Page 31 - Studia Universitatis Hereditati, vol 11(2) (2023)

kent, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Poland of- That being said, and from a disciplinary
ten multi-sited – combining ethnographic field- point of view, this ethnographic research is char-
work and archival sources located in Greece and acterized by incompleteness; there is no satura-
post–socialist Europe have one thing in com- tion of information, and this is explained by the
mon: they examine the lives of refugees and their fact that the interlocutor in question is a witness
descendants such as it is (tel quel). Using life his- and may be the only one that I could find. To
tories and archival sources, they analyse, on the what extent does the testimony of a single per-
one hand, the memories and experiences of the son describe a social reality? ‘Testimony’, notes
war and, on the other, the collective life of the Annette Wieviorka ‘especially when it is part of
different generations of refugees during the pe- a mass movement, expresses, as much as individ-
riod of exile, bringing to light common/contig- ual experience, the discourse or discourses that
uous issues relating to nationality, citizenship society holds, at the moment when the witness
and national and local belonging, in particular, is telling his story, on the events that the wit- 31
in the case of Slave-speaking population; the vio-
ness has lived through’ (Wieviorka 1998, 13). Sa-
ti lence they have suffered and then to forms of po- vas’ desire to speak out, to make the history of
Těchonín known, even knowable, reflects what
litical, even communist instruction, and finally
to the imaginary of return. While these various the refugees’ commemorated plaques in tobacco
ta gies between the lives of refugees in the different done: to leave a trace that attests to their pres-
studies make it possible to draw links and analo-
factory, Dohánygyár, located on Budapest have
ence in the country.
host countries, they remain compartmentalized
into case studies, often focusing on the refugee
di population. The Presence of Greek Refugees in Eastern
Europe: Multiple Legacies at Stake
Methodology
The case of Těchonín, is a representative exam-
In order to identify the different trajectories of
er, what remains of the period when the refugees
memorialisation, or even heritageisation pro- ple of the issue of multiple inheritance. Howev-
here were collected during the Covid-19 pandemic. Savas collection, which represent part of their remembering the former eastern bloc: who owns the legacy – the case of těchonín
cess (Harvey 2001; Harrison 2013) of Greeks in
were received in the military barracks, are their
Czechoslovakian, I use ethnographic data which
photographs in situ, in their private collections,
Although I was living in Prague during this pe-
lives. Another, central source is the testimony of
Savas.
riod, travel restrictions did not allow fieldwork
Can the memory of the use of the build-
in the site of Těchonín, while the interview with
the interlocutor was conducted online using the
photo elicitation method.
mer function, photographs of life in situ, and the
studiauniversitatis
graves of its former ‘tenants’, build a ‘lasting her-
The only interlocutor in this ethnograph- ing, which no longer bears any trace of its for-
ic research is Savas, born in 1952 and aged 69 in itage’ (Tunbridge and Ashworth 1996) about the
2021 when the interview was conducted. Savas is reception of refugees? Is this reception, embod-
a second-generation refugee, born in the Czech ied in places of coexistence and habitation dot-
Republic from refugee parents and who, being a ted around Eastern Europe, as in the case of the
child of the period in question, bears the mem- Těchonín, a legacy to be preserved, and if so, for
ory of his life there, from 1954 to 1962, when his whom?
family left Těchonín. According to him, it’s im- Images stimulate the evocation of memo-
possible to find any other interlocuters about ry alongside the mental images that subjects call
Těchonín since the other tenants were at the pe- upon in their narratives. Using photographs, the
riod already adults and the most of them have actors in the case of Těchonín, ‘do not only elab-
passed away. orate other narratives’, as Maurice Bloch (1995,