Agros, Saturday 25 June 2022
The militant life and glorious citizenship of Gregory Afxentios, a short life, filled with the spirit of freedom and virtue, is in itself the epitome of the legendary EOKA struggle. The struggle of Cypriot Hellenism for freedom, i.e. self-determination, i.e. union with Greece. Gregory's devotion to his homeland, to Greece and to freedom, started of course from his desire to wear the glorious uniform of the Greek Officer and was previously manifested in his military action on the Greek-Albanian border in those turbulent years that preceded it. But it took on its full dimensions when he emerged photographed and marched to the eternal Monas, becoming a true icon of the free Greek. Putting Machairas next to Arkadi and Kougi. Yes, the freedom of the Greeks is taken out of the bones. It is born out of death. And the free life we live is a victory over death. It is because some of us, before us, defeated death by dying. Just as the fighters of the sector, based in the houses of the Papachristodoulou family, given to them by Papachristodoulos Avgusti and the elder Kyriaki, really trampled death here in these honoured places of Pitsilia.
What we hear in the lyrics of our national anthem is not some pompous high-mindedness, but is literal: "out of the bones of the Greeks the sacred"
Such is our freedom, such is the passport of Hellenism in the modern world.
Such is our freedom, such is the passport of Hellenism in the modern world. It is taken out of the "thick Greek grains" of Grigoris Auxentios, as the eye of the poet Yannis Ritsos distinguished them with clarity, among the ashes and ruins of English despair and mania. This is how the poet finds the words with inspiration in the mouth of the hero who left in the pantheon of great men as the high priest of Freedom. And the poet puts the fitting words in his mouth: 'My father will recognise me in the morgue by my thick Greek grains, similar to his own / and by the cross of the fatherland that I had as an amulet in the hair of my bosom'.
It is from there that our freedom springs: from the sacred bones of the Greeks and from the cross that our homeland has carried all its life: a symbol of our faith, but also a symbol of its martyrdom. For it is something that shows the true dimensions of a figure like Afxentius and his sacrifice, but also the spirit of a poet - and let us avoid the temptation of political implications. I just want to note that despite the given general directions of the political field in which he was actively involved, Yannis Ritsos did not hesitate at all and gave that great poetic composition "The Farewell", for the greatest hero of EOKA. He not only honoured, but also captured on a level of universal dimensions the deputy leader of Digenis. More generally, however, this is what the EOKA struggle achieved. At that time, in the massive protest demonstrations in Athens on May 9, 1956, against the death sentences of Karoli and Demetriou - demonstrations that resulted in four deaths! as the late Thessaloniki writer Kriton Salpiggis, the late writer from Thessaloniki, aptly observed, the two warring political factions (the "two Greeks" as Savvopoulos would say) were together, for the first time since the Civil War, side by side on the same street, demonstrating for Cyprus. The struggle of EOKA for the Union united the Greeks.
And just as our national poet still vividly describes Glory walking "on the all-black back of Psara", the same glory of Greek freedom walked in Cyprus on the peaks and laxes of the Troodos, especially here in Pitsilia. She walked step by step, path by path, as we say in our dialect, the haunts of the great Gregory Afxentios. For a while he rested and found shelter in the two houses made available to the fighters by the Papachristodolu family, and then he left for the Holocaust of Machairas, the everlasting idea and experience that we will have of freedom.
But, ladies and gentlemen, was this not, in essence, the great national struggle of Cyprus? When the national was experienced by the people as purely personal. And when people, persons, embody in their daily life the national - which, as we know, is what is true - then they are worthy of the virtue of freedom.
Here we are tonight here in Agros. On the glorious peaks of Pitsilia, in one of the distinctive centres of that struggle for freedom. We owe this beautiful gathering to the inspiring initiative and invitation of the Insurance Company "The Central". I congratulate "Central" and my personal, old and everlasting, friend Stelios Georgalidis for this brilliant new publishing offer. I also thank him for this unforgettable experience tonight here in Agros, in the dens of the Heroes, in the hallowed neighborhood.
Here where Father Papachristodoulos Avgoustis and his family had the courage and, out of high spirit, philanthropy and diligence, offered their homes as the headquarters of the EOKA Sector, defying all risks. We thus pay due tribute to the Papachristodoulou family, who deserved to see their family heritage take on the dimensions of a national heritage.
Congratulations are certainly due to the author of the album "The Last Christmas of Afxentiou", Stelios Papantoniou. As well as to Stelios Papachristodoulou for his action so far in memory of the great Struggle and for his speech tonight. As well as I congratulate dear Petros Papapetrou who always gives goal to his great talent and inspiration in his technique and through this publication. I especially congratulate Elena Hatziayaxenti for the musical theatre performance that she has curated in her own special multi-talented way and will move and fill us. Together we must also give credit to all those who collaborated for the original musical theatre performance, the musicians, the artistic advisor, the costume designer, the technicians and everyone else. While congratulations are also due to the creators of the documentary of the same name, Christos Michalaros and Iliana Koulafeti -which I personally now find exists as a pleasant surprise.
Through the pages of this booklet we are given the opportunity for another approach to the great hero and the great Struggle. A more human approach. We feel the warmth and passion in people's hearts. Through the gathering and the Christmas table. What was negotiated between them. The last Christmas of the Oxentius. But also a symbolic moment...
The whole company of rebels. Papachristodoulos seated them and they all sang together and with the chant "Glory to God in the highest" and blessed the table. A real ritual of the Last Supper. Moments of joy and camaraderie evidenced by the conversations between Afxentius, Matsi and the others. With a glass of wine for the good of the feast and to the health of EOKA. With the gramophone from the Apeitio Gymnasium, brought by Stelios Papachristodoulou, with singing and the dances of Afxentios. All there in the basement of the house.
Grigoris' classmate and close friend, Antonis Papadopoulos. His later companion in the holy hole of the holocaust, Augustis Efstathiou. The enthusiastic, yet solemn Michalis Giorgallas, still at school age, who represented the passion of the Cypriot high school students who joined the Struggle and who would fall in the struggle a few days later. The equally young Loukis Augustidis. Stylianos Lenas, also an example of making use of any previous knowledge, since he went from being a blacksmith to an armourer for the Organisation and had a workshop just up the road. The local fighters of the wider region who, as in a dream, saw their beautiful, so familiar mountain paths, the lakes, streams and peaks, become a battlefield of freedom! Evagoras Papachristophorou, from Kato Amiodos, with the tragic later end, murdered in his own hideout by a fellow fighter who became a traitor. From Lagoudera, Phidias Simeonidis, who met an inglorious death, sadly forgotten in 1975, and Andreas Stylianou. George Matsis from Palaichori, Kostas Kyniagos from Potamitissa, Lambros Kavkalidis from Agros. But also Panagiotis Aristeidou. Among them and Dimitrakis Christodoulou, an example of a young man who gave up a very good professional career and threw himself into the struggle, paying with his life later, in the ambush between Potamitissa-Palandriou where Lena was wounded with the wound that 40 days later would cause his death.
Among them, however, was the later well-known traitor Michael Assiotis... For the sector and the fighters were haunted in those days by the curse of treason. A real Last Supper... and among them there were Jews...
Among the many other important and pertinent things composed by Stelios Papantoniou in this very fine scrapbook is recorded Andreas Stylianos' recollection (to Yannis Spanos) of the inspiring and wise speech of Afxentios, at the Christmas table on December 26, 1956, before he caught the ball:
"We do not know what everyone's fate will be and whether we live or die, one will be the prize of the struggle for the dead and the living: for Cyprus to become Greek and to live free and happy."
However, Gregory Afxentiou had no such dilemma. From the very beginning things were clear in his mind. As his father Pieris Afxentius recounts, in a letter he had sent him four days before the Maharajas Holocaust, he wrote about the traitor-traitors and concluded:
"Your son will not surrender for any reason, but will die!"
This is exactly what Antony's mother sang through her pain, which she drowned for her country, in her well-known poem:
"A mother of a deadly hero, in insult to weep
insults her lover, the one she will enjoy.
Halal of my Fatherland, my son, my life
With the wish of the mother, who often proved to be a heroine herself, the fighters of EOKA marched on. But also with the blessing of the Virgin Mary, through the fervent faith and devotion of the long-standing Greek Orthodox tradition of our people, renewed by their oath in the Holy Gospel - by fiery priests like Papastavros - in exactly the same ritual of the Ypsilantis and the Friendly Society.
How then could such glorious fighters be spared the double blessing of the mother and the Virgin Mary?
But still characteristic of that speech of Gregory Afxentius is the mention and exorcism of the curse of discord for Hellenism. His words are prophetic no less...
I even remember that great quote written by George Seferis: our words are the children of many people. With cheerfulness and inspiration, the poet focused throughout his work "on a world of living and past people - in their works, in their voices, in their rhythm, in their coolness." So it is good for us here not to forget that we are made of that wonderful struggle, the freedom epoch of EOKA. The English newspaper "Tribune" wrote on 7 March 1956: "the memory of Grigoris Afxentiou will live on as long as in Cyprus brother will speak of him to brother and father to son."
Yes, we are also made of the EOKA struggle, the legend of freedom and union. A Struggle that was miraculously victorious against the occupying British Empire. It is one thing if afterwards we could not go all the way and politics brought other things...
It is our honour, but it also gives rise to a great obligation.
The very psyche of the EOKA fighters gives answers to many questions of today. For in their personalities they brought together all those elements that made the epic of the united struggle brighten Cypriot history and give Cypriot Hellenism a pride that lasts forever. In addition to philanthropy and bravery, the heroes of the unification epic had deeply rooted in them that ethos which made Greek Cypriot youths walk in struggle and martyrdom quite naturally, almost with the same naturalness that others cross a road to go to work.
Many times we today may ask ourselves: where did the young people of Cyprus then find the courage to throw themselves wholeheartedly into the Struggle in defiance of death? How could high school boys envy the honoured death of their classmates who had martyred and thirst for their turn? How could mothers so simply give their blessing to their son who was going to perish for the Fatherland?"
There is no elaborate explanation. It was the character of those young people that was built with those immortal materials of our family and community tradition. With the values of Greek education. It was the mental formation of people who lived in a familiar world and thought above all about what soul they would surrender. It was the reconciliation of our psyche - which goes back to the roots of our culture - with what we were looking for in the world within. The heroes of that time were able to transcend their ego because they fervently believed and were devoted to something higher, to the We of which Makriyannis spoke to us.
Straightforwardness, virtue, devotion to the collective purpose and the piety of the people allowed the dream to come to life and gave it flesh and bones from their own flesh and bones. From the peaks of Machairas, the caves of Pitsilia and the sacred cave of Afxentios, to the Barn and Dikomo, the intoxicating song of the free Greek soul could neither hide nor be silenced. It poured into every Greek house in Cyprus, intoxicated young and old, made teenage men, made the cheeks of little girls blush and the withered braids of old mothers rise.
In the same swimming pool, the swimming pool of the oath of the EOKA fighters, we must immerse ourselves every moment if we want to hold our heads high and make sense of the prosaic daily life that surrounds us and to overcome signs of decadence that may appear and make us worry at times.
But talking about this so rich album, with poems like The Song of Papachristodoulou, the Song of the Elder Kyriaki Papachristodoulou and all the others, talking about the Hero and his fellow fighters, I drift into a long monologue...
In conclusion, however, as Minister of Education, I could not fail to address thanks to all the known and unknown writers who both lived and wrote or researched and wrote about the Struggle, such as John Spanos, Spyros Papageorgiou, Andreas Kaouris, George Hatzikostis, Alexandros Christoforou - and I apologise for those I may now be omitting. We are grateful to all of them. But also to those who gave useful information and guidance, such as Solon Papachristodoulou, Alexandros Stephanis, Smaragda Antoniadou. I congratulate of course the Historical Memory Council of the EOKA Struggle 1955-1959 and the historian Dr. Haris Alexandrou. And I cannot forget the valuable help of Kyproula Papetta of "Central". Indeed, how to say, how to narrate such greatness? Big words and complicated meanings have little to add. For the truth is instantly simple, direct, tangible: as simple as the ashes of Gregory Axentius. The simple words and this beautiful pilgrimage tonight to the places of the last Christmas of the hero and his comrades are so true because they awaken in us memories that we have kept, even of things we have not lived. But which are things and wonders that fill the atmosphere, the air we breathe. We feel the sacrifice, the holocaust, the haughty gaze, the steadfast step towards death that was the step that climbed the steps of Leftheria.
Compatriots,
We, the Greeks of Cyprus, hold on to these unquenchable sensations and they remain our guide forever. With such milk let the Greek Cypriot mothers continue to breastfeed their infants, with such stories let our fathers put our boys and girls to sleep. Through their bright aura we shall continue to gaze at the vision and the goal for freedom, the true freedom in this land, from Apostle Andrew to Morphou and from Famagusta to Kyrenia, Lapithos and Karavas, with the fragrance of the peaks of Pitsilia, but also of Pentadaktylos.
(NΓ/IK)
Contents of this article including associated images are belongs to PIO
Views & opinions expressed are those of the author and/or PIO
Source
