A woman refers to the conflicts that arose between newcomers and old immigrants in their meetings in associations.
Y.H.M: So, the associations, all these, the charities, we organized whole dinners. One making the meatballs, another
the pie, another the spinach pie, another the greens and over there came our children to get acquainted with each other.
There, to meet and talk. “Have you got a job?”, “My husband lost the job”. “Come to the factory, they want someone in
the machine”. There and in the church during the first years in the time of priest Salamis, they were fighting. The
old Greeks, Papachristides, Demetrian, Florakas and so many others were fighting.
They were fighting with the newcomers. The newcomers I couldn’t figure them out.
They didn’t know the customs over here, they shouldn’t have… they didn’t know that
in order to establish a church there need be… it requires not only the money, it
requires an application, a paper to the state, to get plans and so on. And there comes a paper and
someone stands up over there and reads it. The answer had come in English. And the Greeks stand up. “Why are
you reading this to us in English? As if we understood it? We have to vote over here.” My brother-in-law Demetris Chatzis stands up as well… fluent in German, English, French, Ancient Greek. He goes then. He goes and says “Can you hand me the paper?” and he reads it without explaining. He immediately read it in Greek. “Today is…”, normally I mean. And when he finished… “Since you had it in Greek, why did you translate it into English?”. It was there my brother-in-law met Papachristides who became. Anyway, them, those fights which were always present, after church priest Salamis was saying “It’s alright…”. Somewhere… my husband complained, let’s say, “Say something”. “Let them talk. Let them bring out the sadness they’ve got, the anxiety they’ve got that they don’t know of”. Priest Salamis… they come here, they might… they might get to know, find a job and it so happened. He reconciled them… he didn’t want to tell them right away. Let them bring out the…
