In the heart of Hungary, a small piece of Greece’s history lingers. It’s the town of Beloiannisz, which was founded and built in the early 1950s by Greek communists fleeing their country at the end of the Greek Civil War. Marissa Tejada Benekos visited this fading outpost whose Greek population has dwindled from 1,850–that is, nearly all its inhabitants–to just of one-fourth of the town’s current 1,185 inhabitants who doggedly preserve the Greek flavor of this village.

Hrisztosz Pletser’s Sunday routine is unlike most other Hungarian teenagers. For him it’s a day dedicated to playing traditional Greek music on his bouzouki.
“I’m surrounded by Greek influences. My father first taught me how to play my bouzouki. My mother dances all of the traditional dances and she taught me those too. I listen to Dalaras, Glykeria, Mitropanos. I love rebetika,” he explains in fluent Greek as he carefully rests his bouzouki, secured in a black carrying case, on the seat next to him.
We sit across from each other as our train prepares to depart from Budapest’s Southern Railway Station, Déli p΄alyaudvar. We are about to embark for his hometown called Beloiannisz, sixty kilometers away. It’s a town Hungarians also know as Görögfalva, or the “Greek village”.
As the train pulls away, the sun begins to lower onto the neoclassical buildings that neatly line the blocks of Hungary’s capital. Over the next hour the landscape completely changes as the train charges into the gentle rolling hills of Hungary’s Transdanubian plain.
“I really enjoy learning Greek. I’ve taken lessons since I was in kindergarten,” says Hrisztosz as he settles into his seat, sitting straight and tall in his navy blue parka. He adjusts his rectangle framed glasses as he explains how this weekend two-hour commute is just like his daily commute into Budapest, since Beloiannisz doesn’t have a high school.
“Beloiannisz is part of my Greek heritage,” he says firmly.
Constructed from 1950 to 1952 by dedicated volunteers, Beloiannisz was settled by communist refugees escaping the Greek Civil War. The town is named after the Greek communist and resistance fighter Nikos Beloyannis who was executed in Greece in April 1952, around the time when the village was being completed. Among those fleeing to Hungary was Hrisztosz’s grandmother, Sophia Solomou, who arrived in Hungary as a young girl. Alone and scared, she eventually found a safe haven in Beloiannisz.
In the sixty years since then, the political climate has evolved for both Hungary and Greece. The communist idealism that may have brought the refugees here and was the unifying force for the town’s existence simply isn’t evident any longer. But the children and grandchildren of those very refugees have evolved into a small but proud Greek community making every effort to maintain their Greek heritage in the only ways they can.

The train stops next to a small red station house in Ivancsa, the town next to Beloiannisz. Here, Hrisztosz’s parents, Katalin Takacs and Istvan Pletser, await our arrival in the family’s white mini-van. The blue and white stripes of a Greek flag dangle from the rearview mirror. They’ve come out to offer their warm welcome in the midst of a cold crisp winter afternoon and are eager to share their unique story.
Hungary’s countryside continues to appear impressively vast, stretching out before us as we drive into town. The surrounding plains are a camouflage mix of light browns and greens, seemingly bare from the winter chill but beautifully highlighted by the setting sun’s gold and orange tones. In minutes we arrive at the village entrance. The welcome sign, like every sign that will follow it, is written in both Hungarian and Greek.
A small and tidy white-washed Greek Orthodox church sits immediately off the side of the road near the entrance. It’s the latest addition to the village, built in the mid-1990s.
“We were so proud during the opening ceremonies,” says Katalin. “The whole place was full of people who were christened Greek Orthodox. I was one of them, and eight months pregnant at the time. I like to say sometimes that both Hrisztosz and I were baptized here.”
We stop at a small cemetery lined with tombstones engraved with Greek names lettered in the Greek alphabet. Continuing, we drive pass rows of Beloiannisz’s distinctive simple, bunker-like homes. Thin brown trees frame each street bestowed names that could be found in any Greek neighborhood including the 25th of March Street, dedicated to Greece’s Independence Day.
We all climb out of the van at the main square: a grey stone-laid plateia. Surrounding it is the pre-school, elementary school, and cultural center. A solid upright, square stone monument is chiseled with Beloyannis’s stern profile.
We walk away from the square into one of the only two café-bars in town. A television set on brackets over the bar blares a Hungarian soccer game as we take some seats and warm up with hot beverages.
With her hands wrapped around her mug, Katalin smiles easily as she kindly offers some lemon juice to add to the steaming cups of tea placed before us.
“I have half-siblings who now live in Greece. I am the only child from my mother’s second marriage to a Hungarian. So I am her only half-Greek child,” explains Katalin, her warm eyes crinkling. “I may have been born as a Hungarian girl here but it was a great asset to also be Greek.”
By the end of the 1950s, the first group of ethnic Hungarians moved into the village. In 1980, when Katalin was eight years old, she says more than half the town spoke Greek. Today, Beloiannisz has a handful of full-blooded Greeks. The latest census shows the population numbers just over 1,000 residents with fewer than one in four claiming themselves to be Greek in origin. Nevertheless, Katalin says it’s important to preserve the Greek culture how she can.
“I feel it’s important. With my generation I noticed the whole village was becoming Hungarian. In fact, when I met my husband Istvan, who is Hungarian, we agreed our child would have a Greek first name at least. While it is pronounced Hrisztosz”–she says stressing the distinct intonations of the Hungarian language–“in Hungarian, it is Christos”–she says switching to her Greek accent. “We think it suits him well.”
“Yes it’s because we both have Hungarian last names,” Istvan adds. “I am proud of her heritage, so we are proud.”
“The Greek roots we are so proud of really all started with my mother. I don’t know much about what happened when she arrived. That’s because she doesn’t want to talk about it with anyone. What she went through at the time, having to escape from Northern Greece, I couldn’t begin to understand. She was just sixteen.”
In fact, some eight thousand refugees came to Hungary from Greece as a result of the civil war that erupted after the end of the second world war, and Beloiannisz took in a good number of them.
When Katalin’s mother Sophia arrived, like other children without their parents, she was escaping death and starvation. Children whose parents were in the Communist Party were sent by their families to Eastern Europe near the end of the civil war; families were thus separated for years and some members never saw each other again.
“I don’t know exactly what route she took to get here since she won’t talk about it. But what I do know is that my mother’s world fell apart when her family separated,” says Katalin. “When she met her sisters again she was 60 years old. She relived the pain all over again.”

In the early years of the metapolitefsi, or restoration of democracy after the collapse of the seven-year dictatorship in 1974, the Communist Party of Greece, which had been outlawed after the Greek Civil War, was legalized. Shortly after winning the 1981 elections, Andreas Papandreou’s socialist government allowed former communist fighters to return to Greece and offered state pensions to those who had fought in the resistance. As a result, Beloiannisz’s population dwindled dramatically as nearly half of its residents–700 out of a population of 1,800–took advantage of this opportunity to return home.
“I remember that time and I remember thinking that many had already died by then so it didn’t really matter. My mother had the opportunity too but I was already ten. My brothers went back to Greece; my mother chose to stay here. She made a life here.”
And Katalin and Istvan are doing the same. They say they loved growing up in the village.
“It was safe, people were social and there was this Greek culture that tied everyone together, no matter how Greek or Hungarian you were,” says Istvan.
“I was born in the early 1970s and as I grew up it was natural for people to dance to Greek music. Everyone went to the cultural center to learn, this was our entertainment. It was a completely different life. As everything began to change, I knew it would be harder for my son to keep the Greek culture but he does. He was never forced. I think he feels it and for that I am very, very proud.”
Maintaining the ties are a way of life for those who choose it, in a place Katalin says has few possibilities for the next generations to come.
“This is a basic town and there is nothing here today. Everybody is poor. There is no pharmacy, no butcher,” continues Katalin who commutes four hours a day by bus to work at a supermarket in the nearby town of Torokbalint. “The village can only support the nursery and primary school in the hope that more families won’t move away. There used to be a taverna with Greek food to get pita gyros but the owner died and no one took it over.”
She says daily life remains quiet with retirees regularly organizing events at the cultural center. Children meanwhile organize football games nearby at the field where both plastic goal posts are painted with the Greek flag.

Communism may have been the spur for creating Beloiannisz but today communist ideology is hardly a factor.
“In my view, the last thing I could recall to somewhat tie us to that time was our water tower–it was made of concrete and had a five angle communistic star. It was demolished in the 1980s,” says Istvan.
In its transition to a village without political ties, Beloiannisz has become somewhat of a fading memory of one of twentieth-century Europe’s most wide-ranging political migrations. Katalin and her family say that today culture more than politics is what truly identifies Beloiannisz today.
“I am the dance teacher of the town and have learned all the dances since I was quite young. I love it and I love my students.”
In her spare time she volunteers to teach more than sixty children in Beloiannisz –roughly eight out of ten are purely Hungarian, with no Greek roots at all. Five years ago, she and Istvan, who plays the bouzouki, they started Pyrgos, a choral and dance troupe.
“Pyrgos is named after the ‘white tower’ in Thessaloniki. We chose this to send the message that it is not possible to demolish us,” explains Istvan. “After all, we are a tower. We are strong.”
 “Our group actually became quite famous,” Katalin says, proudly noting how they have toured in Germany, Hungary, and Greece. “When we perform in Greece we always hear how proud they are to know there is a dance group in Hungary representing Greek culture. There is this pride to know that we are maintaining the culture abroad.”
With no financial backing other than revenues from ticket sales, Katalin and Istvan say it can be difficult at times to figure out how to provide costumes and plan for expenses, but agree it’s worth the effort when children see the shows and want to join too.
“My son is the idol at these performances. A small child will come up to him afterwards and ask him to teach him the same solo dancing.”
The group also has a website–www.portal.pyrgos.hu–where Istvan posts photos and videos of events and updates articles about the town. The content is uploaded in both Hungarian and Greek.
 “Our family truly preserves the culture,” says Katalin. She pauses, then adds: “you know, it’s work. Today, culture is not given when you are part of the diaspora here; you have to learn about it in your own way, but we are dedicated. We are a real Hungarian Greek family who loves the culture of Greece.”
“By paper we are Hungarian but we all feel Greek with a Greek life style,” adds Istvan.
While the dedication remains strong for the Takacs-Plester family, Katalin can’t help but express concern that their commitment isn’t enough.
“When Christos has kids one day I am sure they’ll ask, ‘why do you have a Greek name?’” says Katalin. “The future of the village is a concern but in the end we know Beloiannisz is important to Hungarians. We are a special town, with a new kind of meaning from what it started as. When the media comes, our Greek dance and the music is the center subject now.”
As for Hrisztosz, he says he has always been proud to be from such a unique town in Hungary, a town that molded his identity. “Although I’m not all Greek–because my father is Hungarian– Beloiannisz allowed me to grow up in Greek culture and it’s because of this I feel the Greek in me and always will.”