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Interaction between generations; young girls returning from a school function stop to talk to a village elder along the way, in Karimabad, Hunza.
North Macedonia’s Jewish community has one of oldest histories in Europe, with archaeological evidence of a synagogue in the ancient Roman town of Stobi dating back to the 1st Century B.C.E. Most Jews arrived in the country to escape persecution elsewhere in the Roman Empire, and the community maintained a small but prominent status, with new influxes over time due to the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions and favourable attitudes of the Ottoman Empire. Sizeable communities were later developed in the merchant towns of Skopje, Bitola amd Štip, with Bitola at one point having 9 synagogues and currently what is possibly the oldest Jewish cemetery in the Balkans.
In March 1941, Fascist Bulgarian forces intent on reclaiming their lost Western territories occupied much of Vardar Macedonia, but were compelled to pay the price of alliance with Nazi Germany by deporting 20,000 Jews. On 22nd February, 1943, the agreement was signed and the quota established – 12,000 Jews from Macedonia and 8,000 from Bulgaria. It turned out that this was to be the only quota signed with Nazi Germany by any country for the deportation of Jews. Loathe to deport Bulgarian citizens, the quota was initially partially fulfilled by the deportation of whole communities from Macedonia, whilst Bulgaria’s own Jews were later saved by the Fascist Government’s capitulation to the Allies in September 1944, just 1 month before the deportation deadline.
On the morning of Thursday 11th March, 1943, the entire Jewish population of Skopje, Bitola and Štip were rounded up and detained in the Monopol state tobacco warehouse in Skopje. Among the official count of 7,215 individuals were:
– 539 children under 3 years
– 602 children aged 3 to 10 years
– 1,172 children aged 10 to 6 years
– 865 people over 60 years
– 250 seriously ill persons tied to their beds
– 4 pregnant women who gave birth while detention
– 4 people who had died upon arrival.
It is reported that all the detained North Macedonian Jews, with the exception of 4 who escaped, were deported to the Polish death camp of Treblinka. Not one Jew from Bitola’s community survived. In under a week, 98% of North Macedonia’s Jews were wiped out.
A few families returned after the war, joined by those who had fought for Yugoslavia or hidden within Christian communities. To date, one family resides in Štip, a single Jew lives in Bitola, and the country’s total population is only 200, most of whom are above the age of 60.
This statue is outside the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Skopje, which is appropriately located in what was the affluent Jewish Quarter of the capital, on the banks of the Vardar River and opposite the main city square.