By transferring the urns of the killed Jews from Bitola, Stip and Skopje to the Memorial Holocaust Center in Skopje, the ceremonies preceding the opening of this important and rare building on a global scale went underway Thursday morning.
With high military honors and guard escort, the procession of urns led by the mayors of the three cities and high-ranking officials from all over the world slowly and solemnly moved along Macedonia Street. Before the Stone Bridge, the military orchestra joined them and led the way to the Memorial Center, the eternal resting place of the killed Macedonian Jews.
The ceremony of opening the Memorial Holocaust Center took place outdoors in the former Jewish neighborhood in the attendance of numerous guests, including the presidents of Albania and Montenegro, Bamir Topi and Filip Vujanovic, Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon, Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov, Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, heads of religious communities, representatives of the diplomatic corps, rabbis, etc.
The President of the Fund of the Holocaust of the Jews from Macedonia, Liljana Mizrahi, said Macedonia was the only country in the world that adopted a law on denationalization with special provisions about establishing a fund from the assets of those who did not survive the ordeal in the Nazi camps and had no inheritors and for that sole reason their assets remained state-owned.
In 2002 a serious research work went under way about every Jew from Macedonia. In 2005 the corner stone of the Memorial Center was laid and in December 2007 the restitution was fully completed whereby funds were provided for this project, Mizrahi informed.
“My conscience told me we had to find a way to indicate that here lived people, our fellow citizens, that shared with us the good and the bad, that worked honestly and with their investments created property that someone else took away from them unlawfully but no matter what they are entitled to that property even after their death because they created it with hard work and sacrifice. The Government, in which I served as minister at the time, accepted the idea to create a fund from the denationalization of the property that had no legal inheritors and build a memorial center, which on one hand would be a building commemorating, connecting and creating new values and on the other hand would be a kind of revalorization of the effort and property of our fellow citizens Jews.
“We have built a memorial honoring our fellow citizens, friends and neighbors. By building it, we have also built new bridges of friendship, cooperation and respect between Macedonia and Israel, but the most important of all is that we built in order to pay respect to the suffering of a people. We built in order to remind, to commemorate, to send a message and to help remember so that it never happens again,” Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski said in his address.
On behalf of his country, Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon thanked the Government of the Republic of Macedonia and Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski for the denationalization of the Jewish property and the decision to build the Memorial Holocaust center.
“This is an important achievement of the Government of Macedonia, which is one of the first countries that finalized the restitution of the Jewish property and it is all the more important considering it aims to cherish the memory of the killed Jews. The initiative to create a place keeping the memory of 7,144 Jews that used to be part of the thriving Jewish community and to teach people is an important achievement,” Ya’alon said.
Rabbi Andrew Baker added that after 68 years the Jews from Macedonia received a suitable memorial in which their faces will be seen, their names will be mentioned, their stories will be heard and candles in their honor will be lit.
