Nikos Georgiou

He was born in the village of Palaichori¹, in the Nicosia district, on October 17, 1918.

He died on January 25, 1957 in the Platres² detention center, from torture.

Nikos Georgiou finished the primary school in Palaichori and at the age of 13 went to Nicosia³, where he was taught the art of cabinetmaking, also attending Byzantine church music lessons. Later he opened his own dry cleaner in Nicosia.

He was a member of OHEN and the PEON (Pancyprian National Youth Organization). He was initiated into the struggle at the end of 1954 and collaborated with the activist Polykarpos Giorkatzis in the field of information.

In 1955 he joined the Nicosia strike groups together with Iakovos Patatsos. He kept a cache in his dry cleaner's, in which he hid weapons and ammunition. He himself was not directly involved in the execution at the time, due to his religious beliefs. However, he had collaborated with his group in other types of action, such as the preparation for placing a bomb in Governor Harding's bed, on March 20, 1956.

On April 16, 1956, the British went to search his dry cleaner's. He escaped arrest by pretending to go to supposedly call the owner of the shop. The army discovered the ammunition he was hiding under the water boiler. Nikos then fled to the Machairas mountains⁴, where he joined the group of Grigoris Afxentiou. The British rewarded him with the sum of 5,000 pounds.

In August 1956, with the expansion of the Afxentiou sector to the wine villages of Limassol, the sector was divided into four sub-sectors. Nikos Georgiou joined the group, which, with its center in Lagoudera - Saranti, operated in the northern part of the sector and had a rich activity.

In the thorough searches carried out by the British army in January 1957, their hideout in Saranti¹ was discovered in Papacharalambos' house, where Nikos Georgiou, Georgios Matsis and Argyris Karadimas were arrested. Nikos Georgiou succumbed to terrible torture by the English in the Platres detention center, where he had been transferred with Georgios Matsis, refusing to reveal secrets of the Organization.

“From the cell next to where I was,” testifies Georgios Matsis, “I saw one of the torturers kick Nikos Georgiou in the head where they were torturing him and immediately blood began to flow from his mouth. That’s enough, you killed him, I shouted to them. His death caused the torture to temporarily stop for all the others who had been arrested from all over Pitsilia.”