Dendrohori

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Dendrohori (Greek: Δενδροχώρι) is a village in the community Kastraki in the Kastoria Prefecture, the peripheriy West Macedonia, Greece. Dendrohori is located approximately 10 km nortwest of Kastoria and 6 km east of the center of the community Kastraki — the village Ieropigi. Dendrohori has 349 inhabitants (2001).

[edit] History

Dendrohori was a Slavic-speaking village of about 250 families at the beginning of the 20th century. It was one of the first Slavophone villages to revolt against the Ottoman Empire in the Ilinden Uprising of 1903, for which the Turkish army exacted heavy reprisals, killing many of the villagers and burning it to the ground. However a stand at the nearby Battle of Lakvata in which the villagers inflicted disproportionate casualties on a much larger Turkish force became a nationalist rallying point and served as the basis for a poem by Lazar Poptrajkov.^[1]

The village sided with Bulgaria during the Balkan Wars and the First World War, but became part of Greece following the First Balkan War. From the 1930s and especially 1940s many of its citizens became active in Macedonian separatist and Communist groups, the latter due to the Communists' advocacy on behalf of equal rights for ethnic minorities. The village sided with the National Liberation Front on the Communist side during the Greek Civil War, and was destroyed when the Communists lost. Most villagers were forced into exile, and the village was repopulated mainly with Vlach refugees from Epirus.^[1]

Prior to the Hellenization of this area in 1926, the village was known under its Slavic toponym "Dambeni" (Macedonian: Д’мбени, Дамбени; Bulgarian: Дъмбени; Greek: Δύμπενι, Ντέμπενι, Dimbeni, Dempeni).^{[citation needed]}

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Dambeni: Gone But Not Forgotten

v • d • e Municipalities and Communities of the Kastoria Prefecture Municipalities Agia Triada • Agioi Anargyroi • Akrites • Ion Dragoumis • Kastoria • Kleisoura • Korestia • Makednos • Mesopotamia • Nestorio • Orestida • Vitsi Communities Arrenes • Gramos • Kastraki