12 Facts About Lazar Poptraykov

Lazar Poptraykov was a Macedonian Bulgarian revolutionary.

Lazar Poptraykov was a Bulgarian Exarchate teacher and poet from Ottoman Macedonia.

Lazar Poptraykov was one of the leaders of the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization in the region of Kastoria during the Ilinden Uprising.

Lazar Poptraykov was born in Dambeni, Ottoman Empire on 10 April 1878.

Lazar Poptraykov studied at the local village school before moving to the Bulgarian junior high school in Kostur.

Lazar Poptraykov finished the Bulgarian Men's High School of Thessaloniki in 1898, though he had started touring the Kastoria region to promote the work of IMARO two years earlier, in 1896.

Lazar Poptraykov was one of the founders of the Kastoria branch of IMARO.

Lazar Poptraykov was arrested by Ottoman authorities and imprisoned in Korce along with fellow revolutionaries Manol Rozov, Maslina Grancharova, and Pavel Christov.

Lazar Poptraykov died at the end of the Ilinden Uprising when he was assassinated by Konstantinos Christou, a fighter for Greek interests and was acting under orders by Germanos Karavangelis, bishop of Kastoria.

Per Karavangelis, Lazar Poptraykov was the worst enemy of Hellenism, who fanatized the peasants in favor of the Bulgarian national idea.

However, after Lazar Poptraykov had been wounded and taken a refuge with Kottas, he used the opportunity to kill him and present his head to Karavangelis who took a picture of the head on his desk.

When narrating his memoirs to author Penelope Delta in the 1930s, Karavangelis requested the concealment of the information that Lazar Poptraykov's head had been buried in the garden of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Kastoria, lest "the Bulgarians cause mayhem to find it and lay it to rest with great honors, if they find out".