Political alliances

An informant talks about the cooperation between Greek associations and French politicians.
V.K.: No, it hasn’t changed. Alright, slowly back then with the association and so on we had become acquainted with, for example I’m going to tell you now the… I remember one, who has died, […] who was then I remember in […], a minister he was… wherever and I remember that in every event organized by the association we would invite them and they would come and so on, you know and we had established a friendly relationship between, between us and so on, you know. English, French, I’m talking about more back then, they were politicians of course. We had become acquainted with a great many and we had good relations and many times they were helping as well with the assoc… the association I mean, for some stuff it needed, you know.
RES.: Great.
V.K.: For example, as I told you this mister whom we had in immigration who was association Canadian… to become a Canadian citizen. All of ours who would go, we’d hand them a small paper ‘Dodecanesian Association’, they’d go… “You’ll go to so-and-so”. They’d go and so on. It wasn’t anything great of course and so on, but to be fair it helped, let’s say, and so on, you know, in order to become Canadian citizens.
RES.: Very good. And these politicians, how… how did you have relations? How did this happen? How did you establish relations with them?
V.K.: Eh, relations were established slowly because we came then and so on, alright. Back then with the association I remember, we had many communications with the Greek Consulate and it chanced that in one event something organized by the Consulate there, we were… I was at the time, I don’t remember, chairman… deputy chairman, whatever the board over there, let’s say, of the association and naturally there were foreigners present as well, like those… that […] that I’m telling you about and so on, he was… he loved the Greeks very much, the Greeks he loved very much. And slowly from there we started to become acquainted with each other…
RES.: Very nice.
V.K.: Of course, not… I mean about the assoc… about collective stuff, not about personal.