Georgios Muratidis

Georgios Muratidis left Greece when he was twelve, and in 1948 he arrived in Romania: “In Romania they put us in the best hotels they had available. But we ruined them. I remember there were these small tiles that us children took apart to play with. And they let us.”

Upon leaving Greece, the twelve-year-old Georgios Muratidis came first to Albania: “We lived in houses in Dirrachia [Durrës], which is close to the sea. Every morning they ordered us ‘into the sea!’, where we washed. I saw the sea for the first time there. Just as I saw electric lights for the first time there, because in the mountains in Greece we didn’t have electricity yet. We were constantly amazed by it and we kept switching the lights on and off.”

“There was no big communist, thieves they were. I was in the party, I was party chairman in our local, Greek organisation. Thirty years in Zlaté Hory. I was twenty-five years old and I was party chairman already. Some of the oldies didn’t like that, but they couldn’t do anything. I did a good job, I was - I had to be - an example and so on, etcetera, yes. And to be in the party, in our party at the time, that was a sacrifice, nothing profitable. You put money into it, you didn’t have anything, no function anywhere. We held our meetings in the afternoon, when we had free time. So when they talk about it sometime, when we’re sitting in the pub, I say, yeah, I was in it, but I was giving, not taking.”