"We thought of going back to Greece. We thought about it all the time, but we couldn't. The Greek government didn't want to accept us. We were descendants of partisans, children of communists. We weren't to their taste, I guess. And we waited. Every moment we waited. Every New Year's Day we ran and again only to the homeland, a year later. And that year never came. Until one day, when the political situation generally improved and the relations between Greece and the Czech Republic were better, and with all the countries in general, [there was] an agreement. The Greek government was more permissive - whoever wants to and is abroad, migrants - Greeks, can return to Greece. And by that time everybody took up the opportunity and a lot of them came back. And we came back in '89."
"There were children who had parents. They were in other cities and had to work. As we all arrived in an organized way, the parents were put to work, in industry, wherever there was a need. Everybody did what they could. And they would go to to see their children in children's homes. And us kids who didn't have anybody, we were envious and we ere looking, so they added something to our credit too. Or on May Day, they came to see us. They'd make a little circle, and those of us who didn't have anybody, they'd take us among them too. And our friends took us in, not the Czech ones, but the Greek ones. That was in the home."
"The guerrillas were on some hill, there they were fighting the enemy, the Patriotic Party [government troops], it was a civil war. The partisans had to retreat. Only, I think I got that from him - stubborn head, he said they would stay there. There were three partisans. That they would shoot from one place. The two, I don't know if they stayed or died, I don't know. But I know that during one such crossing, the other side found out that my father was there. They thought maybe he was joking. They waited for him and shot him."
"They were partisans who accompanied us to the border. My parents were there and they were afraid they would never see us again. Our father, who worked in Allilengi-Solidarity, an organization that helped the poor, also came. At the border, we children got off the horses and donkeys we were riding. And our parents and the older people around us who knew the song 'Dolphins are Sailing Away' were singing. It was so moving! But we kids didn't understand why the adults were crying. They knew what was going on, I know now. We were going to go from place to place."
Ourania Romanopoulou was born Fevronia Papadopoulou on 12 April 1937 in the village of Litovoi (now Leptokaria) in Greece. Her father, Michalis Papadopoulos, was a communist and after the invasion of Greece by fascist Italy and Germany, he joined the partisans in 1940. Her mother Magdalena Papadopoulou died when Ourania was three years old. When an unknown arsonist set fire to their family home after the outbreak of the Greek Civil War in 1946, her father decided to send Ourania and her brothers, Yannis and Tanas, along with other refugees to safer countries. At the border with Northern Macedonia, they renamed her from Fevronia to Ourania. Through Yugoslavia, where they lived in the experimental communist village of Bulkes, Ourania and Tanas made their way to Czechoslovakia via Hungary. Older brother Janis left with another transport to Poland. The siblings were unhappy about the separation. Moreover, they later learned that their father had been shot in Greece at the end of the civil war. In Czechoslovakia, Ourania passed through the Sobotín refugee centre in the Šumperk region and the children’s homes in Nové Hrady and Chrastava. She graduated from the Secondary School of Arts and Crafts in Jablonec nad Nisou, started a family in 1960, and in 1989 left for Greece with her husband Dimosthanis Romanopoulos and daughter Magdalena. After the death of her husband, she returned to the Czech Republic in 2021. In 2024 she was living in Jablonec nad Nisou.
