The Holocaust in North Macedonia
The Holocaust saw the mass murder of Macedonian Jews in World War II as a result of deportation organized by the governments of Kingdom of Bulgaria and Nazi Germany, with the aim of systematically eliminating the Jewish population from the so-called "newly liberated territories" by the Bulgarian authorities.
[1] All Jews from Macedonia were deported to the Treblinka extermination camp in occupied-Poland, where they were suffocated in gas chambers.
[2][4][5] According to data from October 1945, only 419 people remained on the territory of present-day Macedonia, whose community today numbers around 200.
This law listed all possible occupations that Jews were not allowed to engage in, which reduced their ability to earn a decent living.
With the deprivation of basic civil rights, the heartless and systematic liquidation of Jews within the borders of the then Third Bulgarian Empire actually began.
For the work of the commission that carried out the confiscation, both the Bulgarians and the Germans blackmailed the Jews by demanding money or other valuables so that they would not enter the real value of the items.
In fact, their arrival was connected with the start of the full genocide by mutual agreement between the Bulgarian and German fascists.
[12] Special notices were sent to Jews who were working abroad outside their homeland, informing them that they had to pay a certain fine to the state.
Such notices were sent to Jewish workers in America, Croatia, Bosnia, Palestine, Serbia, Greece, and Aegean Macedonia (Thessaloniki).
[1] The fascist governments of Bulgaria and Nazi Germany secretly negotiated the transfer of the Jewish population of the occupied Bulgarian territories to the Germans.
On February 22, 1943, an agreement was signed in Sofia for the deportation of 20,000 Jews from the territories occupied by Bulgaria, namely from Thrace and Macedonia.
The agreement determined the departure railway stations, as follows: The Minister of Internal Affairs and Public Health Petar Gabrovski submitted a report to the Council of Ministers that, in accordance with the agreement reached between Bulgaria and Germany, 20,000 people of Jewish origin from the "newly liberated lands" were to be deported from the country and that they would be placed in camps in the cities of: Skopje, Pirot, Gorna Dzumaya, Dupnitsa and Radomir.
In the telegram of April 4, 1943 from Joachim von Ribbentrop, Foreign Minister of Nazi Germany, sent to the German Legation in Sofia regarding the talks in Berlin with Tsar Boris on the Jewish problem, point 4 states “...The Tsar stated that so far he has only given consent for the deportation to Eastern Europe of Jews from Macedonia and Thrace.
32 of the Council of Ministers of March 2, 1943, which provided for the organizational measures for the deportation of 20,000 Jews from the "new" and "old" regions of Bulgaria and for the confiscation of their property.
On the night between 10 and 11 March 1943, the cities of Bitola, Shtip and Skopje were blocked, and the Jewish neighborhoods were surrounded by Bulgarian troops and police.
[21] The Main Directorate of Railways was ordered, free of charge, to transport Jews from Macedonia and the Aegean Sea by special trains to places designated by the Commissariat for Jewish Affairs.
The requisition commissions were ordered to seize buildings in populated areas designated by the Commissariat for Jewish Affairs necessary for the creation of camps where the deportees would be housed.
The Commissariat for Jewish Affairs also issued the "Regulations for the Organization and Operation of Temporary Concentration Camps".
Article 10 prohibited lighting stoves or bringing in braziers - without heating in the winter of 1943, which was exceptionally cold.
