Les Juifs de Skopje

Skopje (Üsküb under the Ottomans) was home to a Sephardic community established after 1492, heir to the great Judeo-Spanish centers of the Balkans and speaking Ladino. Merchants, craftsmen, and peddlers, its members lived grouped in a Jewish quarter and maintained a religious and cultural life of Sephardic tradition. The community experienced, in the early twentieth century, the upheavals of the Balkan wars and integration into the Yugoslav kingdom. In March 1943, under the occupation of Macedonia by Bulgaria, Germany's ally, almost all of Skopje's Jews were gathered and then deported to the Treblinka extermination camp, where they were murdered; there were almost no survivors.

Sources & resources

• Encyclopaedia Judaica — 2e éd., Keter/Macmillan
• Jewish Virtual Library ↗