Members of the US Army 8th Evacuation Hospital in Skopje, Yugoslavia, following the earthquake in 1963. The unit was flown to the disaster site to provide medical care to the victims
Within days after the earthquake took place, 35 nations requested that the United Nations General Assembly place relief for Skopje on their list of agendas. Relief, in the form of money, medical, engineering and building teams and supplies was offered from 78 countries 3. The famous artist Pablo Picasso donated his painting Head of a Woman (1963), which was exhibited in the new post-earthquake Museum of Contemporary Art[1][2][3] in Skopje.
Skopje must not remain merely a newspaper report of its first sufferings, but must be the responsibility of all of us, of all men who today or tomorrow, through some similar new catastrophe, may become Skopians.
”
Jean-Paul Sartre, one of the leading figures of the French philosophy and literature:
“
Skopje is not a film, not a thriller where we guess the chief event. It is a concentration of man’s struggle for freedom, with a result which inspires further struggles and no acceptance of defeat.
”
.
Gallery
Symbol of the earthquake: The Old Railway Station in Skopje. The clock stopped at 5.17 on July 26, 1963. Today the building is used by the Museum of the city of Skopje (Muzej na grad Skopje).