopolská factory in Brno where he also obtained a flat. Mr. Kesidis studied grammar school in Brno-Královo Pole. He married a Czech woman soon after, but after five years they divorced. He completed his education in evening courses at an industrial school. In 1978 he returned to Greece, where he was working as a truck driver. His parents and son relocated to Greece as well. The son, however, eventually went back to Czechoslovakia in the early 1990s. Mr. Kesidis visits the Czech Republic regularly.
