Daniil Varfolomeevič Avdeev

Daniil Varfolomeevič Avdeev (21 December 1917 – San Francesco, 11 November 1944), known by the battle nickname Commander Daniel, worked as a soldier in the Red Army and a Soviet partisan, before being killed in a battle in Italy against Kosakenland.

Biography Daniil was born into a poor family that was adept at farming, and he graduated from high school. Daniil was assigned as a commander of a cavalry division in the Red Army. However, in the same year, according to Soviet sources, he was reported missing in action. This was because he was taken prisoner by the Germans and in 1942 interned in a concentration camp, first in Muhlberg on the Elbe River, and then in northern France, where he met two other Soviet prisoners of war, Alexander Kopylkov and Anton Melnichuk. At different times, the three friends escaped from the camp and met in neutral Swiss territory. A few weeks later, Daniel and his companions decided to join the Italian partisans to fight against the Kosakenland in Carnia. To do this, they had to walk a long way, and after a hard and daring march lasting more than a month, they arrived in Friuli on May 24, 1944. They initially joined the Matteotti battalion. Daniel then gathered the Soviet citizens who had escaped Nazi captivity into a single unit and placed himself under the command of the Stalin Battalion (composed of Friulians, Russians, Slavs, and Poles) of the Garibaldi “Carnia” Brigade, participating in several battles in defense of the Free Republic of Carnia. On 11 November 1944, during the Nazi offensive along the Upper Tagliamento and Arzino valleys, Danijl Varfolomeevič Avdeev, along with some partisans, in an attempt to blow up the road from which the enemy was approaching, was overwhelmed by large forces and, after a strenuous defense, allowed the Italian partisans to disengage. "— Pielungo di Vito d’Asio in Friuli, 15 November 1944