 The territory of the Republic of North Macedonia was divided between Bulgaria and Italian Albania in June 1941.The Yugoslav Communists Resistance began officially in 1941 in what is now North Macedonia.On 2 August 1944 (St. Elias's Day), honoring the fighters of the Ilinden Uprising, the Anti-fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia (ASNOM), meeting in the Bulgarian occupation zone, proclaimed clandestinely the Macedonian state (Democratic Federal Macedonia) as a federal state within the framework of the future Yugoslav federation.