Ramiz Džemail Hamidovski was born in Skopje, Macedonia, in 1919 (the exact date remains unknown). He lived in the Skopjan Roma settlement Topaana and worked as a shoe shiner from an early age.
After the defeat of Yugoslavia in the April War of 1941, his hometown was occupied by Bulgarian troops. In September 1944, the German Wehrmacht took control over the former Bulgarian occupation zone. It is not known how Ramiz Džemail Hamidovski fared during the first years of occupation, beyond the fact that he had a small son named Ališan (unknown-unknown) and his wife Elfida Hamidovska (unknown-unknown) was pregnant for a second time in 1944.
After the liberation of Skopje in November 1944, Ramiz Džemail Hamidovski voluntarily joined the Third Macedonian Assault Brigade [Treta makedonska udarna brigada] and later belonged to the Second Company of the Third Battalion [Tret battalion II četa]. He took part in battles in Macedonia, Serbia and Croatia, especially in the military operations around the Syrmian Front. During a battle near Vrpolje, he was killed in the Croatian village of Jamarica on 26 April 1945 and afterwards buried in a common grave with other partisans at the site of his death. His widow Elfida Hamidovska gave birth to a daughter whom she named Ramiza (1945–2022) in his honour. They lived in the Topaana neighbourhood in Skopje until the earthquake in 1963, which forced them to move to Šuto Orizari.
In 1971, the ‘Brothers Ramiz and Hamid’ [Braќ a Ramiz i Hamid] educational centre in the Roma settlement Šuto Orizari (Skopje) was named after him and his younger brother Hamid Džemail Hamidovski (1928–1945), and a primary school was named after them in 1979. The partisan activity of the Hamidovski brothers is described in the documentary film ‘Macedonian Roma – National Heroes and Partisans in the People’s Liberation War’ [Makedonikane Roma – nacionalno heroia thaj partizania an o Nacionalno Tromalo Maripa] (2005; director: Roberto Šontevski), while a portrait of the ‘Brothers Ramiz and Hamid’ primary school can be found in the documentary ‘Fatima’ (2016, director: Sanela Emin). Roma activists actively commemorate the life and death of the Hamidovski brothers with exhibitions and annual ceremonies. In Šuto Orizari in November 2023, Daniel Petrovski (born 1986) presented the exhibition ‘Roma partisans’, in which the Hamidovski brothers played a key role and their photos were shown to the public for the first time. The President of North Macedonia, Stevo Pendarovski (born 1963), attended the opening of the exhibition.
