The calendar read Friday, June 5, 1942.

Eight innocent men were to be executed at dawn that day, "inaugurating" a new place of martyrdom, the altar of Kaisariani.

Eight Heroes would pay with their lives for actions they did not commit, unwitting protagonists of the ultimate German madness of reprisals.

Eight Greeks, surrounded by the white shroud, would be sanctified in their journey to light, to history, to immortality.

They were the Eight Firsts.

Among them, Lefteris Kiosses. At just twenty-one years old, he would have the chance to know the sharp edges of German inhumanity. He would have the opportunity to experience injustice in all its extent. He would have the chance to speak about the dark hours of isolation in his cell, through the 362 densely written unreadable pages. He would have the opportunity to bleed the tree of liberty.

But he would not have the chance to grow up! He would not have the opportunity to study, to fall in love, to work! He would not have the chance to live!

His vibrant youth would be spent for the homeland. "We die as men for the Homeland," "Hail Greece, Mother of Heroes" were his final thoughts, written on a small note, addressed to his parents, his sisters, Greece. Heroism, patriotism, sacrifice, the transition to eternity—all in superposition, all in the absolute, from a 21-year-old boy.

Next to him, his friend, his "brother," Nikos Moschopoulos, and with them six more "hostages," originating from the "pool" of those arrested in the attempt to escape to the Middle East, victims also of their love for the homeland. The events before, the events that followed, the impact left on the families of the executed, on Athenian society, combined with the personalities of those Eight Firsts, are depicted in the spacetime of this research.

The aim of this publication is to evoke memories, to shed light on unknown and unseen moments of history, to speak about Lefteris, about Nikos, about the unjustly treated generation, to talk about Heroes, to honor Heroes.