Todor Angelov

**Todor Angelov Dzakov**, also known as **Théodore Angheloff** and **Bojanata**, was an anarchist turned leninist and veteran of the Spanish Civil War and World War II mainly active in Bulgaria, France and Belgium. He was shot by the Nazi Gestapo in an anti-partisan operation in Belgium in 1943.

## Life

### Early life

Todor was born on 12 January, 1900 in the city of Kyustendil in Bulgaria, specifically in the refugee istrict of Ajundar. His mother was a laundry-worker and father was a builder, and were originally from Macedonia but fled armed conflict in 1897. He joined an anarchist group in World War I due to the influence of his anarchist classmate Asen Daskalov. He graduated high school in 1920 and ended up working as a teacher in a village.

### Arrest and conscription

In 1921, he took part in an illegal May Day protest and was arrested and then fired from being a teacher. He evaded conscription orders and became something a fugitive, hiding in villages. He was eventually captured and served as a soldier, meeting famous Bulgarian anarchist Georgi Sheitanov. In 1923 he took part in anarchists anti-gun control protests that turned into shootouts with the police that he narrowly survived with the help of a soldier friend of his. After this, he moved to Gorna Jumaya and began work as a painter, meeting Todor Chopov at a local anarchist group. He also took part in working class theatre productions.

### September rebellion

When the left-wing September rebellion broke out across Bulgaria Todor joined a group of 130 people including communists and anarchists to fight. The Communist Party of Bulgaria had made a deal with the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation (VRMO) for a peace treaty that the communists quickly broke, leading to VRMO troops pursuing the group and killing most of them, but Todor survived. They surrendered to VRMO and were imprisoned and then conscripted into VRMO forces. He fought in a number of battles before being imprisoned again and tortured. He was released and re-imprisoned a number of times before obtaining forged passports that led them to travel by ship to Austria in 1925.

### Austria and France

Arriving in Vienna, Todor began to work odd jobs and was able to get financial support from local communist groups. He also publicly criticised VRMO, leading to his expulsion from the group. He association with leninist groups also led him to be expelled from a group of Bulgarian anarchist exiles in Vienna. Given his poor financial situation, Todor and his family moved to Paris and worked as a shoemaker. His leftist activities led to him being deported to Belgium in 1927, where he became a member of the Communist Party of Belgium and organised Bulgarian exiles into the group. He lived in Sharbek and continued to work as a shoemaker. His family returned to Bulgaria in 1930 due to a political amnesty, but Todor remained in Belgium until 1936, where he volunteered to fight in the Spanish Civil War.

### Spanish Civil War

Todor crossed into Spain on foot from southwest France and joined the "Georgi Dimitrov" international brigade. He participated in the battle of Harama and was injured in the arm in a later battle. This led to him being placed in a military hospital in Murcia before moving to Barcelona, working as a communist censor and hospital administrator in 1938 and 1939, before he fled to France.

### World War II and death

In France, he was interned in concentration camps. Being released after 6 months. He subsequently moved back to Belgium and lived with socialist poet Piet Vermeilen and continued to work as a shoemaker until 1940. He was trapped in Belgium during the resistance and defied the pro-neutrality position of the Communist Party of Belgium (due to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact) and began to work with the anti-fascist resistance. He organised the hiding of Jewish children and wanted German deserters, as well as sabotaging Nazi infrastructure. He continued to work for the resistance, notably helping raid the Belgium headquarters of the Nazis and destroying their documents identifying local Jewish people. He was eventually arrested by the Gestapo in early 1943, being unable to identify him and holding him in solitary confinement for 7 months. He was shot to death by the Gestapo on 30 November, 1943, at age 43.

### Legacy

After the war, he was declared a hero of the Belgian resistance and posthumously promoted to the rank of colonel, receiving 3 war medals. In the early 1980s, a monument was erected in Sharbek, Belgium. There is also a monument to him in Kyustendil, Bulgaria.

## Sources

All information in this article comes from the Bulgarian Wikipedia page on Todor: https://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A2%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%BE%D1%80\_%D0%90%D0%BD%D0%B3%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B2