A first state appeared on North Macedonia’s territory in the 8th century BC. Beginning in the Middle Ages, it belonged to different empires and states (Byzantium, Bulgaria, Serbia, Ottoman Empire, Yugoslavia). In 1991, the independent Republic of Macedonia was founded; it was renamed in North Macedonia in 2019. During World War II, Roma were mainly deported for forced labour; many fought as partisans against the Bulgarian and German occupation, and Albanian Ballists (forces of the nationalist and anti-communist movement Balli Kombëtar).
Roma in the Area of Vardar Macedonia
Roma settled in the territory of Vardar Macedonia (present-day North Macedonia) from the 14th century as part of their migration to Southeast Europe in the face of the advance of the Ottoman army. From the 16th century, part of the Roma population lived in urban areas, mostly as blacksmiths, weapon makers and musicians. Many groups came to be identified with their occupations, like the ‘Cannon Makers’ (Topaanlii) or the ‘Gun Powder Makers’ (Barutčii). The Roma minority was among the groups which had particular tax and other obligations towards the Ottoman authorities. Roma who were Muslims, however, had to pay less taxes than the Christian ones.1Crowe, A History, 195–198. After the Balkan Wars (1912–1913), the territory of Vardar Macedonia became part of Serbia.
During World War I, Vardar Macedonia was occupied by Bulgaria. The occupying authorities mobilised local inhabitants, including Roma, for military service in the Bulgarian army. The Macedonian recruits received the same rights as the soldiers from Bulgaria, like financial support for the families of mobilised men. Nevertheless, most locals tried to avoid conscription and desertion rates were high, especially in the final phase of the war.2Opfer, Im Schatten des Krieges, 74–75.
After World War I, Vardar Macedonia became part of the newly established Yugoslav state and merged into the Vardar Banovina, which also comprised parts of the territories of today’s states of Kosovo and Serbia. The administrative centre was Skopje [Albanian: Shkup]. Of the 44 districts of the banovina, 30 belonged to Vardar Macedonia.
According to the last pre-war census of 1931, 24,494 Roma lived in the Vardar Banovina; this corresponded to about 35 percent of the total Roma population in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (70,424 Roma). The total number of Roma in the Macedonian districts was 10,546, of which the vast majority were Muslims (10,112 or 95.9%), while 431 were Orthodox and three Roman Catholics. By far the most densely populated district was Skopje with 4,204 registered Roma, followed by Žegligovo [Albanian: Zegligovë] (1,924), Prilep [Albanian: Përlepi] (946) and Šar Planina [Albanian: Malet e Sharrit] (709).3Publikationsstelle Wien, Die Gliederung, 10, 18, 307–351.
Bulgarian and German Occupation, 1941–1944
In April 1941, the Axis powers led by Nazi Germany managed to force the army of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia to rapid military capitulation. The largest part of Vardar Macedonia was occupied by Bulgaria, while parts of the western regions between Tetovo [Albanian: Tetova] and Struga fell to Albania (which itself was controlled by Italy). Some German military units were present on Macedonian territory to secure key transport routes and railway lines.
A peculiarity of the Bulgarian occupation zone in comparison to other parts of the occupied Balkans was that thousands of Roma served as soldiers in the Bulgarian army, and there were also individual Bulgarian Roma in the occupation administration.4Krustev and Ivanova, Gypsies on the Roads of War, 288–324; Ivanova and Krastev, “Holocaust,” 218–219. From September 1944, the Wehrmacht completely took over the occupation of Macedonia, after Bulgaria had distanced itself from Germany and was shortly thereafter occupied by the Soviet Union. Anti-fascist partisans, Bulgarian army units and the Red Army took control over Macedonia by the end of 1944, after which it became one of the republics within the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
According to a Bulgarian evaluation based on civil registers of 1941, there were around 1,073,000 inhabitants in occupied Vardar Macedonia, the majority of whom were regarded as ‘Bulgarians’ (Slavic Macedonians) and Serbs, followed by 185,457 Muslims, 8,000 Jews and 5,000 Aromanians. Roma were statistically categorised as Muslims alongside Turks, Albanians and other minorities; their exact number was not given.
On 14 May 1941, the Bulgarian government formally proclaimed the annexation of the Bulgarian-occupied territories, which was, however, not recognised by Germany but merely tolerated provisionally. Vardar Macedonia was divided into the two oblasts of Skopje and Bitola. With the introduction of the oblast administration system, Bulgarian law applied in Macedonia. This had an immediate impact on the Jewish population, which was now subject to the existing Bulgarian ‘Law for the Protection of the Nation’ with an explicitly anti-Jewish section modelled on the Nuremberg Laws.
The ensuing economic and social exclusion reached a first climax in 1942 with the creation of the ‘Commissariat for Jewish Affairs’ [Komisarstvo po evrejskite văprosi], which was financed by Jewish assets. Jews were under police surveillance and had to wear yellow badges and to perform forced labour in road and railway construction. At the urging of the German Reich, the Bulgarian government finally agreed to the deportation of the Jews in February 1943. On 11 March 1943, Bulgarian soldiers and policemen arrested the Jewish population of Macedonia and interned them in Skopje. There, 165 professional specialist and foreign citizens were selected out. The remaining 7,148 Macedonian Jews, including over 2,000 children under the age of 16, were deported to Treblinka in three German train transports between 22 and 29 March 1943 and murdered there. The remaining Jewish property was appropriated by the Bulgarian state.5Opfer, Im Schatten des Krieges, 211–212, 263, 273–281; Kolonomos and Veskoviḱ-Vangeli, Evreite vo Makedonija, Vol. I, 17–70;Matkovski, A History of the Jews, 108–182; Vesković-Vangeli, “Treblinka,” 3–41.
In contrast to other regimes in Europe, the Bulgarian anti-Jewish legislation was not applied to Roma, who were only mentioned once within this context. In Article 24 of Decision No. 4567 issued by the Bulgarian Council of Ministers on 27 August 1942, the existing ban on marriages between Jews and Bulgarians was confirmed and extended to marriages between Roma and Bulgarians.
In practice, Macedonian Roma could suffer further acts of discrimination on a local level. In April and May 1941, for example, the Bulgarian occupation authorities mobilised groups of Jews and Roma to clear the ruins in the city of Štip caused by German bombings during the April War. Some Skopjan shops, pharmacies, restaurants and cafés displayed disparaging signs stating that ‘Jews, Gypsies and dogs’ were not allowed, although official bans existed only with regard to the Jewish population. In Bitola, a lawyer added Greeks and Vlachs to this list of undesirables at the entrance to his office.6Decision No. 4567 of the Bulgarian Council of Ministers concerning the formation of the Commissariat for Jewish Affairs and amendments of the Law for Protection of the Nation, Sofia, 27 August 1942. Printed in Vesković-Vangeli, “Treblinka,” 63–82, here 70–71; Saliu, “Genocidot,” 40; Kolonomos and Veskoviḱ-Vangeli, Evreite vo Makedonija, Vol. I, 18; Jewish Religious Community of Bitola to the Department for the Protection of the People concerning testimonies against persons who had organized or committed mass crimes against the Jews, Bitola, 1 March 1945. Printed in Vesković-Vangeli, “Treblinka,” 374–400, here 380 and 396.
In autumn 1941, the Bulgarian authorities introduced in Macedonia a compulsory military service for men between the ages of 18 and 45. This was only implemented to a limited extent: Only a small proportion of those mobilised were assigned to the armed forces, while the others had to perform several months of labour service, which often involved being sent to Old Bulgaria. The so-called labour battalions, which consisted of several labour groups, were mainly deployed in road, railway and fortification construction. It is striking that members of ethnic minorities were disproportionately represented in the labour battalions, which points to a targeted policy on the part of the local authorities.7Opfer, Im Schatten des Krieges, 306; Stojčev, Bugarskiot okupaciski sistem, 191–195.
From 1941, there were also individual Macedonian Roma among the regular soldiers of the Bulgarian army. The vast majority was, however, assigned to the labour groups, usually together with Turkish and Albanian comrades. From 1943 onwards, Roma who had not been mobilised before were increasingly used for other forms of forced labour, such as harvesting.8Krustev and Ivanova, Gypsies on the Roads of War, 292, 302–303, 318–319; Opfer, Im Schatten des Krieges, 281–282.
As far as direct state violence is concerned, the Bulgarian occupation authorities carried out several anti-partisan operations and reprisals, but they did not pursue a special policy of persecution towards Roma. According to the current state of research, there were also no attempts on the German side to pressure the Bulgarian government to extradite Roma. The only exception to this rule did not concern local Macedonian Roma, but several German Sinti artist families, who had escaped from Nazi Germany and gathered in the circus group of Karl Blum (1885–1972). After travelling for several month through the Balkans, the 34 Sinti refugees, including 16 children, were arrested by the Bulgarian police in Skopje and handed over to the Germans in January 1943. German authorities deported them via the camps Crveni Krst in Niš and Banjica in Belgrade to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp.9Ristović, “Karl Blum’s long journey,” 13–37.
The relatively low casualty figures under Bulgarian occupation are confirmed by population statistics for the city of Skopje from March 1944, in which Roma formed the third largest ethnic group. According to these statistics, of the 68,049 inhabitants of Skopje, 43,898 were Bulgarians (including Slavic Macedonians), 12,509 Turks, 5,026 Roma and 3,670 Albanians, followed by eighteen other nationalities in smaller numbers.10The Civil Sector of the Skopje Oblast Directorate to the President of the Skopje Oblast Chamber of Commerce concerning the total number of inhabitants of the city of Skopje by nationality, Skopje, 11 March 1944. Printed in Kolonomos and Veskoviḱ-Vangeli, Evreite vo Makedonija, Vol. II, 1096–1097.
It is likely, however, that a certain number of Macedonian Roma fell victim to general German anti-partisan operations and reprisal measures in the late phase of the war. At least one incident of this kind is recorded from the eastern part of the Skopje oblast. When the German combat groups [German: Kampfgruppen] ‘Siefken’ and ‘Bruns’ retreated from Greece and reached the Maleševo mountains region at the beginning of October 1944, they were attacked by partisans of the People’s Liberation Army. On 3 October 1944, the combat group ‘Bruns’ shot around 50 local civilians in retaliation, 40 of them in the town of Berovo [Albanian: Berova], among them also Roma. Four of the Roma victims have so far been identified by name, although their biographical data remain unknown: Muto Demirovski, Šukro Kamilovski, Kjazim Kunde and Ramadan Mustafov.11Trajkovski, “Odmazdnički akcii,” 173; Private Archive of Daniel Petrovski, Testimony of Urmeta Arifovska, interviewed by Daniel Petrovski in Berovo, 17 October 2022.
The State Commission for Determining the Crimes of the Occupiers and their Collaborators collected some testimonies about Roma victims, but there are no official figures on the total number of Roma victims in Macedonia during World War II. In the rare cases that Macedonian Roma are mentioned in official Yugoslav statistics on civilian victims of the Bulgarian and German occupiers, they are grouped together with other Muslim minorities. In the city of Skopje, for example, ‘16 Albanians, Turks, Gypsies and Macedonians belonging to Islam’ [Albanci, Turci, Cigani i Makedonci što mu pripaǵaa na islamot] were identified among the total number of 184 non-Jewish ‘victims of Fascist terror’ [žrtvi na fašističkiot teror].12Kralevski, Bea, 383.
In the lists of war victims compiled by the Yugoslav socialist authorities, such as the 1964 victim census, no Roma victims in Macedonia were listed. The same applies to the estimates of the Museum of Genocide in Belgrade.13Muzej žrtava genocida. “Stradali Jugoslavije.” Among demographic experts who have compared pre- and post-war censuses, different opinions exist on this topic. While the demographer Vladimir Žerjavić (1912–2001) didn’t see notable demographic losses of Roma in this area, the statistician Bogoljub Kočović (1920–2013) assumed a figure of 1,000 Roma victims during World War II.14Žerjavić, Population Losses, 156; Kočović, Žrtve, 76–79; 172.
All in all, the state of research on the situation of Roma in occupied Macedonia is insufficient. Since the 1990s, various oral history projects have attempted to fill the gaps by interviewing elderly Roma, most of whom experienced World War II as children or teenagers, and their descendants.15Fings et al., “… einziges Land,” 82–95; Jašari, Genocidot, 9–13; Michollek, “Sie schaufelten;” Polansky, One Blood, vol. III, 291–395; Private Archive of Daniel Petrovski, Testimony of Urmeta Arifovska, interviewed by Daniel Petrovski in Berovo, 17 October 2022; Saliu, “Genocidot;” Yahad-In Unum, Activity Report. The results are only of limited value in constructing a historical narrative, however, because many of the descriptions of events are vague or even erroneous with regard to perpetrators, location and time.
Nevertheless, the survivors’ memories offer an insight into the suffering of individual Roma, including hunger, forced labour, confiscation of tobacco and food products, looting and burning of property, rape, torture and murder. Bulgarian deportations of Macedonian Roma to labour camps in Old Bulgaria, like Simitli or Kjustendil, play a crucial role in the memories.
A recurring motif is intended mass shootings, which were allegedly prevented at the last moment by the personal intervention of individuals or partisans. Details of the time period and course of the events recounted vary greatly, as the example of Skopje shows: In April 1943, a man named ‘Kitanac’ is said to have convinced the Bulgarian occupiers not to execute the Roma who had already been loaded onto lorries, but to use them as labour. In another, undated case, the rescue is said to have been carried out by two Roma soldiers in German service named ‘Shukrija’ [Šukrija] and ‘Kurta’, who organised a written order to stop the execution at the last moment. Frequently mentioned is the alleged planned murder of all Skopjan Roma by the German occupiers in the late phase of the war, for which a mass grave trench had already been dug, but which was then prevented by the advance of the partisans.16Interview testimonies of Jashar Jashari [Jašar Jašari] (born around 1933) and Daut Selimov (born 1924), interviewed by Paul Polansky, printed in Polansky, One Blood, vol. III, 323 and 334; Fings et al., “… einziges Land,” 47; Kenrick and Puxon, Sinti und Roma, 92; interview testimony of Stefan Jankosovski [pseudonym] (born around 1935), interviewed by Nadine Mena Michollek in 2015, see Michollek, “Sie schaufelten,” 159–160, 179–180. Memories and narratives seem to overlap here. In some cases, it appears that the recruitment for compulsory labour service was wrongly perceived as an intended extermination measure. At least no documentary evidence has yet been discovered for this kind of narrative. The same is the case with purported Bulgarian plans to establish a Roma ghetto in the outskirts of Skopje.17Fings et al., “… einziges Land, ” 88; Jonuz, “Buchenwald,” 8; Deutscher Bundestag. Drucksache 18/6493, 6; Sozialgericht Berlin, Urteil, 9.
Allegations of mass murder actually carried out specifically against Roma can only be found in a series of interviews with survivors from Kumanovo and the surrounding area: At the beginning of 1942, 30 Roma (men, women and children) are said to have been shot in Sredorek, a Romani settlement in Kumanovo, in a German-Bulgarian reprisal measure. In the municipality of Lipkovo [Albanian: Likovё], according to a further interview, 50 Roma from the villages of Otlja and Matejče [Albanian: Mateç] had already been murdered before the local Albanian Ballists leader Suleiman Asipi, named Sulj-Otlja (unknown–1947), was able to stop the killings through personal intervention. In nearby Orizari [Albanian: Orizare], also in the municipality of Lipkovo, a telegram and a phone call from Sulj-Otlja are said to have been enough to stop the perpetrators, who by then had already murdered several elderly people and a pregnant woman.18See the interviews conducted by Rufat Jašari with Ašmet D. (born 1928) (Kumanovo 2008), Nešat M. (born 1937) (Kumanovo 2009), and Malik N. (born 1930) (Kumanovo 2011). All printed in Jašari, Genocidot, 9–11. Incidents on such a large scale were usually investigated by the Yugoslavian State Commission. So far, however, the information on Kumanovo and Lipkovo has not been corroborated by any archival documentation.
Roma Partisans and the Liberation of Macedonia
During World War II, Macedonian Roma also participated in the anti-fascist partisan movement led by Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980). Some of them had fled from labour battalions and camps or were former soldiers who had defected from the Bulgarian Army into partisan units. While many locals, including Roma, joined the resistance movement voluntary and deliberately, the partisans also carried out forced recruitments in the course of their attacks on villages and towns.
Roma served in various partisan military units: The Third, Seventh, Eleventh, Twelfth (’Skopjan’), Fourteenth, Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Nineteenth Macedonian People’s Liberation Brigades. The Fifteenth Macedonian Partisan Corps, to which several of these brigades belonged, was known as a ‘unit of brotherhood and unity’ [jedinica bratstva i jedinstva] because of its multi-ethnic character. Apart from Macedonians, many Albanians, Turks and Roma served in it. In the 7th Brigade, minorities of predominantly Muslim faith, including Macedonian Roma, even made up the overwhelming majority of fighters. Apart from participating in combat, Roma partisans also took part in various sabotage operations against the infrastructure used by the occupiers, such as the demolition of telegraph poles in the area between Kumanovo and Stracin. Furthermore, Roma are mentioned as members of military orchestras in partisan units.19Mitrovski, Petnaesti, 593.; Kralevski, Bea, 378; Biljanovski, Od Kozjak, 227–228; Kotevski and Mitrovski, Treta, 315; Mihajlovski Grujica, Treća, 26, 274–316, 325, 349–350; Report of the Kumanovo District Police Chief to the Skopje Oblast Directorate about a partisan attack on the village of Vojnik and the destruction of 24 telephone poles between Kumanovo and Stracin, telegram dated 13 March 1944. Printed in Trgo, Zbornik NOR, Vol. VII/3, 348; Confidential letter from the District Leader of Negotino to the Commander of the 56th Veles Regiment with proposals for the fight against illegals and the complete mobilisation of the male population aged 18 to 45, 7 July 1944. Printed in ibid., 404–407, here 405.
The majority of Roma partisans had joined their units in late 1944, when more and more parts of Macedonia were liberated. Most of the new recruits were immediately deployed in operations against Albanian Ballists and only then went through a three-month ‘military-political training’ [voeno-politička obuka], during which they were also familiarised with new Soviet weapons delivered by the Red Army. In the late phase of the war, their partisan units fought in other Yugoslav territories, especially in military operations to break through the Syrmian Front [Croatian: Srijemski front; Serbian: Sremski front] defended by Ustaše and Germans, which marked the border crossing into the Independent State of Croatia. Here, including the nearby Vrpolje, the partisan units suffered the highest losses.
The total number of Macedonian Roma partisans is difficult to determine because many of them were registered as members of other nationalities. Furthermore, as in the case of civilian victims of occupation, Macedonian Roma partisans are sometimes grouped together with other Muslim minorities in official Yugoslav statistics. It is stated, for example, that ’98 Albanians, Turks, Gypsies and Macedonians belonging to Islam’ were among the 902 partisans who lost their lives during the liberation of Skopje and the fighting in the immediate vicinity in November 1944.20Kralevski, Bea, 377–378.
So far, nevertheless, dozens have been identified by name, but the number can be expected to grow in course of ongoing research. Sejfo Kadri (born 1947), the son of a Roma partisan and prominent member of the Skopjan Fighters Union of the People’s Liberation and Anti-Fascist War of Macedonia [Sojuz na borcite od Narodnooslobooditelnata i antifašistička vojna na Makedonija, the Macedonian equivalent to SUBNOR], has collected the names of 27 Roma partisans killed in action from Skopje alone, most of them from the Roma neighbourhood of Topaana. Among them are the renowned brothers Ramiz Džemail Hamidovski (1919–1945) and Hamid Džemail Hamidovski (1928–1945). A total of 21 of these Skopjan Roma partisans died during the breakthrough of the Syrmian Front and its subsequent battles in April 1945. The youngest of them was born in 1928, the oldest in 1915.21All of them are mentioned in the official memorial book of Skopje, but without indication of their ethnicity. See Kralevski, Bea, 22–23, 30–32, 50–51, 58–59, 66, 69, 74–75, 86, 90, 103, 122, 125, 128, 140, 155–157, 392–394.
Two of the Roma partisans from Berovo, Mehmed Jašar Barjaktarovski (1926–1981) and Amza Ibrahim Sulejmanov (born 1924), received the Medal of Merits for the People [Orden na zaslugi za narodot] after the war. The Rom Rušid Šakir (1927–1945), a worker from Kumanovo, joined the partisans in September 1944 at the age of seventeen. He became a member of the 11th Macedonian Brigade and took part in the liberation of Veles, Skopje and Tetovo. Afterwards, he fought for the 3rd Macedonian Assault Brigade at the Syrmian Front. Šakir died during the breakthrough operation at the town of Šid on 12 April 1945, while helping a wounded comrade.
For Kumanovo, the history of Roma woman and partisan Alema Mustafovska (1921–unknown) is also known, who received the nickname ‘Partizanka’. Her father had left the family at an early stage of the occupation to join the partisan movement. In 1944, Mustafovska herself became a partisan within the 17th Macedonian Brigade of the Kumanovo Division. There she met the Roma partisan Sali Ibraimovski (biographical data unknown), whom she married during the war. Mustafovska participated in battles against German forces and Albanian Ballists, contributing in this way to the liberation of her home town Kumanovo, which her brigade achieved on 11 November 1944 together with other partisan units and Bulgarian troops. Alema Mustafovska and her husband survived the war and spent the rest of their life in Kumanovo, where they were very respected among the Romani community.22Učesnici, 373; Kotevski and Mitrovski, Treta, 315.
Post-War Development and Commemoration
In the first post-war census, which took place on 15 March 1948, 19,500 Roma were counted on the territory of Macedonia.23Konačni rezultati popisa, XIV, 437–450. It appears that more Roma had declared Romanes as their mother tongue than in the pre-war censuses, and this led to higher registration numbers. This was one of the indicators of a Yugoslav policy of tolerance towards Roma, which was based not the least on the recognition of their participation in the partisan resistance. According to one account, the Yugoslav authorities led by Tito even considered creating a Romani autonomous province within Macedonia as part of the newly established Yugoslav federal state.24Kenrick and Puxon, The Destiny, 112.
After the 1963 Skopje earthquake, which destroyed around 80 percent of the city, including large parts of Topaana and other Romani neighbourhoods, the area around the nearby village Šuto Orizari [Albanian: Shuto Orizarit; Romanes: Shuto Orizari] was developed to house Skopjan Roma made homeless by the earthquake and became urbanised. In 1996, Šuto Orizari and its neighbouring districts received the status of a Skopjan municipality with local self-administration headed by a Roma mayor and with Romanes as an official administrative language alongside Macedonian. Today, Šuto Orizari is the only municipality in North Macedonia with a Romani majority.
In socialist Yugoslav Macedonia, monuments to civilian victims of World War II usually did not specify their ethnicity. This also applies to Berovo, where a memorial dedicated to the victims of the German reprisal massacre of October 1944 stands at the site of the mass shooting near the local football stadium. The same is the true of the numerous monuments for partisan heroes which dominated the Macedonian remembrance culture. The names and biographical details of Roma partisans can be found on several of them throughout the country, but only relatives or friends would know about their ethnic identity. This even applies to a monument in the Skopjan Romani district of Šuto Orizari, which bears the names of twelve Roma partisans who had participated in the battles on the Syrmian Front. The Roma communities, however, found other ways to preserve the memory. In Šuto Orizari, an educational centre and a primary school were named after the Hamidovski brothers Hamid and Ramiz, while the Ensemble of Roma Folk Dance and Songs [Ansambl na narodni romski igri i pesni] in Kumanovo bears the name of the Roma partisan Rušid Šakir. And annual ceremonies and other events secure the knowledge for current and future generations.
Macedonian independence in 1991 opened up new possibilities for Roma self-organisation and commemoration. Roma members of parliament and newly founded NGOs, like for example ‘Romano Ilo’ or ‘Romalitico’, represented the interests of the minority and called for the inclusion of Roma history and the genocide in school textbooks. Roma from Macedonia were mostly not recognised as victims in the context of compensation for forced labour paid out by the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future in Berlin, Germany. Instead, elderly Roma who had suffered during World War II received humanitarian aid from the responsible International Organisation for Migration (IOM) between 2003 and 2005.25Erker, „Compensating the Rest of the World,“ 187–88. According to the IOM, there were about 4,500 Roma survivors left by 2005.
In recent years, the culture of remembrance has strengthened among the Macedonian Roma, in relation both to the persecution and suffering during World War II and to the history of Roma partisans. Exhibitions, documentary films and even theatre plays appeared, as for example ‘The Villain’ (Zlostornikot) by the author and director Daniel Petrovski (born 1986), which was staged by the theatre group of the Skopjan Roma NGO ‘Romano Ilo’ at the International Roma Theatre Festival ’Garavde Muja’ in Skopje in 2020.26“‘Zlostornikot’ na Daniel Petrovski.”
Initiatives to erect a memorial to Roma genocide victims of World War II in Šuto Orizari have so far failed, however. The same was the case with a campaign of the Roma politician and former member of the Macedonian Parliament, Samka Ibraimovski (born 1954), for an official recognition of 2 August as International Roma Holocaust Memorial Day by the Republic of Macedonia. Since 2017, however, non-Roma representatives of the Macedonian state participate in commemorative ceremonies organised in connection with this day.27“Samka Ibraimovski” and “Odbeležan.”
