Konstantinos Katsianikos

“Then when I came to grammar school - I went to grammar school in Krnov, there were three of us Greeks there who came from children’s homes, the other two didn’t last the first quarter - even though we were the thing among the Greeks, we found out that we didn’t know anything at all, because the requirements they had for us at the children’s homes were low, so that everyone would manage. We hadn’t even had some of the subjects at all. So at grammar school, which was high quality, it showed. It evened up by the eleventh grade. But simply, if you had all ones (A’s) the past five years, and now you have a five (F) in Czech, a five in physics, a five in maths, a four in that, it’s quite a shock. That was the first quarter. I wrote a dictation, and it was all red, all mistakes. And when I wrote one in tenth grade with just one mistake, that was a miracle of the twenty-first century! Because we were the champs in literature, but when someone made a mistake in grammar, they gave you a four. You didn’t get a better mark than at grammar school, if you made a mistake.”

“What Kundera wrote etcetera, that all happened very peacefully. Simply five classmates in a class formed a committee and wrote assessments of the others, whether they’ll be studying or not, what family they’re from. After that every granny, every cleaning lady, the school management, the Party all had their say. At that time, my classmates from grammar school received a paper - German father - banned from school, banned from university, banned from Prague. To my horror I received one as well, a week before my final exams. My class teacher called me in, he was crying, because he had been rooting for me, because he saw how I was improving, and the regime didn’t love too much either. I got a paper, that the Greek communist party, which was here at the time, bans me from third-level education, from university, for no reason. So I didn’t have any option but simply that instead of going to the graduation ball (the prom) that everyone at school was looking forward to, I went out into Krnov - there’s quite a lot of industry there, I’d say, there are several Strojosvits (a company name) there, they made machines for Gottwaldov, for Baťa, there were several cotton mills there - so I came to one headmaster, whether I might end up as a machinist, whether he’d take me on, with my graduation degree. So I told him my story, and he said: ‘I’ll take you on straight away. Straight into the second grade, then maybe in half a year into third grade, and you’ll only have the work practice.’ He understood, what was going on.”

“I said to him: Look, my granddad was a pop, he moved to America with his whole family. In 1912, the Greek ship (with his family, he had six children, Mum was eleven) lay next to the Titanic. They left a bit sooner, warned the Titanic - icebergs, and later in New York they heard how it ended. He made himself a pile, because he was super educated. He was in Boston, and in Chicago and so on. And then in 1918 he was supposed to get American citizenship and to decide, whether yes or no, and the dumbo changed his mind and returned to Greece, he wanted to start a revolution. [...] And when he returned, he understood that it’s a couple of centuries elsewhere. So he went off to Holy Mountain, and meditated there about two months, and then he lived like Tolstoy. He built a school, he taught the locals to read and write - do the work first, and then come to church. He was such a good-natured man. And so my mum knew English, she was educated. And she was a midwife for our village, a nurse, doctor, scribe, everything, because everyone else was illiterate.”

“And in the meanwhile Dad was like: ‘Don’t put up with that, write to the president, write to the government!’ Just being political. He always freely listened to the BBC and rooted for Mao Tse Tung, because he didn’t like Russians. So at the age of 17, I started corresponding with the Ministry of Culture, Education. I wrote to the Red Cross, because I had their address, because we were looking for our lost brother. It’d be like this, some rotter would come along with a photo like this, and say: ‘I just escaped from Terst, there’s a prison camp there for Greek partisans, and your brother is there, his arm’s wounded and it’s this one here.’ Well, and Mum of course, tears and all, that the Italian embassy, that we should... 17 years old and I wrote such a letter, and the next day straight away interrogations, State Security, the police. And amongst all of that, Dad: ‘Don't give in, we didn’t either.’ ”