Dimitrios Chalkidis lived in the Greek village of Neo Petritsi, not far from the border to Bulgaria. He joined the Communist Party of Greece at a young age. During the occupation, he became a member of the National Liberation Front EAM and fought in the Greek People’s Liberation Army.
When Bulgarian troops occupied the area around Neo Petritsi in 1941, Dimitrios Chalkidis fled anti-communist persecution to the small German-occupied town of Nigrita. The EAM’s resistance was better organized there. Dimitrios Chalkidis frequently visited imprisoned comrades in Thessaloniki, which was how he met the Jewish communist Abraham Karasso. The latter was murdered by German units during a retaliatory measure at the end of 1942. In the spring of 1943, Karasso’s family was at risk of deportation. Chalkidis decided to help the family. He obtained forged identity papers for them, enabling them to escape the ghetto in Thessaloniki and go underground.
After the end of the occupation, Dimitrios Chalkidis was persecuted as a communist during the Greek Civil War. The Israeli Holocaust memorial center Yad Vashem honored him as Righteous Among the Nations in 1992.