He was born in April 1907 in Galați, in the historical region of Moldavia, eastern Romania. His father, a carpenter, died when he was 9 years old, and he was raised in poverty. After starting his studies at Vasile Alecsandri High School, he dropped out at age 15 and became employed at a local bank. In 1926 he volunteered into the Romanian Army, at the Regimentul 13 Dorobanti in Iași. Encouraged by his superiors, he enrolled in the local Military High School for a year, after which he went to the Military School for Infantry Officers in Sibiu, graduating in 1929.
At the end of the war, in June 1945, Dabija was awarded by royal decree for a second time the Order of Michael the Brave, 3rd class. In July 1946 he retired from the army. In view of the royal awards he had earned, Dabija was given 5 hectares of land near Aradul Nou, where he settled together with his wife. According to Dorin Dobrincu, he went into hiding fearing arrest as the Soviets occupying Romania allegedly deemed him a war criminal for his participation in the war against the Soviet Union. Liviu Pleșa however notes his decision to join the anti-communist movement was prompted by the arrest of his brother and his denunciation by local communists after a dispute. In February 1948, Dabija met the brothers Traian, Alexandru, Viorel, and Nicolae Macavei, the nephews of Ștefan Cicio Pop. The Macaveis were wanted for gold smuggling, having killed two gendarmes and wounded four others. Together with them, he formed and armed group called the "National Defense Front", sometimes also known as the "Haiduc Corps". He issued a proclamation against the “Jewish-Communist clique”, calling for freedom, independence, and respect for human rights. Convinced that a new world war would soon break out between the Americans and the Soviets, Dabija reached out in May 1948 to the United States authorities through several intermediaries, offering help with military actions to liberate Romania, only to be rebuffed. The National Defense Front started recruiting sympathizers in the Apuseni Mountains, in the Roșia Montană–Zlatna gold-mining area. On December 22, 1948, resistants from this group, armed with a rifle and handguns, robbed the Tax Office in Teiuș of some 300,000 leis, from which they later procured more arms and a typewriter.
Arrest and execution
The Romanian authorities learned about the location of Dabija after an arrested rebel revealed the location of his group on Muntele Mare and their strength. On March 4, 1949. Securitate forces led by Colonel Mihai Patriciu charged the peak where the fighters were located, with a gunfight and later hand-to-hand combat occurring but many anticommunist fighters escaped. The Securitate forces suffered three deaths and three others wounded. Dabija was arrested on March 22, 1949 after a local villager, whose barn he was sleeping in, notified the communist authorities of his presence. All partisans and their aides were captured. They were subject to interrogation in Turda, Bucharest, and Sibiu. Later they were tried and convicted through sentence no. 816 / October 4th, 1949 of the Military Tribunal of Sibiu. On October 28, 1949, seven members of the group were executed in Sibiu by firing squad.
