The history of the Jews in North Macedonia stretches back two thousand years. The first Jews arrived in the area now known as North Macedonia during Roman times.The area’s Jewish community remained small well into Ottoman times, with the next major influx of Jews to the area coming with the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, and Sultan Bayezid II of the Ottoman Empire welcomed Jews who were able to reach his territories. They were granted significant autonomy, with various rights including the right to buy real estate, to build synagogues and to conduct trade throughout the Ottoman Empire. The Jewish cemetery in Bitola was established in 1497, soon after the first Sephardic Jews moved to the area. The cemetery is the oldest Jewish cemetery in North Macedonia.
Piccolomini’s burning down of Skopje in 1688-1689 and a massive fire in Bitola in 1863 significantly diminished the Jewish population in North Macedonia in the two largest Jewish centres. In 1689, the Jewish population of Skopje was 3,000. Prior to World War II, the Jewish community of Vardar Macedonia (the area roughly corresponding to the borders of the present-day republic) was centered on Bitola (approximately 8,000 Jews), Skopje (approximately 3,000 Jews) and Štip (approximately 500 Jews).
In March 1941, Bulgaria became an ally of the Axis Powers and in April 1941 the Bulgarian army entered Vardar Macedonia, in an effort to recover the region, which it saw as a natural part of its own national homeland. On October 4, 1941, the Bulgarian authorities enacted a law prohibiting Jews from engaging in any form of commerce, and forcing them to sell their businesses to non-Jews. However, such laws were not a novelty for the region since the Kingdom of Yugoslavia had had its own anti-Semitic law enacted as early as 1939. The Bulgarians then ghettoized the Jews of Bitola, forcing them to move from the Jewish areas of the town, which were relatively affluent, to poorer areas of the town.
Some of those, who helped the Jews were: Dr. Atanas Kostov, Boris & Vaska Altiparmak, Dr. Smiljan Čekada, and Stojan-Bogoja Siljanovski.
Dr. Atanas Kostov opposed this discrimination policy, and offered his Jewish colleagues opportunities to work in small and far out places. An agreement was next signed between Eichmann’s representative. Dr. Kostov, however, succeeded in freeing his friends with their families, in total, 58 Jews. He had written insistently to Bulgarian government officials warning of the spread of epidemics if the Jewish medical professionals would be deported.
Boris and Vaska Altiparmak took in four Jewish teenage boys. After hiding them for a month, the Altiparmaks gave the four peasant garb and sent them to join the partisans in the mountains.
Dr. Smiljan Čekada spoke of justice for all men of any nationality or race. On March 11, 1943, he sent a letter of protest to the Skopje police commander demanding the release of “the Jews of the Catholic faith”, insisted that he be allowed to visit the Jews in the Monopol warehouses, and that the Jews be treated humanely. Not only did Bishop Dr. Čekada risk his life by openly opposing the Nazis, but he also hid at least five children.
Stojan-Bogoja Siljanovski was a member of the underground and the owner of a small tobacco shop. He hid eight Jewish girls under the noses of the police as he was very skillful at deceiving them. After hiding in Siljanovski’s shop, the girls joined Tito’s partisans.
Many Jews joined the partisans fighting the Nazis in Yugoslavia. In Vardar Macedonia, Haim Estreya Ovadya, a Jewish woman from Bitola, was among the first women to join the partisan movement in 1941. The day before the deportations, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Macedonia gave the Jewish community advance warning of the deportation. Shelters were organized, as well as connections to the partisan units, but unfortunately, few Jews believed that a program for their destruction was underway and chose to stay together in the ghettos instead.
As a result, the Jewish communities of Bulgarian-controlled Yugoslavia and Greece were almost completely wiped out. There was much harsh treatment before the Jews were transported in German cattle-cars to Treblinka. A few dozen Bitola Jews managed to avoid deportation, and four escaped from the transit camp. None of the 3,276 Jews of Bitola deported to Treblinka survived. In 2003, one Jew remained in the city that had been home to a Sephardic community for more than 400 years. Štip’s ancient Jewish community was also completely destroyed.
Presently, the Jewish community of North Macedonia has about 200 people. Almost all live in Skopje, with one family in Štip and a single Jew remaining in Bitola. A new museum dedicated to the memory of North Macedonia’s Jews who perished in the Holocaust during the Bulgarian rule was inaugurated in the presence of the country’s President and representatives of North Macedonia’s religious communities and international Jewish organizations, in 2011. The modern building is located in the heart of what was once the city’s Jewish quarter, in the centre of the Macedonian capital Skopje.