“I heard that in 1956, when the party broke up, after some sort of ‘Ekti olomelia’, that was the sixth conference, then the (KKE) meeting took twenty-four hours. And the passion was such that a police squad had to come to pull the Greeks away from each other. [...] My father belonged to the Partsalidi group which stayed with Zachariadis. [...] Many friendships were broken. They were such fanatics because they put their heart in it. It wasn’t just some kind of struggle to them, they lived for this of course. And also they were abroad, so the feelings were all the stronger within them.”
“It was a big change for us, and at the time the working conditions in Greece were terrible - work clothes, showers and so on, none of that existed. We started meeting up with the same friends in Solun [Thessaloniki] as we had in Czechoslovakia, to celebrate birthdays together, organise parties and so on. The Greeks started calling us ‘Tsechi’, because they saw that we stuck together more, we had common hobbies, similar opinions, we helped each other out when dealing with bureaucracy.”
“There were days in Brno when three different parties were held. One by the Zachariadists, one by the Partsalidists and a third by the Kolijannists. So simply put, us youngsters [...] went to the other parties too. But he found out immediately - in the morning Father said: ‘You were at the party.’ I said: ‘So, I was at the party.’ He said: ‘But do you realise you’re financially supporting a fraction that is fighting against us.’ [...] So, we didn’t see it like that, and they were really glad when I came to a party, because my father was chairman. [...] And they always said: ‘Tou Baira o ios irthe’. [...] But in time the fanaticism here died down somewhat. They started getting in touch, seeing each other.”
“I was walking along Prague [...] and I met three Greeks, boys who were on a visit to Prague. They said: ‘We have one (woman) friend here who lives in Prague, we met her on a holiday in Greece and we can’t understand her, but we have her phone number.’ I said: ‘I’ll phone her for you.’ So we called to say the boys didn’t have anywhere to stay, that they’d leave and go back to Budapest. No, certainly not, they must stay here at least one day. [...]So we waited for her. So I said I had brought them and now I can go. ‘No, certainly not, I wouldn’t understand them, so stay with us at least, so we can talk.’ So I stayed with them, walking along, and they were supposed to sleep at her place, that she had agreed it with her parents. I said: ‘Great, I’m off to Brno.’ - ‘No, you’ll be with me.’ So she took four boys home with her overnight. Those boys were flabbergasted, the Greeks. They said: ‘For a girl in Greece to bring four boys home...’ ”
“Most of our friends were Greeks... our parents felt that was important. [...] When they saw us with a Czech girl, they said: ‘We didn’t come here to stay, we’ll be returning to Greece. If you marry a Czech, your family will fall apart, they won’t want to follow you.’ [...] My first wife was Czech. [...] We mostly dated Czech girls, we didn’t date Greeks, because we had such respect that we didn’t want to leave the girls or hurt them or something, and they were annoyed at us because of it. But most of our friends were Greek.”
Dionisios Vafiadis was born in Czechoslovakia in 1953. His parents came to the country in January 1950 from a Bulgarian refugee camp. His father was with the partisans during the civil war, and he remained an active communist afterwards. Dionisios kept to his father’s footsteps. He learnt to be a plumber, and when still a teenager he actively participated in the communist youth movement. In the early 1980s he decided to repatriate. However, after spending several years doing manual labour he left Greece and moved to Australia. After 1989 he returned to Czechoslovakia and now lives with his family in Brno.
