Kalimanov Trpo

Trpo Kalimanov was born in the village of Dobrolishta, Kostur region. He was an intelligent man and even though he did not have much education, from a young age he felt it unfair that not all people had the same rights. He saw that some worked day and night and did not have enough bread, while others, without working, had money, houses, a good life and everything they could want. He saw the double slavery of the Macedonian people, who did not even have the right to speak their own language. Trpo listened and read that only in the Soviet Union where socialism had prevailed, was there freedom from exploitation by one person of another person, that nationalistic oppression was eliminated and all people, without regard to their nationality or religion, worked freely together as brothers for a fair life.

In 1928 Trpo became a member of the Communist Party of Greece. He dedicated his whole life to achieve its policies, to achieve democracy and to introduce socialism to his country. He worked not only in his own village but, pursuing his trade of tinsmith, he became an active worker of the party in Rupishko and Nestram villages. He started off working legally but later, in the dark years of the Metaxas dictatorship, illegally until August 1938. Then he was arrested and sent to the Akronafplija concentration camp.

In Akronafplija, Trpo withstood all the interrogations. The violence of the monarcho-fascist forces which aimed to eliminate the spirit of the imprisoned fighters strengthened Trpo's belief and that of all the communists of CPG in the immortal Marxist-Leninist ideals.

In the month of November 1939 Trpo together with 200 other communists was taken to Pilos and imprisoned in an old fortress established at the time of the Venetians. The fascist regime used even more brutal techniques there, considering that he would force the communists to surrender their ideologies and to sign declarations. But they did not succeed. At this place, Trpo held high the CPG flag, the flag of the people's struggle.

In the summer of 1941, he managed to escape from the concentration camp and threw himself into the fire of the battle against the German and Italian occupiers. He was an active member of CPG and worked tirelessly in the well-known villages of Kostur among the Macedonian and Greek population. He reorganised the old party organisations and set up new ones. He organised the people into EAM and sent hundreds of partisans into the units of ELAS.

Trpo, who joined the CPG in 1928, completed the tasks allocated to him by the party without interruption and with dedication until 1943, until the day of his heroic death. He was killed by a bullet from the gun of an Italian carabineri in February 1943 in the village of Selca, region of Grevena.

L Moshov

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

© 2009

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