Bizos: his life as a refugee

While doing an interview with the NEWS at his offices in Marshalltown, Johannesburg, in July 2018, he looked back on his life as a refugee.

Bizos came to South Africa as a refugee from Greece, where he said his family had to flee the Nazi-occupied country.

“Germans had occupied mainland Greece,” said Bizos at the time.

Before leaving his native Greece, Bizos lived as a refugee on a farm.

He said the French along with his family fled the farm after dark to go to Crete, where they would be safe from the Germans.

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“On our way to Crete we could see on the horizon, 16 boats coming towards us to bomb Crete. The British came to our rescue as they tried to evacuate the French and those in exile at Crete.

“We stayed on a boat for three days on our way to Alexandria,” said Bizos.

When they arrived in Alexandria, Bizos said the Greek consul wanted to know how far he had got in school.

At that time Bizos was 14 years old, and was told he had passed Standard Six.

Thereafter Bizos’ father was sent to Cairo to a refugee camp and Bizos was placed in an orphanage in Alexandria.

“My father came every second week to see me. My grandfather was also a member of a political party in Greece. He continued to fight the fascists voluntarily in Italy.

“I was influenced politically by my father and my grandfather,” said Bizos.

His father helped an Armenian beggar get away from the Germans.

He needed a boat to get around, but the boat was taken by thieves.

Also read: Adv George Bizos honoured

Later they finally left Greece to come to South Africa as refugees.

This was where Bizos first saw the segregation in South Africa.

“I watched how black men were treated as slaves,” said Bizos.

Bizos became a student at Wits in 1948, where he was a first-year BA student.

He was five years older than the average first-year student.

It was when Bizos found the passion to give a speech about the unfair treatment of black students that he caught the attention of late former president Nelson Mandela.

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The election in 1948 was followed by the first expulsion of a black student, which led to protests, particularly by the student representative council (SRC), which were ignored.

“If wanting equal treatment for all makes me a leftist, then I am proudly one,” Bizos said during his speech.

“He [Mandela] wanted to know who I am, where I come from and what am I doing,” Bizos previously told the NEWS.

They met at the Great Hall at Wits, where they had their first conversation, which lasted for hours.

Also read: Bizos honoured with a birthday ceremony at Saheti