"I will follow my fate with courage. Perhaps this will be my last letter. But it still doesn't matter. I'm not sorry for anything. Let me lose everything. One dies once. I'll walk happily to my final resting place. What today? What tomorrow? Everyone dies one day. It's a good thing to die for Greece. Time 7:30. The most beautiful day of my life. The most beautiful hour. Don't ask why."
These are the stirring words of a teenager, only nineteen years old, in his last letter to his sister from prison, who boldly and fully accepts his impending death. The teenager who knows that a few hours later the thread of his life will be cut off. So unfairly. Words that conceal the meaning of his entire life, when he declared that it was the best day for him, since he would die for the freedom of his country. A life as short as a breath. But at the same time so catalytic, so timeless, so eternal.
His words in the same letter, urging his sister what name to give to her little daughter born when he was a partisan in the mountains and whom he planned to christen. So indicative of the rare for his young age maturity and dedication to the fight for freedom.
"The name you shall give her shall be of five syllables, and shall be reminiscent of her for whom I have come hither. To remember the one for whom the poet Solomos wrote his most beautiful song. The one that every man desires most of all. Do you understand, my sister?"
We are here today at the 1st Lyceum of Ethnarchis Makarios, on the occasion of the events "Evagoria-2022", organized by the Cultural Association "Evagoras Pallikaridis", to pay tribute to the eternal teenager, student and hero of EOKA, Evagoras Pallikaridis. This event of honour, which has become an institution, aims to keep his memory alive for his selfless offer of his life on the altar of the freedom of Cyprus. Allow me to express my sincere congratulations for the long-standing contribution and actions of your Association, which aim to promote the values of life, our culture and the healthy engagement and expression of our young people.
It is a great honour and a duty to address the literary memorial of the hero Evagoras Pallikaridis and for this I would like to thank from the bottom of my heart the board of directors of the association and personally the president Mrs. Andri Kanari for the invitation.
The Paphitis teenager Evagoras Pallikaridis sums up in his person the whole meaning of the national liberation struggle of EOKA 1955-59, as well as the insurmountable contribution of the youth of Cyprus. The young student and fighter with his heroism and action in the struggle for freedom of our homeland, but also with his monumental poetry, entered our hearts to awaken us, so that we can walk on the path he carved. That of philanthropy, selflessness, courage, faith in the universal human values of freedom and democracy and absolute dedication to sacred duty.
Evagoras Pallikaridis, or Vagoris as he was called, from Chada, saw the first light on February 26, 1938. His parents were Miltiades Pallikaridis from Larnaca of Lapithos and Aphrodite Papadaniil from Chada. He had four other siblings: Eleftherios, Andreas, Georgia and Maroulla.
The first years of his life were spent in his village, where he attended primary school until the fifth grade. In 1949 his family moved to Ktima, where Evagoras attended the sixth grade of primary school and then the Greek Gymnasium of Paphos from 1950 to 1955 and as a senior in the first quarter of 1955-1956. From his young age he showed dynamism, leadership skills, creativity, love for Greece and the ideals of Hellenism, philanthropy and literary talent, characteristics that would accompany him in his short life. He prided himself on his name, which, as he wrote in one of his own texts, was that of the Greek king of ancient Salamis, Evagoras. So I, too, had to be worthy heir to my successor."
He was a philosopher, thoughtful and magnanimous. God endowed him from childhood with the poetic instinct and the gift of lyricism. Surprised at the sheer volume of the 19-year-old poet's manuscripts, the first person to study them, the award-winning philologist George Hatzikostis, recalled the famous saying of the Roman poet Ovid: "Everything I tried to say was verse."
Because of his unruly and dynamic character, his conflict with the colonial regime was full-frontal from his teenage years. On 1 June 1953, at the age of 15, when Cypriot society was already in turmoil because of London's successive refusals to fulfil its demand for self-determination and union with Greece, he led militant, anti-colonial, student demonstrations in Paphos. On the eve of the celebrations for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, he lowered the English flag from the forecourt of the Jacobean Gymnasium to the cheers of the Paphos student body. His act was the spark for the outbreak of militant protests that aborted the celebrations. This was his first revolutionary act, with which he became more deeply aware of the sad realities in his homeland and determined his further militant course as an EOKA guerrilla.
With the beginning of the new school year 1955-1956, during which Pallikaridis was a senior, the suspicions of the English services about him and other classmates intensified. In March 1955 he led a new militant demonstration in Paphos, on the occasion of the trial of those arrested in the "Agios Georgios" ferry case, in Chloraka, and was again arrested by the police, along with dozens of other Paphite youths. He was tried and ordered to pay a fine before being released.
In April 1955, the 17-year-old student joined the ranks of EOKA and, in addition to student demonstrations, was involved in distributing leaflets and in sabotage attacks against British targets and government buildings. On 17 November, during a student demonstration, he attacked two British soldiers who were abusing a classmate and literally rescued him from their fury. Shortly afterwards he was arrested, charged and released on £30 bail, to be summoned to appear in court on 6 December.
On the eve of his trial, Eugoras announced to his father that he did not intend to appear in court because, even if he was not convicted, he would be locked up in prison, which he did not want. Moreover, he had previously stated:
I cannot bear the burdens of prison
so I will go
to mountains and ravines
to have the moon
as my companion by night
and by day
to talk with the willows."
He had made the final decision to leave the life of the city to go up the mountain the day before the trial, on 5 December '55. He said goodbye to his father with pride and respect and left his home forever. He certainly felt obliged to say goodbye to his classmates, but it was afternoon and they were not in the classrooms. He went to the school alone and left them his written greetings on the classroom benches. On the morning of the next day, the first of his classmates to enter the classroom found a manuscript on the desk with which Eugoras bid them farewell, together with the stirring lines of the poem which to this day is the shining beacon of our youth and bears the title "Egertirion Salpisma":
"Old classmates,
At this hour someone is missing among you, someone who is fleeing in search of a little free air, someone you may never see again except dead. Do not weep at his grave, it is not fit to weep for him. A few May flowers scattered on his grave. That's enough for him ONLY.
I'll take an uphill, I'll take paths
to find the stairs that lead to Whiteness
I'll leave siblings, relatives, MAMA, FATHER
in the valleys beyond and on the hillsides......
..... Hello old classmates.
The last words I write today are for you.
And whoever wants to find
a lost brother, an old friend,
Let him take an uphill
let him take paths
to find the stairs
that lead to Freedom.
With freedom along, he may find me.
If I live, he will find me there."
He first escaped to the Monastery of Saint Neophytos and a little later he climbed the mountain, as a member of a guerrilla group, one of the first to be organized in mountainous Paphos, putting into practice his great desire to cross the hills and paths that led to "PANORIA LEYTERIA".
He escaped first to the Monastery of Saint Neophytos and a little later he climbed the mountain, as a member of a guerrilla group, one of the first to be organized in mountainous Paphos, putting into practice his great desire to cross the hills and paths that led to "PANORIA LEYTERIA".
He took part in several operations, the most important of which were the attacks on the military base of Pomos and the police stations of Stroubios and Panagia and the ambushes at the mine of Kinousa, Lysos and Tsada. For his guerrilla action he was awarded a bounty by the British for the very large sum of 5,000 pounds for the time.
During his life as a guerrilla he wrote poems inspired by his stay and action in the mountains and other events of the liberation struggle. He celebrated with his verses the heroic deaths of his fellow fighters who preceded his own sacrifice. When he returned to his den after an operation, he would isolate himself to write poems in his notebooks, as his comrades confessed. Indicatively, we mention the poems about the sacrifice of Charalambos Mouskos, who was killed in an ambush on 15 December 1955, in the village of Mersinaki, and those he wrote to commemorate the eight hanged men who were led to the scaffold before him. Michalakis Karoli, Andreas Demetriou, Iakovos Patatsos, Charilaos Michael, Andreas Zakos, Stelios Mavrommatis, Andreas Panagidis and Michael Koutsofta.
From early on he accepted his own fate, the fate of the guerrilla, as he himself testifies.
But we go with pride
and say ...whoever we take
and we shall win."
The hero's lyrics proved prophetic shortly afterwards. On December 18, 1956, while moving his group from the area of the Cross of Psoka to settle in the area of Lysos, he was confronted by a British patrol near Lysos, where he was arrested. He was charged with illegal possession and trafficking of arms and was imprisoned, only to be subjected, according to testimonies, to horrible torture.
On 5 January 1957, at the Paphos District Court, he was charged with carrying a machine gun and ammunition and after the verdict he was transferred to Nicosia Central Prison. On 14 February, he was referred to the higher special court established by the British for the trial of cases relating to participation in the liberation struggle. His trial lasted until the 25th of the same month, in a mock trial, when the court issued its verdict sentencing Pallicarides to death by hanging: "I know that you will condemn me. I know you will hang me. What I have to say is this: what I did, I did as a Greek Cypriot fighting for the freedom of his country. Nothing else."
On the day after Pallikaridis was sentenced, a massive, moving effort began, which went beyond the borders of Cyprus, to prevent his execution. Student demonstrations and walkouts, telegrams to Governor Harting, interventions by the Greek government and petitions to its English counterpart and the UN. Similar petitions from English MPs and an American senator. Mayors, guilds, intellectuals, the ecclesiastical leadership of Cyprus and ordinary citizens were desperately trying to persuade the British authorities to pardon the teenager Eugoras. But in vain. The deep establishment of British diplomacy and the ruthless governor of Cyprus, Harting, rejected every request for a pardon.
Thus, at 11:30 in the evening of March 13, 1957, on Wednesday, Evagoras Pallikarides of Miltiades and Aphrodite from Chada in Paphos, defying death, with a smile on his lips, took his own uphill path to freedom. He climbed the gallows with his head held high and crossed the threshold of the pantheon of the heroes of freedom, where he enjoys eternally the wine of the immortals.
The executioners of the young hero immediately after their criminal act ordered the prison priest Papantonis Erotokritou to conduct the funeral service and before dawn, they buried him in the courtyard of the prison, in the same grave where a few days earlier the lifeless body of Gregory Afxentiou, burnt at the altar of Machairas on March 3, 1957, was buried.
Greeks,
Today's commemoration of the sacrifice of Evagoras Pallikaridis is not only about paying tribute to another hero. It is something greater, something even more important. Today, we take the opportunity to look through the mirror that Evagoras brings before us.
Cyprus may, thanks to the sacrifice of the heroes of 1955-59, have been freed from the colonial yoke and gained its independence, but shortly afterwards a new invader from the East unlawfully and criminally occupied half of our homeland, which suffers to this day from the presence of the Turkish army. With thousands of dead and refugees forcibly uprooted from their ancestral homes. With hundreds of missing persons, many of whose relatives are still experiencing the daily drama of waiting for their fate to be determined. With destroyed and ruined towns and villages, with enormous destruction of our cultural heritage.
We all bear a heavy debt to our immortal heroes. We must all unite together to continue the struggle for the liberation of our island. So that we can hand over to the younger generations a free and reunited homeland where the human rights and basic freedoms of all its lawful inhabitants will be protected, without the encroachments and dependencies of third parties.
From the Pantheon of our heroes, Evagoras and the other heroes of our homeland's struggles await the performance of the duty that precedes the meaning of the liberation struggle of 1955-59. We have the duty to remain committed to the struggle, to be worthy successors of the struggles of the heroes of EOKA and all those who watered the tree of freedom with their blood. Until that holy day when the bells will ring joyfully in our churches from Paphos to the Apostle Andrew. Until Hellenism takes root again on the altars and in its ancestral homes, from which it was brutally expelled in 1974.
May the memory and the glory that accompanies Evagoras Pallikaridis and all our heroes who have offered their lives as a sacrifice on the altar of our country's freedom be eternal.
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