The Liberation Struggle 1955-59

Greek poet George Seferis recorded the prevailing climate on his visit to Cyprus in 1953. He addresses the British in order to remind them that: "The land has no metal rings That they may pull it up and carry it away […] And these bodies Made of a soil they do not know, Have souls. They gather implements that they might change them. They cannot; they can merely undo them If souls can be undone". ("Salamis of Cyprus".) In his diary Seferis also recorded the desperate longing of the Greek-Cypriots for vindication of their national desires and in photographs taken during his visit, he preserves the predominant slo- gan: "We hunger for Greece though we are fed only stones". The 1 st of April 1955, the day on which began the epic 1955-59 struggle for Enosis – or union with Greece, was a day of national pride and rebirth for the whole of Hellenism. The people’s passion for free- dom and for Greece, the refusal to accept colonial subjugation and slavery, the determination to fight and the will for dig- nity and honour, eventually led to a titanic and bloody struggle. A struggle marked by holocausts and heroes’ sacrifices. The E.O.K.A struggle was above all a struggle of youth. The young men and women of E.O.K.A were imprisoned in concentration camps, suffered under torture, died heroes’ deaths in ambush, climbed on to An everyday scene in the streets of Cyprus: searches, arrests, torture… Schoolchildren on the front line of the struggle Imprisoned Graves. The British buried 13 heroes of the strug- gle here in secret in order to avoid popular demonstrations.