On this day the 15-year-old Andreas Paraskeva falls fighting heroically (July 2, 1956)
Parents: Paraskevas Alexandrou and Aikaterini Paraskeva
Siblings: Antonis, Alexandra, Elli, Evgenia, Alexandros, Anastasis, Iliou and Andreas, who was born after his death and took his name.
Andreas Paraskeva finished the primary school of Koma tou Gialou and attended up to the fourth grade at the Gymnasium of Gialousa.
He joined the EOKA struggle toward the end of 1955, in the student group of the Gymnasium of Gialousa, and his entire activity was marked by spontaneity and bravery. Arrest, imprisonment, death did not cross his mind. When his father suggested that he was too young to join such a great struggle, he replied:
"You have been late, father, in telling me this. Your son grew up the moment he took his great oath. My father and my mother now are Greece."
In his actions against the English he had the support of his father as well, who was a leftist and was persecuted by his Party for supporting his son. "After the death of my son," he himself relates, "my leftist friends would not even offer to buy me a coffee, and they would leave the café when I arrived. Yet I was proud that my son gave his life for the homeland. I was poor and my children were many. But I worked very hard and educated all my children, because I wanted them to have a good position in society and to be worthy of their heroic brother."
It was Monday, July 2, 1956 and the time was 2:30 in the afternoon, when Andreas Paraskeva, together with a comrade of his who was his signaler, set up an ambush against English soldiers inside their village for a bombing attack. When the motorcade reached the center of the village, Andreas threw his bomb, from the explosion of which two English soldiers were wounded. The English chased him from the roofs and balconies of the houses where they had taken positions. He was spotted when he ran to disappear with his bicycle and was shot.
He fell heroically at only fifteen and a half years of age.
