Georgios Nikolaou
Timeline Events
He was born in the village of Kato Pyrgos1, in the province of Nicosia, in 1930.
He was tortured to death by the British on the night of November 12-13, 1956, in a camp near Xeros2.
Georgios Nikolaou graduated from Kampos3 primary school and worked in Nicosia4, where he developed activities in secret groups that were preparing the fight to shake off the English yoke.
He collaborated with his grandfather Papaevripidis Ioannidis, one of the first recruits of EOKA, his uncle Polycarpos Ioannidis, who was later exiled by the English to the Seychelles together with Ethnarch Makarios, the Metropolitan of Kyrenia Papagriagos Kypriangos. From 1950 he collaborated with the hero Andreas Zakos for the national enlightenment of the inhabitants of the villages of his area.
He was initiated in the struggle from the beginning of 1955. With the beginning of the armed action, he took over as the head of EOKA in the villages of Pigainia, Pachyammos, Kato and Pano Pyrgos, under the pseudonym “Dafnios”. He kept a hideout in his house.
There he hosted the first nuclei for guerrilla activity in the sector of Tilliria, among which he promoted to a new hideout, a natural cave in the Flat River in the forest, and fed them. He was also one of the liaisons of the guerrilla group of the hero Markos Drakos, whom he helped in various operations.
On October 27, 1956, he was arrested by the British along with nine other villagers and taken to an English camp on the Pentagia-Xerou road. There, his brother Takis Nikolaou managed to secretly enter and meet him on November 12, 1956. He found him in bad shape from the torture.
As he revealed to him, the English torturers had crushed his genitals, caused him deafness with an explosion of dynamite and tied him with a rope in the sea all night. He asked for a doctor and a lawyer.
The next day when his family went to meet him, they found him dead with broken legs and a bullet in the back, which he received when he was already dead. His death came from the drowning torture inflicted on him by investigators, using oil to which they added sawdust.
Source: https://www.eoka.org.cy
