“Ke tu chronu stin patrida [in the homeland in a year]... We always used to say it, but no one believed it much then. Well, later I mean, when we were bigger. Maybe when we were really small, when we’d arrived, then I reckon a lot of people thought it’d be like that, for five, six, ten years. They stopped thinking it after that.”
“Greeks have a more fervent nature [...] it is normal for them to express their feelings. Whereas here that isn’t the case, people here, not that they’re colder, but they just don’t show it so much and say the ties between parents and children are stronger.”
“When we came home, I was in my graduation year - we came back from the children’s home in Ivančice - Dad thought that we were too young for all that, that we had time enough and that we hadn’t even talked about it. It hadn’t even occurred to us. We were constantly under surveillance when we were going out and when we were coming back home... [...] He said: ‘Girls, you’ll find yourselves Greek boys, because we’ll be going back to Greece.’ ”
“I think Dad left (the party) back then. [...] When I heard those Greeks talking about politics... As Mr Zamarovsky said: ‘When three Greeks meet, they form three political parties and one movement.’ And when I heard how, in what complicated way they tried to explain the politics (my father tried to explain it to me), I said: ‘Dad, this is terribly complicated for me.’ I know the name Markos, Markikoi cropped up now and then - that was our father.”
Martha Elefteriadu wasborn to Greek emigrants in 1946 in Buljkes in the Serbian region of Vojvodina. She spent her childhood with her sister, Tena, in a number of children’s homes, which were reserved for Greek refugees. She later studied psychology, while at the same time devoting herself professionally to music. Together with Tena they made a name for themselves in the 1970s as the duo Martha & Tena. Martha is still active musically, but she also interests herself in Greek dancing and Greek cuisine, which she is trying to popularize in Czech society.
