VIDEO REPORT: Remembering Treblinka – the camp where 7.144 Macedonian Jews were executed

PHOTO - Dejan Srbinovski: Board at the entrance to the Treblinka Museum

>"Not a single Jew from Macedonia was deported to Auschwitz, they were all deported to Treblinka and no one returned from there. Now you will have the opportunity to see and hear the sufferings of your ancestors, friends and relatives up close and to be convinced of the real truth about the tragedy of the Jews and the executions of 7.144 Macedonian Jews who were killed in the Treblinka concentration camp."

With these words, the members of the Jewish community in Macedonia sent the three high school students and five students from Skopje with Jewish origin on a visit to Poland and a visit to several memorials and locations of deported Jews during the Second World War last week.

PHOTO: The main memorial to the dead Jews in Treblinka

Keeping in mind that we obviously cannot change history, but we can respect the memory of our fallen fellow Jews, immediately after arriving in Poland, the first destination for the visit of the youth from the Macedonian Jewish community was precisely the Treblinka camp.

Hidden deep behind the tree canopy 5 kilometers from the village of Treblinka and about a hundred kilometers northeast of Warsaw on the main road leading to the borders with Russia, the well-known death camp of Nazi Germany was a cold "welcome" for Macedonian students and high school students.

The eerie silence and the cold wind at the gates of the camp were just a reminder of the words spoken by the members of the Jewish community in Macedonia before leaving Skopje.

PHOTO: Entrance to the Treblinka Museum

Pavel Malishevski the guide to the Treblinka Museum for Free Press pointed out that the camp in Treblinka, like the others, was originally intended as a prison for Poles who opposed the Nazi regime, and then turned into the largest factory of death in Europe.

PHOTO- Pedestals in memory of the victims in Treblinka

- As most of you know, after the Second World War, Poland was occupied by the Third Reich from the West and the USSR from the East. We are now at a location in front of the entrance to Treblinka, the camps are located approximately 5 km. from the railway station Treblinka and 5 km. from the village of the same name Treblinka. Here it is estimated that about 900.000. Jews were killed there in gas chambers, mostly from Poland, Jews from the Third Reich and countries that were occupied by Nazi Germany - said the guide Malishevski briefly to the group from Macedonia before the very entrance to the Treblinka camp.

The stone with the name Macedonia in Treblinka, credit to EZRM

Chronologically recounting the thousand-year history of Polish Jews with our hosts, persons in charge of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, we concluded that without the culture of Polish Jews there would be no culture of Poland, no Polish national identity without Jewish identity. So, discussing how to encourage after many years the renewed Jewish life in the growing Jewish community in Poland, the road led us to the gray stone with the inscription Macedonia which was discovered in the Polish village, in addition to the many such stones on which the names of the countries from which the Jews killed in the Nazi camp came.

PHOTO: Jewish youth and Maya Nanou photographed in front of the stone with the name Macedonia in Treblinka

Maya Nanou a researcher from the Center for Research and Education in the Holocaust in Skopje who accompanies herover the group of youth from the Macedonian Jewish community in Poland, telling about the efforts of the Macedonian community of Jews to place their own stone marker in Treblinka, he explained to us that it was not easy to intervened in the permanent installation of the Treblinka memorial, and that the whole activity lasted almost two and a half decades.

- It was achieved with many years of work, commitments and international contacts the representatives of the Jewish community in Macedonia. We simple can notin to reconcileme with the fact that the Macedonian Jews do not even have a grave marker in Treblinka. It was not easy to intervene in the permanent installation of the Treblinka memorial, after so many years. But thanks to effortsand prominent members of the Jewish community, well, since 2008 we also have kamen on which it says "Macedonia" - he says Maya Nanou.

Sofia reached out to remove the stone with the inscription Bulgaria from a campfrom Treblinka

At the same time, telling about the fate of the Jews from these areas in the Second World War, our guide also referred to the stone on which the name of Bulgaria is inscribed.

PHOTO-Dejan Srbinovski: The guide of the Malishevski group in front of the memorial markers of the victims from countries around the world in Treblinka

- Bulgaria during the Second World War has occupied Yugoslavia or rather some parts of it. Now the then occupied part of Yugoslavia was also from present Macedonia. The Jews of Macedonia were commemorated with this monument until the late sixties with the name Yugoslavia. But кamen with the name Macedonia as a sign of the Macedonian Jews was set in 2008 and that at the initiative and request of Macedonian Jewish Community – he told us Malishevski.

He added that recently official Sofia through the embassy in Poland requested to remove the stone with the name Bulgaria with a simple explanation that it should not be written in a negative context in the concentration camp in Treblinka.

PHOTO: Model of the camp as it looked during the Second World War

Martin Grombanievski and Dea Denkovska, high school students from Skopje who were part of the group that organized the visit of the youth from the Jewish Community in Macedonia (EZRM) to Poland, summarizing the impressions from the visit to the camp, said that the Treblinka Museum represents a bridge across the abyss created by the Holocaust, a bridge through time, continents and human lives. As they say, they will never forget the suffering of the Jews, especially those who were deported from Macedonia during the Second World War, including their ancestors.

Watch the entire video report below.

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