In the wake of World War II, over 150,000 Greeks emigrated to Australia. In their new home, they tried to keep their connections to Greece alive. In the 1950’s and 60’s, thousands of Greek men in Australia married Greek women from “back home,” through arranged marriages. Young Greek brides, many of whom had never before left their hometowns, traveled the immense distance to Australia to get married — to men they had never met. In 1965 in Lesvos, Eleni Theodorou embarks on a ship to sail to Australia — and her adventure begins. New inlaws, a new way of life, the hard work of the immigrant laboring in a factory, being treated as an outsider in a foreign lands, lands that “require constant struggle, but also love.”
Interviewee: Eleni Tzanni
Interview by: Panagitsa Xenitelli
Producer: Maya Filippopoulou
Sound Designer: Iasonas Theofanou
Sound Editor: Michael Ikonomidis
Photos: Eleni Tzanni
Voiceover: Monica McShane
Istorima is the bigest project of recording and preserving oral histories of Greece. Over 1,000 young researchers find narrators, listen, collect and save stories of people from all over Greece : Stories of their place, stories of love, stories that changed us or defined us, stories modern or old. Stories that are not recorded in the history books and that could be lost in time. Istorima is the co-creation of the journalist Sofia Papaioannou and the historian Katherine Fleming and is implemented with a founding donation from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) as part of his Youth Reboot and Empowerment initiative (learn more at www.snf.org). The more than 20,000 stories are being published in their entirety in stages at www.archive.istorima.org. Excerpts of the stories are published in the form of podcasts, videos or written stories at www.istorima.org