Grigoris Pieris Afxentiou (February 22, 1928 – March 3, 1957)

Grigoris Pieris Afxentiou (February 22, 1928 – March 3, 1957)

From the village of Lysi, west of Famagusta in Cyprus, he was a Greek fighter and hero of the EOKA struggle (1955-59), to liberate Cyprus from British Occupation & unite it with Greece.

Arriving in Greece as a student and unable to afford the fees, he joined the Greek Army as a volunteer in 1949. After entering the Infantry Academy in Syros, he was then stationed and served on the Greek-Bulgarian border. After 4 years he returned to Cyprus in 1953, where he worked as a taxi driver.

When EOKA was formed in 1955, Afxentiou was one of the first to enlist and because of his military background, charisma and boldness, he quickly gained the trust of EOKA’s leader, Georgios Grivas, who made him his second in command.

Afxentiou led several attacks on British installations on the island, such as the power company and the broadcasting corporation, he was also responsible for training EOKA recruits in weapons use, bomb-making techniques and guerrilla warfare. The British put a bounty of £5,000 on his head.

This forced Afxentiou to be constantly on the move, often disguised, but continued to direct and conduct operations from hideouts in the Troodos Mountains. In early 1957 he found himself holed up near Machairas monastery, south of Nicosia.

By March 1957, British troops acting on a tip-off, surrounded Afxentiou and his comrades and called for them to surrender. Afxentiou ordered his men to leave, but insisted he had to stay. “I will fight and die” he told them. “I have to die” he said.

With Afxentiou alone, the British ordered for him to surrender, Afxentiou answered with Μολών Λαβέ, the British stormed the hideout, but Afxentiou held them at bay. They lobbed grenades into him, but the wounded Afxentiou wouldn’t give up and continued to fight.

After being unable to break his resistance, lasting 10 hours, the British poured petrol into his hideout and a charge was attached, the hideout was blown up in an explosion that reverberated throughout the mountains.

The intensity of the flames made it impossible for anyone to approach the hideout. It wasn’t until the following morning that the British were able to get inside, they found Afxentiou’s burned body, a sub-machine gun, revolvers, grenades and a copy of Nikos Kazantzakis’ Christ Recrucified, given to Afxentiou by the Abbot of Machairas.

Afxentiou’s scorched body was buried at the Imprisoned Graves, in the yard of the Central Jail of Nicosia. The monks at the Machairas monastery have built a museum for Afxentiou and a statue in his memory was erected.

He is a Great Greek Hero.