Arabadzhiev Dimitri (Kolarov)

Dimitri Arabadzhiev was born in 1914 in the historic Macedonian town Dolno Dzhumaja, Ser region. The town was destroyed in the wars of 1912-13 and was rebuilt in 1930 at a distance 1000 metres north of the old village. Dimitri's father (bai-Ivan Kolarov) was an impoverished wheelwright and because of his poverty was not able to rebuild his house after the war. Dimitri's family felt the burden of the war very strongly on their own backs. He was orphaned at a young age; he had no protectors, no roof over his head. He got pleurisy and was forced as a young boy to start working at a café, just to get a crust to eat.

The development of the workers' struggle and the communist movement in Eastern Macedonia had a deep impact on the young worker.

He entered the ranks of OKNE and afterwards the CPG and he turned the café into a hub for the underground revolutionary organizations, even before the time of the Metaxas dictatorship.

At the time of the Nazi occupation he was active, he developed serious revolutionary activism and rose to become the secretary of the party in the town where he was born.

After the Varkiza agreement he continued to work for the CPG, for the people's struggle. And because of the CPG's perseverance he was arrested and brutally tortured by the government security forces. He withstood all of the tortures and provocations by the police heroically and bravely. In 1947 in the town square, watched by all the townspeople, the beloved Dimitri Arabadzhiev was hanged.

K Korikafa

From: For Sacred National Freedom: Portraits Of Fallen Freedom Fighters

© 2009

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