61 years since the Skopje Earthquake

61 years since the earthquake that destroyed much of Skopje, Macedonia.

The massive international assistance from both sides of the Cold War led to Tito calling Skopje 'The City of Solidarity'.

Pablo Picasso donated a painting for the post-earthquake Skopje Gallery of Modern Art

Legendary Macedonian singer Nikola Badev's song Skopje, Skopje is a very sad song about the tragic aftermath of the Skopje earthquake.

The first time I found out the song existed was in the mid-90s when hosting a Macedonian radio program in Australia. I asked my colleagues how come I'd never heard of this before? They played it... apart from evoking tragic memories, at first I found nothing controversial. But then we reached the line "Југославија нема да заборави" ("Yugoslavia will never forget").

There, the "Y" word.

Our community leaders were Greek Civil War partisan veterans still bitter that Yugoslavia had cut off their supply lines after the 1948 Tito-Stalin split. And before that, instead of going on to liberate the rest of Macedonia, in late 1944 Tito sent many of their comrades to their deaths in the meat grinder that was the Syrmian Front. While they were allied to the Yugoslav Socialist Republic of Macedonia, they abhorred Yugoslavia, so any direct reference to the country was avoided, hence why we didn't dare play the song on our radio program, nor had I heard it before.

When Skopje, Skopje is sung these days, "Yugoslavia" is replaced with "Macedonia" (Македонија нема да заборави). The first time I heard this lyric was 1997 in Pirin Macedonia (Bulgaria), where the song is popular and firmly in the repertoire of local bands and singers.

Interesting note is that my maternal grandfather, originally from Pirin Macedonia, donated money to an appeal organised by the local Macedonian community for the recovery of Skopje. After that, he would receive monthly "Makedonija" magazines and an annual almanac for free from the main Macedonian diaspora organisation in Skopje, Matica. The images in these publications gave me an visual insight to Macedonia at the time, as well as fuel my interest in the Macedonian language.