Todor Angelov

Todor Angelov Dzekov ( bg, Тодор Ангелов Дзеков, rendered in French as ''Théodore Angheloff''; 12 January 1900 – 30 November 1943) was a Bulgarian anarcho-communist activist who lived in exile in Belgium for much of his adult life. He served in the Bulgarian Dimitrov Battalion during the Spanish Civil War and, during the German occupation of Belgium, was a leader within the Partisans Armés as part of the Belgian Resistance. He was captured and executed in 1943.

Biography

Early life and Bulgaria, 1900–25

Angelov was born in 1900 in the city of Kyustendil to a mason father and a weaver and laundress mother, both Bulgarian refugees from Macedonia. In 1923 he married Aleksandra Sharlandzhieva; the two had a daughter, the writer Svoboda Bachvarova (b. 1925). Angelov was related to the anarchist left wing of Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) and the Bulgarian Communist Party from an early age; in 1923 he took part in the failed and suppressed September Uprising, more specifically in its Pirin Macedonia operations. After the communist St Nedelya Church assault of 1925, he was sentenced to death but managed to escape the country with his family.

Exile and activities in Belgium, 1925–43

After spending some time in Austria and France, Angelov and his family settled in Belgium in 1927. In 1930 they were extradited for "disturbing public peace": Angelov settled in Luxembourg while his wife and daughter returned to Bulgaria. In 1932 he was allowed to return to Belgium. In 1936–1938, he joined the International Brigades' Dimitrov Battalion of Bulgarian volunteers and fought in the Spanish Civil War, siding with the Second Spanish Republic forces.

Upon returning to Belgium Angelov was an active supporter of the Communist Party of Belgium. In 1942, he organized a resistance group, the "Corps Mobile de Bruxelles", under the auspices of the "Partisans Armés" and associated with the "Front de l'Indépendance", the major Belgian underground movement. The ''Corps'' itself recruited around 25 people, mostly Central European Jewish immigrants; the group was mostly active around Brussels. Angelov was referred to as ''Terrorist X'' by the Nazi authorities and led over 200 actions against the Nazis, including the destruction of a train carrying military machinery and the burning of records of Jews to be deported. During a single year, around half of the group's members were killed or arrested. Angelov was arrested in early 1943 and interned in the prison camp at Fort Breendonk where he was executed in late November 1943.

Commemoration

Immediately following the war, Angelov was proclaimed a hero of Belgian Resistance and awarded a posthumous Order of Leopold. In the early 1980s, a monument to him was built in the ''Clos du Chemin creux'' in Schaerbeek, where he lived. A monument to Angelov also exists in his hometown Kyustendil; he was proclaimed an honorary citizen of Kyustendil in 1998.

In 2007, the book ''Hostages of Nazi Terror'' (french: Otages de la terreur nazie) devoted to Angelov and his group was published in Belgium. In 2008, his daughter, the Bulgarian writer Svoboda Bachvarova published the three-volume documentary novel ''In a Particularly Cruel Way'' ( bg, По особено мъчителен начин) devoted to her father's life.

References

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External links

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''Otages de la terreur nazie: le Bulgare Angheloff et son groupe de Partisans juifs, Bruxelles, 1940–1943''
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Angelov, Todor
1900 births
1943 deaths
Belgian communists
Belgian Marxists
Belgian people of Bulgarian descent
Bulgarian communists
Macedonian Bulgarians
Belgian resistance members
Bulgarian people executed in Nazi concentration camps
People from Kyustendil
Bulgarian people of the Spanish Civil War
Resistance members who died in Nazi concentration camps
International Brigades personnel
People who died in Breendonk prison camp
Resistance members killed by Nazi Germany
Executed Belgian people
Belgian people executed in Nazi concentration camps