Prof. Vera Veskovik-Vangeli, PhD, INI                                                                                                 

“VIA DOLOROSA”  SKOPJE – TREBLINKA

                                                                                                                                          “Non omnis moriar”

 Throughout a millennium of co-existence, the two biblical peoples, the Macedonians and the Jews, shared an interwoven and similar fate, enduring the terror and fear of agonizing imminent destruction and experiencing golden moments of scientific and cultural achievements, and while this fate was interspersed with despair and persecution, the ever-present hope that they would preserve their nationality in the war arena they had found themselves in, the two peoples, side by side, marched the century-long road and arrived to March 11, 1943.  On that cold and dreary March day, sixty years ago, Skopje, Bitola and Stip were covered by the dark “shadow of the swastika.”  The Jewish neighbourhoods were becoming deserted.  Our neighbours and co-citizens had vanished in distant Poland in the Treblinka 2 death camp. To this day the evil acts of genocide performed on the Macedonian Jews by anti-Semitic, fascistic Bulgaria, an ally of the Third Reich during the “Great War,” who occupied Macedonia during the Second World War, have left their traumatic effects in us all.

To the 7,240 Macedonian Jews, it is with deep piety that we dedicate this day’s memento mori. 

A vow not to forget the victims of the Holocaust.

There are, hereby, two aspects which are of significant importance.  Firstly, during the last few decades of the last century, the following key question is asked louder and louder: Might the notion of the holocaust be a basis for interpreting the genocide of the Jews?  A short investigation brings about a significant number of problems.

 This modern discovery, according to Zygmunt Bauman, opens a large area of debate, from the etymology of the word to its ideology.  A simple explanation of the term is actually quite complex:  It is an amalgamation of the Greek word, “holos,” which means “completely total” and the Latin word, “caustos,” – burnt,[1] or simply interpreted: “sacrifice through fire.”  It is a notion that carries mythological and religious connotation, an allusion to the primitive ritual of sacrifice.[2]  In 1992 a scientific symposium joining in on this debate was held in Thessalonica, dedicated to the Jewish communities in Southeastern Europe.  In regards to the use and establishment of the term, “holocaust,” Professor Abaadzopoulou provides the following statement:  “The Nazi genocide due to its extensiveness and thorough planning was an historical event without precedence in western European civilization...  It was referred to with a variety of adjectives such as ”despicable,” “outrageous,” an “unprecedented” event and man appreciated any attempt to assign it a specific name in order to differentiate it from other historical events of a genocidal nature.  And therefore the need for this term was whole-heartedly felt at the moment when the true nature of the Nazi’s operations against the Jews became obvious, the moment that coincided, more or less, with their first massive executions and the establishment of the ghetto in Eastern Europe in 1940/41.”[3]  In 1997 Professor Alan Rosenberg would raise the question on the use of the term, “holocaust,” in contrast to the specific Hebraic term, “Shoah.”[4]

 The definition of the term “Shoah” means (great) catastrophe.  For a number of reasons the use of this term was preferred to the term, “holocaust.” According to one interpretation, “Throughout time the term “Shoah” represented a more Jewish internal view than the one, “holocaust” which had been adopted by the North Americans. The etymological meaning of the term “holocaust” is also not adequate enough for this topic.  It originates from the Greek and signifies a religious sacrifice to a god through fire. The slaughter of the European Jews via “Holocaust” gives it a pseudo-sacral connotation, implying the fact the Jews were the sacrifice and that the Nazis a kind of priest. 

Therefore, for the victims and survivors, referring to these murders via “Shoah” is more adequate.”[5]

This biblical term that signifies catastrophe or devastation is at the core of this debate.   Rosenberg, in a protesting tone, is summarized as follows:  The word “holocaust” belongs to a foreign used term and has become a symbol for the “burnt sacrifice.” He goes on to add and question why the term is not applied to the Armenians who fell at the hands of the Turks or the nuclear “fire” set off in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  And as the “debate” on “holocaust” draws to an end, Rosenberg attempts to generally convey the thinking of the historian, Peter Steinbach:  “I believe, says he, that the term “holocaust” is a theological one that first appeared from an ancient notion, totally and completely designated by God. It was something positive.  However, four (?) [it is understood that there were six] million people, on the orders of the Germans were sent to their deaths, and they can not be treated as sacrifices in the biblical sense.  They were sacrifices to other humans… that history of the Third Reich was a product of mankind’s responsibility and needs to be explained within the context of its political order.”

Second aspect:  This refers to the reasons why this particular historical event that saw the organization and methodical extermination of civilians can not be permitted to be forgotten.  The act of reminiscing as a means to project the future is often questioned and is as old as history itself.  One answer as to why it is done was given in the 19^th century by J.G. Dreuser who “argued that we had no other means to understand and interpret historical events, other than through our wealth of previous experience.”[6]  Almost a century later the Jewish, German philosopher, Walter Benjamin would agree with this notion.  He presented his stand that each era had to make the effort of overcoming the past[7] in order to satisfy the curiosity of uncovering and clarifying those historical events that are specifically marked as those that shape history.  One such event is the 60^th anniversary of the genocidal holocaust of the Macedonian Jews who long have awaited patiently for the results of the research to be finalized.  Is this merely a philosophical reflection of the “dark times” or the need to explain the modern “means” of “ethnic cleansing” (referring to the unwanted history associated to the holocaust), a study of the “total collapse of a political civilization,” as the German historian, Peter Steinbach, assesses the period of Hitler and the Third Reich.[8]  His analytical thinking on the destruction of the human mind concurs with the views of Martin Gilbert,[9] the author of an extensive study of the Holocaust, a unique work not only because of its subject matter, but in equal measure, because of its structure, whereby the Nazi concept of racial inequality through the Law for the Protection of the State received the status of “legalization” for the “collective extermination of the Jews.”  Within the context of anti-Semitism, Steinbach adds that the national socialists took every possible opportunity to emphasize that from the day they came into power, the process of “legalizing revenge,” the holocaust, would begin.

 The beginnings of anti-Semitism, like the history of the Jewish people, have its roots in the distant past, while it was not until the 19^th century that anti-Semitism was “scientifically” explained and formulated on the basis of a racist philosophical-anthropological theory, “perfected” by the national socialist theorists.  With the outbreak of the Second World War, the mighty coalition of the Rome- Berlin-Tokyo axis powers in conjunction with other fascistic powers carried the heavy seal of an all encompassing totalitarianism and a nationalistic ideology of exclusionism.  In line with the Nazi myth of a pure race, the concept of the ghetto and the construction of concentration camps provided a perfect system for massive extermination.[10]  Himmler’s long term plan foresaw a reordering for Europe and the extermination of her Jewish settlers, as well as others.  In Berlin a programme was devised for the biological extermination of the Jews and other “inferior” races. At a Nazi conference held in Wannsee near Berlin on January 20, 1942 a simple and seemingly naive project of this fatal programme entitled: The Final Solution to the Jewish Question was formulated on Hitler’s insistence. According to notes taken at the conference, Heidrich, a fourth-in-line director on the hierarchy scale for the Head Administration Office for Security of the Third Reich and Hitler’s authorized representative on the final solution to the European Jews issue, confidently commented:  “The war against the Jews to date has seen them driven away from certain spheres of German people’s lives.  In the future it will see them driven away from the space that the German people occupy.  Now, with the necessary permission of the Fuehrer, the evacuation, and not emigration of the Jews to the East, will be imposed as “an additional solution…..”  Heidrich further added: “a final solution” did not only refer to the Jews under German rule, but to “eleven million Jews” throughout Europe.[11] To carry out this monstrous plan, nothing was left to chance.  In a mere ten days or at the end of January 1942, it was insisted that the entire apparatus for “total extermination” be in place:  the concentration camps, transport wagons, railway lines,[12] schemes for confiscation and deportation programmes.  A representative of the Office for the Security of the Reich gave serious warning as to what security measures were required of the entire operation and his statement was of an imperative character:  “We can never permit the Jews to know that they are being prepared for deportation.  Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that this information remains a strongly held secret.”[13]

 And, “everything depended on,” Gilbert assesses, “the fact that thousands of administrative and bureaucratic workers complied with their orders, which was something never recorded, by keeping their silence whilst carrying out their jobs, organizing the gatherings, overseeing the accommodation centres, co-ordinating the railway lines and sending the local Jews to a far off, unknown destination…”[14]

 An anti-Semitic virus spread all too quickly to outside the borders of the Third Reich.  The Bulgarian ally was a devoted follower. A series of laws, orders, rules and other acts of anti-Semitic character from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Public Health (MIAPH) were passed by the People’s Assembly of Bulgaria and approved and decreed by Czar Boris III. These were rigorously carried out in the territory of Macedonia, which was occupied by the Bulgarian fascists.  Having been prepared and written according to the Anti-Semitic model of lawmaking in Nazi Germany, the government of Bogdan Filov, who signed the Triple Pact and was a disciplined ally of the Axis powers, obediently adhered to Nazi lawmaking and enthusiastically applied the laws and orders to his subjects in Macedonia, which was not the case with the Bulgarian Jews under government rule in Sofia.

 Among the extensive number of anti-Semitic laws that the Macedonian Jews were to be submitted to, one of the first was the Law for the Protection of the Nation, (January 21, 1941)[15]  which went into effect on the first day of the occupation of Macedonia.  Based on a legal model of the racist laws of the Third Reich, the law provides a multitude of measures for strict penalties and numerous types of restrictions that served the anti-Semitic project for total discrimination against the Jews.  Through this law the concept of racial inequality was given legal status.

 This fundamental law which legalized discrimination during the Bulgarian occupation was continually amended and extended with new articles, orders and regulations and with the clause “the same to be applied to so-called liberated states only,” meant the law applied to Macedonia.  In addition to these set of laws were the “Regulations for Applying the Law for the Protection of the Nation” of February 17, 1941,[16] which brought up the question of the biological survival of the Jews prior to the act of genocide.

 Fatal to the Jewish population’s basic existence in Macedonia were the Law for the Levy of a Property Tax on Individuals of Jewish Ancestry, established through decree No. 45 of July 13, 1941 and Order No. VI-131 for its enforcement.  In this law “a tax was levied on all assets,” whether fixed or variable, inheritances, etc., and the taxes collected went to top up the national budget.  So as to have no misunderstandings, article 18 of this said Order stipulates: “with this article, the law for the protection of the nation is to be applied and refers to individuals of Jewish ancestry; residents of liberated states during 1940 and 1941.  The foreseen period of the order under the Law for the Protection of the Nation was to commence on July 14, 1941, on which day it was announced in the ”National Newspaper” as the Law for the Levy of a Property Tax on Individuals of Jewish Ancestry. [17]

 The anti-Semitic practices of the Bulgarian government had metastasized and spread throughout the ministries.  Each ministry had unlimited power in carrying out any law or order appropriate of anti-Semitic politics in the kingdom. Restricted movement by the imposition of a curfew was further complicated by Order (No. V-230) on March 12, 1942 by the Ministry of War. This order deeply affected the basic needs for sustainment of life, whereby the Jews in the community of Skopje (the largest number who considered themselves as the central community) approached the district commissioner for goods procurement and requested a change to the time when bread could be purchased, as “the curfew imposed on the Jews” deprived them of obtaining this staple commodity.[18]

 The Bulgarian government of fascists, closely following the anti-Semitic programmes of the Third Reich on the biological extermination of the Jews, as well as other “inferior” races, adopted the programme for the Final Solution to the Jewish Question. (Wannsee, January 20, 1942)  The Czar’s decree No. 52 confirmed the decision of July 28, 1942 of the National Assembly, which “prepared a law to authorize the Ministry Council to undertake all measures in response to the Jewish question.”[19]  With this law the grasp around the Macedonian Jews was further tightened. The law “demanded stricter measures and all-encompassing and precise restrictions on individuals of Jewish ancestry and their subjects or those individuals who they were hiding from the authorities.”  This law (in conjunction with previously passed laws) gave the Bulgarian administration the empowerment to carry out any practices they deemed suitable.  So immediately on July 9, 1942, the Ministry Council was given the authority to strictly apply the Law for the Solution to the Jewish Question.[20]

On August 27, 1942, almost eight months before the deportation of the Jews, Aleksandar Belev, the commissioner of the Jewish Question Commission would appoint Ivan Zahariev as assistant head of the Municipality of Skopje and a delegate to the Consortium of the Jewish districts of Skopje as of September 22, 1942.[21]  One day later on September 23, with the announcement of Order No. 32 by the Commission for the Jewish Question in Sofia, the wearing of the “star of David” would be enforced.[22]  With the appointment of Zahariev as delegate to the Jewish Question Commission, an organized programme for extermination was approaching its final phase.  This was followed by a series of threatening orders and strict penalties, as well as the confiscation of all property of the Jews residing in the districts of Skopje, Bitola and Stip, the proceeds of which were to be used by the government. (January 18, 1943)[23] 

The notion that Macedonia was an occupied territory of the Bulgarian fascists, a disputable issue for some academics in neighbouring countries today, was evidenced in a report by the German ambassador, Adolph Bekerle, in Sofia.  On January 22, 1943 he had informed the Bulgarian Minister for Internal Affairs, Petar Gabrovski, of his discontent because “there was mainly just talk of the Jewish Question, while the activities carried out were not done in an energetic manner, and that he was categorical in his view that the initial Jews to be evacuated be those living in the liberated states”; in other words, Macedonia.[24]  Shortly following this “discussion,” on February 2, 1943, Aleksandar Belev, together with Theodor Daneker[25] agreed to a plan that included all phases of the deportations for the “resettling” of the Jews in Macedonia and Belomorieto.  On this occasion it was with obvious satisfaction at having completed the plan that Daneker made the following statement:  “The Reich is prepared to assist its allies in all matters concerning the Jewish Question by accepting the Jewish population of Macedonia and Belomorieto,” emphasizing that “Should only the Jews be accepted for resettlement, it will be necessary to take on precautionary measures.”[26]  

On February 18, 1943 it was learned from Theodor Daneker that Aleksandar Belev did not wait for confirmation of the deportation plan by the Ministry Council, so as not to waste time for necessary preparations, and “took it upon himself to send authorized individuals to Trachea and Macedonia to find out the means by which the Jews could be gathered and sent to camps.”[27]  It is possible that this decision was made in haste as a result of the defeat of the elite Sixth German Army at a battle in Stalingrad, which later was seen as the turning point that signaled the near-end and victor of the Second World War. The shock of its defeat caused panic among the Germans and worry among its allies as to whether or not they would be able to carry out Hitler’s project for the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.”  

On February 22, 1943 an agreement was signed between the commissioner of the Commission for the Jewish Question, Aleksandar Belev and the German authorized representative and captain of the Security Units, Theodor Daneker, for the “resettlement” of 20,000 Jews in Macedonia and Trachea.[28]  This was immediately followed by orders from the Ministry Council for the deportation of Jews and the confiscation of all fixed assets to be used in the interest of the government. All documentation for the liquidation of variable assets had been prepared.[29]  The Commission for the Jewish Question also prepared a set of rules for the organization of temporary concentration camps located in Skopje’s Monopol.  On March 8, 1943 Peju Draganov was appointed commander of the camp. It was at this time that Minister Petar Gabrovski also made the decision to “resettle” 20,000 Jews outside the state’s borders, irrespective of age or gender, and those Jews living in recently liberated states or in the camps in Skopje, Pirot, Gorna Dzumaja, (today’s Blagoevgrad) Dupnica and Radomir.[30]

The evil ideas of the anti-Jewish demoniacs in Macedonia were carried out via the Commission for the Jewish Question in Skopje and its delegate, Ivan Zahariev.  Under his strict supervision life carried on in temporary concentration camps in Skopje’s Monopol. Zahariev consequently carried out the agreement between Belev and Daneker, which included two monstrous decisions:  Firstly, the guarantee that the German Reich was prepared to accept the Jews from eastern areas and secondly, that the Bulgarian government “would never, under any circumstances, request the return of these resettled Jews.”

The “creation” of these precise guarantees provided all the necessary requirements for deportation.  March 11, 1943 was “D-day.” The Jews who lived in smaller communities in Skopje, Bitola, Stip and other Macedonian towns were gathered up.  The temporary concentration camps in Skopje’s Monopol, tightly secured, became their new homes.

Thus, this ancient biblical people, whose high points in life had found them in the clutches of centuries of unforeseen historical events, set off on their final “Via Dolorosa,” organized by the Bulgarian police and army with the assistance of the Gestapo and SS.[31]  Through three transports, 2150 families comprised of 7240 members[32] left the Skopje railway station and headed for the death camp of Treblinka 2 in Poland.

·         The first transport wagons carrying Jews from Skopje left on March 22, 1943

·         The second transport wagons carrying all the Jews from Stip, some from Skopje and a group from Bitola, left on March 25^th

·         The third transport wagons carrying the remaining 2500 Jews from Macedonia left on March 29^th

 95% percent of the Macedonian Jewish population had been exterminated, among one of the highest of any country.  Those who survived had previously joined the Partisan ranks.

Archival documentation on the genocide of the Macedonian Jews in Treblinka is mainly supported by an investigation conducted of the documentation in the Warsaw archive of the Head Commission on Hitler’s Crimes in Poland. (1988/89) Here I found the notes and records of investigating Judge Lukasievic on his findings from September 24 to November, 22, 1946 which were required for the Nuremberg process,[33] telegrams, transport lading lists from Skopje to Treblinka, plans and sketches of the camp, etc.

The labour camp, Treblinka 1, was built on the land of an existing mine in 1941 and during the first half of 1942, the extermination camp or the death centre, Treblinka 2 was added under the SS command.  Documentation related to Treblinka 2 leaves no doubt that this was a special extermination camp for the Jews, but also saw the extermination of a number of Poles and Romas. Initially built for the purpose of exterminating the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto, Treblinka 2 saw the arrival of the first transport wagons on June 23, 1942.  Shortly afterward it also became the extermination camp for the Jews of Germany, Austria, France, Belgium, Yugoslavia, Greece, Czechoslovakia, parts of the USSR and Macedonia.  In its short and monstrous history, investigating Judge Lukasievic estimates between 1,300,000 to 1,500,000 people were exterminated through suffocation and later set ablaze.[34]

Through the accurate collection of data on the Treblinka 2 camp compiled for the Nuremberg process by investigating Judge Lukasievic, we learn that the death camp was situated on an area of thirteen hectares, located only two kilometres from the nearest residential area and four kilometres away from the railway station from which a special rail was directly built to the camp.  The camp was divided into two parts, separated by a barbed wire fence.  Administrative and apartment buildings, warehouses, workshops, garages, gardens and the railway ramp were located in one part, while in the other, two buildings that housed gas chambers and barracks for the Jewish workers who set afire and disposed of the burnt remains and were later sent to their fate in the same manner.  Technically speaking, Treblinka 2, was not a classical crematorium. It was specifically known for its open-air, bonfire-like burning.   Under an open Polish sky, railway tracks were placed on two concrete slabs, which conjure up the idea of a “barbecue.”  A few of these “barbecues” or “burning stakes” were constructed where 2000 bodies could be placed on each.  The enormous blaze of the fires, the smoke and the smell of burning flesh was the daily  “illumination” for the surrounding residents of Treblinka.

“When one describes Treblinka,” emphasizes Judge Lukasievic as he gloomily states, “it is impossible to keep one’s silence in regards to the so-called “Lazaret,” because that would be an indication of the rare cynism for the executioners.  “Lazaret” was in the first part of the camp surrounded by a high wire fence.  Over the entrance the “Red Cross” flag hung.  It was here that the individuals who could not dress themselves on their own were brought, as they could not walk nor run to the gas chambers.  These were the old, disabled, ill and the young who had no one to care for or support them.  They were brought to “Lazaret” under the pretext that they would be examined here.  The personnel inside wore white coats and aprons and under the sign of the “Red Cross” helped them to undress in the area that imitated a doctor’s waiting room.  They were separately taken to another area in the second part of “Lazaret” where a hidden SS soldier or Ukrainian pointed a small caliber pistol to the back of the head and deprived the individual of his life.”

On the basis of witnesses and material proof, it was with certainty that Judge Lukasievic speaks of  how the transports normally carried sixty wagons with one hundred people and that “at the moment the wagons arrived at the camp’s ramp, it required thirty to forty-five minutes to exterminate a victim, including the process in the gas chamber which took fifteen minutes on average.  An entire group of people from one transport could be liquidated in under two hours, meaning that the victims who were sent to Treblinka 2 often lived less than an hour.”[35]

Leon Perlenstein worked in the warehouse when the Macedonian Jews arrived at Treblinka.  In his statement he speaks of a destructive energy used in the exterminating operations:  “The steps to extermination included the following:  Each day saw the arrival of approximately between twelve and twenty thousand people. On the tributary railway line to the camp area three trains arrived daily.  Each train consisted of approximately sixty wagons carrying one hundred people.  The arrivals were led to a yard surrounded by barracks.  They were ordered to fully undress and the clothing was piled into a large heap. Women, children and the elderly were brought here.  Within a period of two hours the entire transport of people was killed.  This was carried out in the following manner:  The barracks had been equipped with cabins, where one hundred people were sent to each, for a “bath.”  The cabins had towels and small wash tubs and gave the impression that these were indeed baths.  After the people had gone in, a button was pressed and the doors were automatically locked and sealed, followed by the emittance of a gas – I do not know exactly what kind, and they suffocated in about ten minutes.  After the ten minutes the floor fell from two sides and the bodies fell into a hole a few metres deep… The work prisoners pulled the bodies out, put them on stretchers and placed them in a pile.  Kerosene was poured over them and they were set on fire to burn.   Before these people went into the cabins, their teeth (gold) were taken out and the women’s hair cut.”[36]

The manager of the railway station, Fancisek Zabecki, was a witness of the fate that would befall the Jews after their arrival at the railway station.  In his daily journal information regarding the arrival time of transport wagons from Skopje was found.  “Scenes at the railway station in Treblinka were extremely frightening,” he commented, “because as of September 1942 passenger trains would no longer stop here.  There would only be military trains or trains filled with the deported that were separated from the main line and sent to the death camps.”[37]

The camp was the site for the extermination of men and women, the elderly and the children, the babies, the individuals of different political beliefs and various professions and those of other faiths.  For the most part these people were not politically active.  They were sent to these camps for extermination only because they were of another nationality or race.

The activities carried out for the extermination of the Jews was a tightly held secret.  So that no trail be left behind, the SS commanders of the camp destroyed all the evidence.  However, on August 2, 1942 something unforeseen happened in Treblinka.  There was an uprising organized by the Jewish workers.  Approximately 1500 camp prisoners participated.  Only a few hundred managed to escape.  In the autumn of 1943 Treblinka 2 was leveled to the ground, the gas chambers and fire stakes set ablaze, the ground leveled, tilled and planted with grass and wheat, where the entire “cultivated” complex grounds was secured by guards.

The international court in Nuremberg regards the Nazi concentration camps as the most harmful instruments of terror against the residents of the occupied territories, and the evil committed falls under the category of crimes against humanity.

While racism and anti-Semitism were unfamiliar concepts to the Macedonian people, the oppressive environment and terror they had found themselves in created under the fascist Bulgarian occupation, did not discourage them from remaining at the side of their

Jewish fellow-countrymen, lending shelter and hope.[38] The political and military leadership of the National Liberation Army against the fascists counted on the participation of the Jews “as brothers united under distress, misery and fate” in the “Great War” against the fascists, of which there was much documentation.[39] They had fought together from the Ilinden Uprising to the impressive formation of ASNOM which is one of the foundations of today’s Republic of Macedonia.  The renewal of the Jewish districts in Skopje on December 26, 1944 seemed a logical step to the century-old walk toward freedom.[40]  The Jewish communities in Macedonia today are quite small.  They only number 182 members, but they have the testimonial responsibility to preserve and nurture the tradition of their predecessors.

From the time the hearths went out in the Jewish homes in Macedonia of March and April 1943 and the lighting of the stakes in Treblinka 2 to today, the acts of genocide have left the Macedonian people heavily scared by trauma. They had lived in harmony and friendship with their Jewish co-citizens.  The altered demographic map indicates the voids left by the well-known Jewish neighbourhoods.  No dreams in Hebrew anymore.  The multi-faceted strong motivation required to reach the internal boundaries of the cracked and deeply marred human beings who committed these heinous crimes is the moral obligation of today’s generations, so that we may prevent the reoccurrence of any future genocide or holocaust.  And to us all, the following message is like from the Talmudic wise men:  “…watch over your soul carefully so as not to forget the things you have seen with your eyes.”

A Chronology of Treblinka 2

1942

• June -  The beginnings of the construction of a tributary railroad and other

structures including barbed-wire fences and deep ditches.  Camp prisoners serving time in the work camp, Treblinka, located two kilometres away from the foreseen site of the death camp and Jews from the surrounding area worked on these structures.

• July – The Treblinka 2 camp was completed and stood on an area of thirteen hectares.
• July 23^rd – The first transport wagons arrived carrying Jews from the Warsaw ghetto.
• Late autumn – Attempts to set the corpses afire were made.

1943

• February-March – Following a visit by Himmler to Treblinka 2 a “hearth” was built in order to set a fire.
• Spring- The “ritual” of setting open fires began
• August 2^nd- An uprising organized by the Jewish workers at the camp occurred where 1500 camp prisoners took part and whereby a few hundred escaped
• September 10^th- The camp ceases to function
• November 17^th- The camp is disposed of

 *Speech held on March 7^th, 2003 at the NUL St. Clement Ohridski in Skopje on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the genocide of Macedonian Jews

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