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Dr. Gadjev was born in 1937 in Gotse Delchev, Bulgaria. His father, a VMRO activist, was arrested right after September 9, 1944 and murdered together with 12 more people as an "enemy of the people". This fact made the education and the further life of his son rather difficult. For that reason he decided to leave communist Bulgaria and in 1968 illegally crossed the Greek border. 5 months later Dr. Gadjev settled in Detroit where he set up a vet clinic. All his income he dedicated to bying the archive of the Bulgarian community in North America. Initially Dr. Gadjev kept it in his own house and in the "Dr. Ilia Gadjev" Institute, founded by him and named after his father. Later he decided to move it to Bulgaria.

In his hometown Gotse Delchev, Southern Bulgaria, Dr Ivan Gadjev has donated funds for the construction of a three-storey building to house the Institute for the History of the Bulgarian Immigration in North America including museum collections and rich archives. The collection comprises of more than 30 000 volumes, tens of thousands of photographic images, and millions of archive units, regarding the Bulgarian emigration in North America since 1880 until nowadays.

The most precious items in the collection include memories and pictures of Bulgarian emigrants, members of VMRO, collaboraters of Todor Alexandrov and Ivan Mihailov. It contains full biographical references of all people who fled Macedonia in the period 1908-1933. The letters of Ivan Mihailov and the archive of Georgi Pirinski are kept In special metal cases.

Dr. Ivan Gadjev gathered the results of his research work in a 3 volume set. The first volume - "History of the Bulgarian Emigration in North America - 1860-1944" has already been published and the second one is on its way. Click here to read a short summary by Dr. Gadjev!

For his contribution to Bulgarian emigration study in June 2004 Dr. Gadjev was awarded a medal by the chairman of the Agency for Bulgarians Abroad.