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JEWISH HERITAGE EUROPE

An Online Resource Centre

MACEDONIA


Jews in Macedonia
Jewish Cultural Heritage Sites in Macedonia
Skopje Bitola Stip [Štip] Stobi
Contacts
Sources

Jews in Macedonia
Macedonia was the southernmost republic of the former Yugoslavia. It became independent in 1991 and today shares borders with Albania, Bulgaria and Greece, as well as Serbia and Kosovo. Due to differences with Greece over their own territory of Macedonia, the country is known formally as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM).

Historically, Macedonia included parts of present day Bulgaria and Greece, and Jews lived throughout the region in ancient Roman times. Jewish archeological remains can be seen in modern Macedonia at Stobi, an ancient Roman commercial centre not far from the town of Gradsko. The site was discovered in 1861, and excavations, which began in 1924, revealed the mosaic floor of a synagogue 1.5 metres below the remains of a 4th-century CE Christian basilica. A column unearthed in 1931 dates from the 3rd century CE and bears an inscription describing the construction of this synagogue by Claudius Tiberius Polycharmos.

Jews from central Europe (modern Austria and Hungary) settled in Macedonia in medieval times. The most significant migration of Jews to Macedonia occurred during the Ottoman period, when Jews came to the Balkans after their expulsion from Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1497. These Sephardi Jews were welcomed by the ruling Turks, forming their main communities in Monastir (modern Bitola), Štip and Skopje. These settlements maintained close links with communities now in northern Greece, notably Thessalonika (modern Salonika).

Macedonian Jews prospered in trade, banking, medicine, and law and some even became administrators for the Sublime Porte (the Royal Court of Istanbul). Bitola in particular was a lively centre of Sephardi culture, although a poor Jewish underclass developed there in the 19th century.

By 1910, on the eve of the Balkan wars, some 10,000 Jews lived in what is now Macedonia. These wars devastated the region and many local residents, including Jews, emigrated. On the eve of World War II, about 8,000 Jews lived in Macedonia with the largest community, numbering about 3,350, living in Bitola.

The fate of Macedonia's Jews changed when Bulgaria invaded in the winter of 1941. Almost all of them - together with the Jews of Northern Greece and Thrace - were arrested by the Bulgarian Army and transported to the Nazi camps in Treblinka and Auschwitz (Poland) where they were murdered (see www.deathcamps.org/reinhard/macedonia%20thrace%20transports.html). 7,200 Macedonian Jews died in this way; only a handful survived, most living in hiding or with the partisans. The Bulgarian authorities also appropriated Jewish assets (property, money, insurance, gold, and other valuable belongings).

Today, the Jewish community consists only of about 190 people who identify themselves as Jews, almost all of whom live in the capital city, Skopje. The community is tight-knit and its leadership is very active in community development, among other things promoting restoration of the historic cemetery in Bitola. There are estimated to be some 200 to 300 Jews living elsewhere in Macedonia, but unaffiliated with a formal community.

On 30 May 2000 the Macedonian parliament enacted a law that allowed heirless properties of Jewish Holocaust victims to be included in a special-purpose fund whose proceeds would go to the creation of a Holocaust memorial museum in the country.

There has been much discussion of the restoration of the historic Jewish cemetery in Bitola, one of the most important Jewish heritage sites in Macedonia. In November 2000 the cemetery was desecrated with anti-Semitic symbols and grafitti. The perpetrators, a group of nine juvenile delinquents, were soon arrested. This crime produced loud protests from the public, prompting the government to restore the cemetery entranceway, which has now been designated a national monument. The Ministry of Culture has co-financed its restoration. There are also Jewish cemeteries in Kratovo and Prilep, and there may be abandoned ones in Ohrid, Dojran and Strumica.

There was no functioning synagogue in Macedonia until 2000, when a prayer hall opened on the top floor of the renovated Jewish centre in Skopje.

Macedonian Jews maintain close contacts with the Jewish communities of Belgrade (Serbia) and Thessalonika (Greece), holding occasional joint cultural and religious events with these groups.


Jewish Cultural Heritage Sites in Macedonia
Skopje
An abandoned pre-war synagogue stood in Skopje until 1963 when it - like most of the city - was destroyed in a disastrous earthquake. Today Skopje is almost totally modernized, its buildings designed to withstand further such disasters. There are a few old structures, including an arched bridge, but even the 'old town' has been largely rebuilt.

Synagogue and Community Centre
Bet Yaakov Synagogue
This new synagogue was opened on the top floor of the Jewish community centre in Skopje in March 2000. Here are celebrated the first Jewish services to be held in Macedonia since 1951. The new sanctuary is a simple room, but is decorated with striking stained-glass windows illustrating Jewish symbols. Funding for the construction and furnishing of the synagogue came from the Joint Distribution Committee and Congregation Beth Israel in Phoenix, Arizona (USA), which also donated a Sefer Torah. Two other Torah scrolls were presented to the community by a synagogue in Pasadena, California and by the Jewish community in Sofia, Bulgaria. Rabbi Yitzhak Asiel, the chief rabbi of Yugoslavia, traveled from Belgrade to conduct the first services.
www.jewishworldreview.com/0300/macedonia1.asp

Address


Ul. Borka Taleski 24
91000 Skopje

Cemeteries
There was a Jewish cemetery in Skopje (known as the old Jewish cemetery), but its location is presently unknown. It was either destroyed during the Holocaust or shortly afterwards, or in the earthquake of 1963, and presumably has been built over. Jews are now buried in the city's municipal cemetery. A section of this cemetery contains a Holocaust memorial. The ground in front of it is paved with fragments of broken tombstones rescued from the old Jewish cemetery after World War II and laid by local Jews. It is similar to the memorial walls common in Poland, but the fragments are laid horizontally on the ground, perhaps reflecting the Sephardi tradition of horizontal gravestones.

Holocaust Memorial Centre and Museum
In the year 2000 the Government pledged to erect a Holocaust museum and educational centre in the former Jewish quarter. In September 2005, Macedonian President Branko Crvenkovski, Prime Minister Vlado Buckovski, local public figures and representatives of the diplomatic community and of Jewish communities from Israel, the United States and Russia, attended a ceremony in Skopje marking the start of construction of a Holocaust Memorial Centre. 'The Memorial Holocaust Centre, in a symbolic way, will bring the victims of Treblinka home to Macedonia', said Buckovski, after laying the centre's cornerstone. The memorial will include a Holocaust museum and an institute for Jewish and multi-ethnic studies. The building has a striking design. Completion is planned for the end of 2006 or in 2007.

Monopol Concentration Camp
In 1943 a transit camp was established at a Government tobacco warehouse at Monopol in Skopje. Here Jews from throughout Macedonia were imprisoned prior to their deportation to Treblinka on 22, 25 and 29 March. The conditions in the camp were horrendous. 7,341 people, approximately 2,000 of whom were children, were packed into 30 rooms. A doctor from Bitolj has described conditions there: 'In one room there were over 500 persons… We and the Jews from Štip were kept locked in during the whole of the day because the plundering search of the Jews from Skopje was still in progress… When some of us tried to peep through the windows, a policeman fired in the air… On 13 March, they opened the door for the first time and allowed us to go to the latrines… They let out the 500 that were in our room and gave us half an hour, whereupon they locked us up again so that more than half the people never managed to relieve themselves or to get water… The food was distributed once daily and it consisted of 250 grammes of bread and usually a watery dish of beans or rice... They gave us smoked meat from time to time, but it was so foul that we could not eat it in spite of our hunger… Under the pretext of searching us for hidden money, gold or foreign currency, they forced us sadistically to undress completely... Sometimes they would even take away baby diapers....'
[Savich, www.serbianna.com/columns/savich/056.shtml]. Only 165 of the detained Jews were released. The rest were sent to Treblinka where they died in the gas chambers.

Museum of the city of Skopje
Muzej na Grad Skopje
In recent years the Museum of Skopje, situated in what was once a beautiful railway station (until it was partly destroyed by the earthquake of 1963) has made a major effort to include the history of Macedonian Jews within the body of local and national history. The museum has organized the following relevant exhibitions: The Genesis of the Jewish Community in Macedonia; Jews from Macedonia in the concentration camp of Treblinka - Poland and For peace and inter-ethnic coexistence in the Balkans.

Address


bul Mito Hadzivasilev bb
1000 Skopje


Bitola
Monastir (before 1913)
Cemetery
Founded in 1497, the Jewish cemetery of Bitola is one of the oldest - if not the oldest - Jewish cemetery in the Balkans. It was abandoned and left to ruin after the deportation of all Bitola's Jews in 1943. Only one Jew is known to live in Bitola today. A civic campaign to restore the cemetery and create a Holocaust memorial complex there began in 1997 to coincide with the 500th anniversary of its foundation, and considerable work has been carried out. At the time, the monumental entrance gate and surrounding wall were covered with graffiti and in ruinous condition, the site was overgrown, and many of the grave markers - horizontal, in the Sephardic tradition - were also covered with graffiti or had otherwise been vandalized.

The local Association for the Restoration of the Bitola Jewish Cemetery is leading the campaign, in co-operation with local authorities and the Jewish community in Skopje. Its president is Professor Vilos Emilijan, who has a deep personal involvement in the site.

The restoration plan, worked out in consultation with the Macedonian Jewish Community in Skopje, is being carried out by the Institute for Protection of Cultural Monuments and National Rarities at the Bitola Museum, and is funded in part by the Macedonian Ministry of Culture. Funds are also being sought from private sources, including NGOs, Jewish organizations and institutions, and Jews with ancestry in Bitola.

The plan entails preserving and conserving as much of the cemetery as possible, including grave markers and other structures. Construction of a Holocaust memorial is also planned.

The cemetery extends up a fairly steep hill, rising from 600 to 670 metres above sea level. It extends over about 4.3 hectares and is fully enclosed by a wall (three sides are masonry, but part of the front is decorative iron grillework, incorporating Stars of David) more than 800 metres in length. The main gate, with a central Gothic arched entrance flanked by two Gothic-arched windows, and featuring a facade whose upper part is decoratively ribbed, has been restored to gleaming whiteness, and stands at the bottom of the hill.

Several thousand grave markers remain, but only a few - in the lower left corner as seen from the entrance - are in good condition. Most are eroded and illegible, where they stand at all. The lower left part of the cemetery contains better quality graves with legible inscriptions dating as far back as the 17th century. Partly because of the steep terrain, poor drainage has been a major challenge to restoration.

There is a small Holocaust memorial already in Bitola, shaped like a stunted tree. No synagogues survive.

Hashomer Hatzair Building
The building has been abandoned for many years and was recently restituted to the Jewish community. The former house of this pioneer Zionist organisation is in very poor condition.

Stip [Štip]
Cemetery
There is a Jewish cemetery outside Štip, but access to the site is difficult without a local guide. About 120 gravestones are still visible, but all have been vandalized and heavily damaged. There are probably many fragments scattered along the slope. There is no wall or fence around the cemetery, and no one maintains it.

Holocaust Memorial
There is a Holocaust memorial in the town, created by Metodi Andonov.

Stobi
Roman Synagogue
Archaeological excavations at Stobi, an ancient Roman commercial centre, have revealed some of the most important remains of ancient Jewish culture in the Balkans. Stobi stood near the confluence of the Vardar and Crna rivers not far the present town of Gradsko. In 1931, seven years after systematic excavations began at the site, a column dating to the third century (and later reused in another building) was found with a long Greek inscription (32 lines) describing the construction of a synagogue by Claudius Tiberius Polycharmos. The column had been reused in the construction of a church built over the synagogue in the 4th or 5th century CE. The inscription reads as follows:

'The year 311 [?] Claudius Tiberius Polycharmos, also named Achyrios, father [pater] of the synagogue of Stobi, having lived my whole life according to Judaism, have, in fulfilment of a vow, [given] the buildings to the holy place, and the triclinium, together with the tetrastoon, with my own means, without in the least touching the sacred [funds]. But the ownership and disposition of all the upper chambers shall be retained by me, Claudius Tiberius Polycharmos, and my heirs for life. Whoever seeks in any way to alter any of these dispositions of mine shall pay the Patriarch 250,000 denarii. For thus have I resolved. But the repair of the roof tiles of the upper chambers shall be carried out by me and my heirs.' [Levine, 2000]

The remains of this synagogue were also uncovered - including a well-preserved floor mosaic containing Jewish symbols, lying 1.5 metres underneath a 4th or 5th century Christian church, presumably built over the synagogue when Jewish worship was suppressed. Subsequent excavations have revealed an earlier (2nd- to 3rd-century) synagogue beneath that of the 4th century. It is not clear to which period of the synagogue the Polycharmos inscription belongs.

The Roman city of Stobi is the largest archaeological site in Macedonia. In addition to the synagogue remains, the site is notable for its 2nd-century amphitheatre, the Theodosia palace, and early Christian ruins with extensive and ornate mosaic floors. The excavations can be visited, and there is an exhibition of finds.

Location: The site is 20 minutes south of Veles by car, 3 kilometres from the Gradsko exit on Highway E-75. The main museum entrance and guard station are near the railroad and the river, on a local road. As of 2003, there were no toilets, restaurant or other tourist amenities at the site.


Contacts
The Jewish Community in the Republic of Macedonia:
Address



Telephone

Ul. Borka Taleski 24
91000 Skopje
Macedonia

+389 91 237 543
+389 91 214 799


Sources


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