Journey into emotional territory – IHRA’s visit to Macedonia

Just occasionally a diplomat’s work takes us into deeply emotional territory. That happened here this week with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s visit to Skopje.

The IHRA (www.holocaustremembrance.com) exists to foster international cooperation to support Holocaust education, remembrance and research.  The UK holds the Chair this year.  And in that role Sir Andrew Burns (ex-FCO, one-time Ambassador to Israel) and Executive Secretary Dr Kathrin Meyer came to Macedonia as part of an ambitious  road-trip through SE Europe.  Their aim was to build IHRA’s relationship with Macedonia and to help develop the country’s engagement in IHRA activities.  I have little doubt that they achieved that, following their calls on the President, Foreign and Education Ministers, and through engagement with the Jewish community here.

In 1943 there were some 7,400 Jews living in the territory of modern-day Macedonia, mostly in Skopje, Bitola and Stip. In March of that year, they were arrested and interned in a tobacco factory in Skopje. They stayed there for ten days or so before being put on trains bound for Treblinka where they were murdered.  Just 200 avoided deportation; and no-one returned from Treblinka.

The programme included a visit to Skopje’s extraordinary Holocaust Memorial Museum.  The museum describes brilliantly the life and culture of Macedonia’s Jewish community.  Jews have lived here for centuries – there are the remains of a synagogue here, from the second century AD. But the modern Jewish communities had come here from Spain and Portugal in the 15^th century.  They were Sephardic Jews expelled from Iberia during the Inquisition, but welcomed to this region by the Ottomans.  Their beautiful and vivid culture, all but wiped out in the space of a month in 1943, lives on in the museum.

The internment centre is still a tobacco factory today.  The present owners showed us the space where the Jews were kept before transportation to the north.  It has been kept empty.  But seeing the actual locations where these crimes took place is intensely moving.  And the bleakness of the place only sharpened that.  The factory and museum are collaborating to transfer parts of the old building to the museum as an exhibit.

At a reception to mark IHRA’s visit, our Macedonian guests were drawn from seven ethnic groups.  IHRA’s visit made a deep impression on them.  This is a highly diverse country, where different ethic groups’ historic roots go back centuries. It was no surprise that the prominent theme of our guests’ conversations were IHRA’s wider messages, of respect for all peoples.

Charles Garrett, British Ambassador to Macedonia