In April 1941, the Bulgarian army in alliance with Nazi Germany occupied Vardar Macedonia and the new authorities quickly implemented increasingly painful anti-Semitic measures.
The official line was of avoiding delving into the crimes of World War II, as they were considered to be capable of potentially destabilizing the internal inter-ethnic Yugoslav relations.
For several decades it was the only documented source with significant global circulation about the fate of the Macedonian Jews under Bulgarian occupation in World War II.
The documents constitute the blueprint of the 1986 book The Jews in Macedonia During the Second World War (1941–1945) co-edited by Žamila Kolonomos and Vera Vesković-Vangeli and published by the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
Several Jewish testimonies before the Yugoslav Federal Commission for the Investigation of War crimes were published in full length for the first time.
It contains the personal data of 7,148 Jews from Vardar Macedonia, as well as from Preševo, Momchilgrad, and Vranje in Bulgarian-occupied former Serbia who were deported via Skopje to Treblinka.
The lists contain first names, patronyms and surnames, exact addresses and birth dates, as well as information on gender, kinship relations, profession and citizenship.
[5] Although the book was compiled with the intent to remain a collection of documents, its extent and the profound introductory study made it one of the most important works about the topic of the Holocaust of the Macedonian Jews.