ABANDONED CEMETERY, BITOLA

Bitola's Jewish cemetery was supposedly established as early as 1457. This makes it one of the oldest in the Balkans. Interments continued until 1927 

The second largest city in North Macedonia, Bitola, outshone Skopje: if anything, it could have been called the Jewish capital of the country. At the beginning of the 20th century there were 11,000 Jews in town. The local Jewish cemetery, founded by the Sephardis in 1497, is thought of as the oldest Sephardi cemetery in the whole of the Balkans. 

Trouble for the Jews of Bitola started as early as the beginning of the 20th century. In 1912- 1918 Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia and what had remained of the Ottoman Empire fought several 

wars to gain control of the area. As a result of the hostilities many Jews emigrated to North and Latin America and Palestine. The number of Jews dwindled from 11,000 to about 3,300. 

The Holocaust obliterated Bitola's Jewish community and its heritage almost without a trace. The death transports to Treblinka carried as many as 3,276 Jews. The community never revived. In 2010 there were just two Jews in town. 

What remains of the five-centuries-old Jewish cemetery of Bitola can still be seen on the northern outskirts of town. The columns of one of Bitola's former synagogues are on display in a city park. 

In an ironic twist of fate the only surviving synagogue of Bitola's Jews is in... Thessaloniki. Bitola settlers in what is today's Greece's second largest city erected their synagogue in 1927. Today it is one of the two existing synagogues in Thessaloniki.