“First I travelled to Evzoni, that’s right on the border, I went by car. I slept in my aunt’s house, I visited my uncles, cousins who were there, because those who were on duty were away, but I met them later. It’s about fourteen kilometers from there to our village, I was driving the old road all the way to the village, I was really anxious. I met one of the villagers in front of the village. He was herding sheep there, I thought I had to speak to him, I asked him if he was … He replied that it was indeed him, ´But who are you?´ He didn’t know me, and so I told him my grandpa’s name, and father’s name, explaining that I was my father’s son. ´You’ve come from far away.´ - ´I have.´ - ´And how’s our boy doing?´ he asked me. I asked: ´Which one?´ He told me the names of all his relatives, I told them they were in Brno and doing fine… You can’t imagine that. I stopped in front of my uncle’s old house, it didn’t belong to us any more, they took what they could, roof tiles, and there was only a ruin. A new house built by my cousin stood next to it, and they used the old house as a storage place. He had some grain there, a tractor and a wagon. There was him and my aunt and I came to them and embraced them and cried.”
“You know, in the past, big countries wanted to own colonies. Now they invented colonies without wars. What is the European Union? We will actually become one state. I can do what I like in your country, and you in mine. A Greek can go to Germany, construct a factory there, and a German can do the same thing in Greece. It’s like in boxing. There is a boxing ring, that’s the 27 states. There are some rules, just like in boxing – you can’t hit your opponent from the back, and so on. Rules apply just like in the ring, but there is one difference: weight. In boxing, an 80-90 kilo man cannot match the man who weights only sixty kilos. He would hit him once and kill him. There is the economic power. A strong state can afford it, it can kill the Greek, but the Greek cannot kill that German. That’s the way it’s done, and now they have colonies without wars.”
“My mother, her sister, and her brother and her younger brother were living there. The youngest one had died. Most of them were right-wing, because there was the army, customs office, and police. People like my aunt were called vasilites, they wanted a king. The nation didn’t want to have a king, but they still did. Her husband was armed with a rifle, just like my uncle, the youngest one, the one who had died in combat. They were doing well then, her eldest son became a customs office head, he studied a school. Other two sons worked for the traffic police, one was at home, and her daughter also married a policeman. This was different, but as for relations among us, they were excellent, we had good family relationships.”
“When I was leaving Poland, the boys from the Szczecin swimming club, where I was going swimming, Gwardia Szeczinska, knew me as Pavel, they didn’t know me as Pavlos Kevrekidis, but always called me Paweł. When I told them I was going to Czechoslovakia, they asked: ´What, you’re not Polish?´ I replied: ´No!´ - ´Are you a Czech?´ I said: ´No, I’m a Greek!´ There is a saying in Poland, neudawaj greka, don’t be playing a Greek, don’t be a smart aleck. I said: ´I don’t have to, I’m a Greek.´”
“One day I went with my brother and a bunch of boys with sheep up to the mountains. I told my younger brother Janis: ´You know what, watch the sheep, I’ll go and bring some sticks.´ We needed them, but I lied to him. One of the boys was older, and we went to the partisans. When we came there, there were some girls from our village washing clothes, they recognized us and led us up there. They remained with the partisans, but I was too young, and so they waited for some families to come from our village, and then they took us to former Yugoslavia.”
Mr. Ing. Pavlos Kevrekidis was born January 2, 1937 in the village of Megali Sterna in the Kilkis district in northern Greece. His father fought in the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE) during the civil war. In 1948 Mr. Kevrekidis wanted to join the partisans with a group of friends and they left for the mountains. Since he was too young, he was sent over the border to Yugoslavia. For a short time he was accommodated together with other children in a monastery in Macedonia, then he went to Bulkes in Serbian Vojvodina, where he met the rest of his family. With his grandmother and siblings he then went to Poland. Father had been wounded in combat, and had to undergo treatment in Budapest; he then settled with Pavlos‘s mother in Czechoslovakia. Mr. Kevrekidis arrived to Czechoslovakia in 1954. He studied an industrial school in Vysoké Mýto, later he graduated from the Technical University in Brno, specializing in water-supply and sewer systems. He visited Greece for the first time in 1975, and he relocated there shortly after. Later he was working in Libya and West Germany. In the 1990s he founded a marble trading company in Brno. He married a Czech and he lives in Brno.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
