Memoirs of George Bizos

Memoirs of George Bizos http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.gerhart0018 Use of the Aluka digital library is subject to Aluka’s Terms and Conditions, available at http://www.aluka.org/page/about/termsConditions.jsp. By using Aluka, you agree that you have read and will abide by the Terms and Conditions. Among other things, the Terms and Conditions provide that the content in the Aluka digital library is only for personal, non-commercial use by authorized users of Aluka in connection with research, scholarship, and education. The content in the Aluka digital library is subject to copyright, with the exception of certain governmental works and very old materials that may be in the public domain under applicable law. Permission must be sought from Aluka and/or the applicable copyright holder in connection with any duplication or distribution of these materials where required by applicable law. Aluka is a not-for-profit initiative dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of materials about and from the developing world. For more information about Aluka, please see http://www.aluka.org Memoirs of George Bizos Author/Creator Bizos, George Contributor Karis, Thomas, Gerhart, Gail M. Date 1989-10 Resource type Memoirs Language English Subject Coverage (spatial) South Africa, Greece Coverage (temporal) 1941-1989 Rights By kind permission of George Bizos. Description The memoirs of George Bizos, with emphasis on his legal career, as related to Thomas Karis and Gail Gerhart in New York, October 1989. http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.gerhart0018 http://www.aluka.org Memoirs of GEORGE BIZOS (With emphasis on his legal career) As related to Thomas Karis and Gail Gerhart New York, October 1989 ____________________________________________________________________ Day 1: October 7, 1989 [Nonverbatim: At the time the Germans occupied Greece in 1941, I was at school in Kalamata, which is near my home town of Vasilitsi, near Koroni in the south ofGreece, where my father was a prominent citizen, having been the mayor at one time. In 1941 I was thirteen. Seven allied soldiers from New Zealand were being sheltered in our home town, and we were warned that there might be reprisals against my father. He arranged for someone to get a permit to take a boat out of the harbor, and with others we set out for Crete. My mother was reluctant to see us go, but we had always heard tales of how the Turkish janissaries pressed men from the conquered territories into their armies, and she feared the Germans might do the same. The rest of the family came to join us in South Africa only in the l950s. Whilst preparing to set out to sea, we saw German aircraft going over. They had black crosses painted on their undersides. We didn't know that they were heading for Crete. On the third day at sea we saw a large fleet of war ships, and one of the soldiers on our boat signalled to them with a mirror. We were off course to the west. One of the ships veered over and picked usup. It was the British fleet. They told us that Crete was about to fall to the Germans. They took us to Egypt, where we stayed about two months in mid-1941. My father was housed in a camp at the sports club on Gezira [Zamalek] island in Cairo, and I was sent to stay at a Greek orphanage in Alexandria, where I stayed for about a month. Refugees were being moved out, with single people being sent to India and families being sent to South Africa. We went by train to Suez and travelled on the Ile de France toDurban. I had a taste of violence on the train when some Gurkha troops threw one of their officers out of a window and the train had to back up to get his body. I was impressed by the sight of strange men with turbans. When we landed at Durban there wereAfrican men at the docks with rickshaws. To me they seemed like men doing beasts' work. Later when my children were small and we holidayed in Durban, the rickshaw men were all dressed up for tourists and my sons wanted to go for a ride, but I refused to let anyone go. Somehow I could not bring myself to tell my sons then what I have said to you now. We were taken by train to Johannesburg. Some Greek families looked after for us for a few months. I still remember the imposing facade of the Johannesburg station, though the place where we got off the train was in Braamfontein. I went for a few days to a school where I was laughed at because I couldn't speak English, so I quit and started working behind the counter in a Greek shop. My father got a job at an ISCOR munitions factory in Pretoria, while I remained in Johannesburg, living first in a YMCA, then in a small room near the shop. I worked in the shop for about a year before I went back to school. Nearby there was a bicycle shop, and the daughter of the owner was a sixth grade teacher at a predominantly Jewish school. Her name was Cecilia Feinstein. In September 1941 the Sunday Times had run a story on my father helping allied troops out of Nazi-occupied Greece. There was a photo of my father and me (in a cap); the title of the story had the word "Odyssey" in it. This teacher had seen the picture and took an interest in me. I started in her school. ] (Verbatim transcription now begins) I had missed six months of school in Greece, and almost eighteen months in South Africa, so I was about eighteen months to two years older than the rest of the class. But it didn't matter. I continued to live in the room and work after school in the shop. I caught a tram to school everyday. My English by then was enough tobe able to participate. In fact, her concern over me was so great that my relationship with the class was such that I was viewed as the teacher's pet. I was held out as an example of what a chap could do if he really tried. This was a school in a poor area. Most of the students' ambitions were to become tradesmen. The school only went up to Standard eight. I remember Miss Brown taught us English, an emotional woman, in retrospect I think a great admirer of the British Empire. One time she was reading aloud to us from The Prisoner of Zenda , and she read out a sentence "I'll bet you a crown he'll never be crowned." And I laughed. She threw the book down and she said she's sick and tired of teaching this class. Here is the only foreigner in the class and he's the only one to catch the pun. She had to explain it to the rest of the class. This didn't make me popular with the rest of the class. Cecilia Feinstein gave me lessons. She lived on top of a hill between the school and the shop where I was working. I would go for math and English lessons. She would give me a light slap when I would lapse into Greek in reciting the multiplication tables.It's very hard when you learn them by heart in one language to then recite them in another. Later she got married and left the area. But meanwhile she arranged for me to go to a predominantly Jewish high school, Athlone Boys High School, where I did my last three years of school. My English improved, and I even almost got a part in a play, The Barretts of Wimpole Street. I had a lot of self-confidence. I was also a sort of a hero in that school because I was a refugee from the Nazis. I was happy there. I was still working in the shop. While I was at school, my father left his job and did what all Greeks do in South Africa and tried his hand at business. Though he had no experience. He opened a cafe. But what was significant about it was that it was directly opposite to the offices of Die Vaderland . It was on Plein Street in Johannesburg, near the corner of de Villiers, near the station. My father's shop was directly opposite the loudspeaker which broadcast during the l948 election campaign (in Afrikaans): "Come vote, ladies and gentlemen, vote for a white South Africa! Vote National!" My father's business didn't go well. I finished school in l948. My father wanted me to do medicine, but when I applied I didn't get in. The places were being given first to returning soldiers. So it was decided that I would first do a year in arts, then reapply when the pressure from the ex-servicemen was lower. [ How did you first become politically conscious?] In Greece I remember political rallies with my father and his friends participating and throwing their caps in the air when the local MP came. But I did not really understand much. Zionist socialism was probably the first political activity that I came across. Most of my schoolmates were Zionists, and the establishment of Israel was very high up for them. In fact my best friend left South Africa as soon as he got his matric certificate and went to Israel.

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