Exiting the train car, the visitor is confronted by a Soviet tank engine whose exhaust was pumped into Treblinka’s gas chambers. There is a model of Treblinka and a film with Samuel Willenberg’s testimony. He was one of the last survivors of Treblinka and died in 2016.
After encountering the fate of Macedonian Jews, we encounter the Holocaust outside Macedonia. We learn about the Wannsee Conference, where the Final Solution—the murder of all Jews, men, women and children—became the announced policy of the German State.
The visitor learns about the Einsatzgruppen, the mobile killers in the former Soviet territories invaded by the Germans, who together with local gendarmeries, antisemites, murderous militiamen and even ordinary neighbors, murdered more than 1.5 million Jews, town by town, village by village, bullet by bullet.
Then the visitor enters exhibitions about the five other death camps -- Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Majdanek and, of course, Auschwitz.
The paradox is that the deportation of Jews from Bulgarian-occupied territories triggered resistance and protest. It is an important story within the context of the Holocaust in occupied Europe.
When leaving the exhibition on the Death Camps, the visitor sees the alternatives to deportation—Resistance and Hiding. In Macedonia, Jews joined their fellow Yugoslavians and fought as an integral part of the Resistance. A grand mural depicting the resistance covers two floors of the Museum. Moshe Piade, a Jew, was Josip Broz Tito’s second in command. Tito was the leader of the Communist Party and led the revolution and the partisans.
We watch a film about the resistance, with testimonies of Jews who fought with their fellow Macedonians, and not in separate Jewish units. They commanded Macedonian Partisan Units and were named heroes of the nation. These testimonies are heard, some weapons are seen, and the visitor begins to comprehend the scope and importance of Macedonian Jewish resistance.