Clarifying 70 Years of Whitewashing and ... - Shelomo Alfassa

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property was looted and stolen. 92 A curfew was imposed on the city and all movement forbidden. After
the residences were evacuated, the police checked, house by house, to ensure that all the family members
had left. The Jews were marched from the assembly points and frisked – all valuables were confiscated.
The Jewish families were marched down muddy snow covered lanes of their villages and by 7am they
arrived at the railway station where they were crammed into trains fit for animals. 93 No food, no water, no
light, no bathroom facilities, many having to stand the entire way, they were locked inside wooden and
iron boxcars for a 17 hour ride to holding facilities, tobacco warehouses in Skopje. 94 There, a temporary
detention center was established in a large tobacco warehouse known as the ‘Monopol.’ This place was
utilized for it had a railroad spur adjacent to it. Albert Sarfati, a survivor of the Monastir deportation
recounts:
They loaded us and our luggage onto wagons, 60 people in each, many of them standing. There
was no water. The children were crying…a woman crouched down to give birth… at midnight we
arrived at Skopje. The wagons were opened and we were pushed into two large buildings…
inside the Bulgarian soldiers beat us relentlessly... 95 The weather was cold, there was little food
and few blankets, and the Jews were continually searched, beaten, and humiliated…Women and
girls were raped. 96
Mr. Sarfati added: “We did not know what awaited us, but the dreadful treatment we received from the
Bulgarians, showed the value of the promises given us, that we would only be taken to a Bulgarian work
camp.” Upon arrival, they locked 500 people in per room, with no latrines, no water and no food. One
could not look out the window without risk of being shot. The people were forced to strip out of their
clothing on the pretext of government-men looking for hidden valuables. 97 The Jews were held there for
10 days then transferred with enormous cruelty via train. 98 Historian Mark Cohen reports the railroad
transports took the Macedonian Jews from Monopol to Treblinka. The journey typically took six days,
and during this time the Jews were locked in cattle or freight cars. Several Jews died during each
transport. 99
Until that very moment we believed we would be sent to the central areas of Bulgaria as
promised us. But, when we saw the Germans, we grasped that our die had been cast , and that the
92 On March 2, 1943, Bulgaria passed a law granting Jewish property to the state. This Jewish communal and private property left
behind in Monastir was sold for 19,564,486 Bulgarian lev. (For information on Jewish property values in ‘Old’ and ‘New’
Bulgaria see: Yahil, Leni. Friedman, Ina. Galai, Haya. The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry, 1932-1945. 586)
93 Oren. 195
94 Even the eight sick Jews from the hospitals were taken and placed inside the rail car.
95 Testimony of Albert Sarfati, survivor from Monastir; Yad Vashem Website ‘Monastir During the Holocaust.’ Also see Sarfati
in Oren. 212
96 USHMM Website “The Holocaust In Macedonia” (Also, Oren in A Town Called Monastir; reports the rapes of young Jewish
girls by Bulgarian and German policemen, 197)
97 Arad. 143
98 IBM’s subsidiary, Watson Business Machines Corporation, Ltd. had opened in Sofia in 1938 and their single largest customer
was the Bulgarian Railroads. Using IBM Hollerith punch card tabulating machines (the forerunner to the modern computer) at
every major railroad stop, train authorities could precisely schedule trains, whether they were for passengers, freight, or genocidal
purposes. For a full accounting, see IBM and The Holocaust. (Black, Edwin. IBM and The Holocaust. Crown (Random House)
New York, 2001) 385
99 Cohen, Mark. Last Century of a Sephardic Community: The Jews of Monastir, 1839-1943. Foundation for the Advancement of
Sephardic Studies and Culture, New York, 2003.178-179
Judaic Studies Academic Paper Series / Library of Congress ISSN No. 2156-0390 © Shelomo Alfassa (shelomo@alfassa.com)