User:Ehrlich91/The Jews of Štip

The Jews of Štip

The Jews of Štip are an old Jewish community. It is considered that it existed since the beginning of the Christian era. However, the first written documents about the Jews – Romaniots date to the 15th century.

History

Because Sultan Mehmed the Second conquered Constantionople in 1453 and moved his capital there, the city’s population began to increase. The largest portion of the Jewish population, thus, was transported to Constantinople. Among those who remained in their city was the rabbi Elijah bar Samuel Parnas, one of the more famous poets and exegetes of the Torah of his time.

The small number of Štip Jews who remained in Constantinople after the expulsion at the beginning of the 16th c. strengthened their position with the arrival of banished Jews from Spain and Portugal. Judging from the language used by the Štip Jews, it can be concluded that most of the newly-arrived were from Portugal.

Turkish documents provide us with data that says that in 1512 there were 38 jewish families ( around 200 souls). By 1573, the number of jewish families was 28.

During the plague outbreak, Štip served as a sanctuary, thus, many Jews from Thessalonoki and from other suffering cities moved there.

In 1859 the city of Nikolaidi has recorded that in Štip there were around 3.000 households, of which 1200 have been Christian , 200 Roma, 30 Jewish, and the remaining Turkish. According to the census of 1890, in Štip were leaving around 350 Jews.

The Jewish children in Štip were attending the so-called Jewish school up to 1910. Despite the fact that the school was not offering advanced levels of education, children learned the most basic terms of the sacred writings, to read the ‘square’ script, write 'Judesmo' in Rashi script, Jewish history, arithmetic and Turkish. In February 1910, the Universal Israeli Alliance (Alliance Israelite Universelle) opened their school in the city. The Alliance financed the school because the Jewish population in the city was very poor.

In 1913, the city numbered 25000 citizens of whom around 750 were Jews. The city itself was under Serbian authority, however, the Serbian troops were stationed in barracks outside of the city. On the other hand, the Bulgarians were stationed in the city. Bulgarian bandits were abusing and bullying the Jewish population. The Bulgarians were in the city since 1912 and were forcing Jews to abandon it even before they had taken the city completely. Of the remaining seven Jews, two were murdered during a pogrom of more than 750 Muslims by the Bulgarians. All Jewish houses and shops were demolished and raided and the synagogue burned.

The Jews who fled found a temporary shelter in Thessaloniki, where they were accommodated in the building of the Talmud-Torah and in the “Baron Hirsch” school.

After the wars on the Balkans the former inhabitants of the city started to return in their homes only to find ruins and burned houses.The Jewish ghetto in Štip was situated on the right bank of Otinja river, and the houses were crammed on the hills around the river on a very small space. The old synagogue in the city burnt during the war, so a new one had to be commissioned. Kraus of Senta, project manager and technical supervisor, was called to aid the building of the new synagogue, completed in 1925. As in other cities in Macedonia, Jewish buildings had one open terrace without a yard, used to make huts ( sukkah) during the holiday of Sukkot. Almost all Jewish shops and craft workshops were closed on Saturday and Sunder, which reduced their income substantially. Save for a small number of minor merchants, Štip Jews were craftsmen and workmen.

In 1928, Štip was visited by dr. Shlomo Levi, who wrote a report on the condition of the community in the city. The report tells us that in the Jewish ghetto dr. Levi encountered ruined Turkish houses, narrow bumpy street, a helpless and poor community whom nobody aided.

After the beginning of the Second World War and the occupation of Yugoslavia, the relations of Štip to other cities was terminated and news barely came from other parts of the country or the world. As a result, the mood in the Jewish community was optimistic, although they could barely subsist and their housed were marked.

On the 11th of March 1943, at 5 a.m., the Bulgarian soldiers and guards surrounded their houses. The blockade was complete, and the soldiers started to enter the apartments.This action was under the command of Stojan Bahchevandjiev, civil servant in the Commissariat for Jewish Questions, who hade made an elaborate plan for moving Jews from their homes to the railway station. There, they were met by Stojan Bahchevandjiev, the head of police Ignate Mocev and the municipal director Ivan Dilov. Bahchevandjiev told them that with decision from the tsarist Bulgarian government, all Macedonian Jews would be banished and that similar actions were taken in other cities in the country, and temporarily stationed in one place, which he didn’t say. He allowed the Jews to carry no more than 30 km weight and 100 levs per person. Later, he took all their money.

Afterwards, all of them were boarded on cattle wagon. At the end, they were taken to Skopje, in the building of “Monopol”, along with Jews from other cities. All of them were eventually transported to Treblinka. This marks the end of the history of the Jews in Štip. According to concentration camps lists in German and Bulgarian, there were 551 Jewish victims who came from Štip.