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I worked very intensively. First, I started by dealing with current problems, to order the requested subscriptions of the foreign magazines for the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, for the departments of Medicine, Architecture, Mechanics, etc. Then I started studying the French bibliography and little by little I was managing the whole French department.
Right after the war my husband was at the bookshop day and night. In order to start again he went to the Bank of Greece and asked for a loan. Let's say he asked for 150,000 drachmae. The bank manager sent him to the cashier and he gave him 300,000 drachmae, double of what he had asked for. With this money Solon managed to order the books for the first school term. We were in competition with another bookseller, and we would bring the first books by plane in order to be the first to have them.
Retail book sellers would be coming to the shop even at midnight, so that they would have the new books the next morning, in their shop. And I had the feeling that we never stopped working.
Of course, as I told you, we started with no capital. Not only that, but when the bookshop was closed by the Germans, there were open balances with foreign suppliers. When we re-opened after the war, in order to re-open our accounts with our main furnishers, despite the fact that obviously we were not responsible, we promised to pay whatever we owed them from before the war. We owed them nothing but we paid all the same.
This way, we paid Hachette, Oxford and the others, the French, the English, even the Germans, we paid. I don't remember the exact details of those accounts but what I know for certain is that we paid even the last penny of all our foreign debts. Not all of them together but slowly we managed to reduce and finally pay off all our accounts. We never used other peoples' money for ourselves!
Right after the war my husband was at the bookshop day and night. In order to start again he went to the Bank of Greece and asked for a loan. Let's say he asked for 150,000 drachmae. The bank manager sent him to the cashier and he gave him 300,000 drachmae, double of what he had asked for. With this money Solon managed to order the books for the first school term. We were in competition with another bookseller, and we would bring the first books by plane in order to be the first to have them.
Retail book sellers would be coming to the shop even at midnight, so that they would have the new books the next morning, in their shop. And I had the feeling that we never stopped working.
Of course, as I told you, we started with no capital. Not only that, but when the bookshop was closed by the Germans, there were open balances with foreign suppliers. When we re-opened after the war, in order to re-open our accounts with our main furnishers, despite the fact that obviously we were not responsible, we promised to pay whatever we owed them from before the war. We owed them nothing but we paid all the same.
This way, we paid Hachette, Oxford and the others, the French, the English, even the Germans, we paid. I don't remember the exact details of those accounts but what I know for certain is that we paid even the last penny of all our foreign debts. Not all of them together but slowly we managed to reduce and finally pay off all our accounts. We never used other peoples' money for ourselves!
Period
Interview
Renée Molho