The history of the Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Serbo-Croatian: Jevreji Bosne i Hercegovine; Jevrejski narod Bosne i Hercegovine) spans from the arrival of the first Bosnian Jews as a result of the Spanish Inquisition to the survival of the Bosnian Jews through the Holocaust and the Yugoslav Wars. Jews are one of the minority peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina, according to the country's constitution. The Bosnian Jewish community is composed of both Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews.[2]
Judaism and the Jewish community in Bosnia and Herzegovina have one of the oldest and most diverse histories of all the former Yugoslav states, and is more than 400 years old, in terms of permanent settlement; records of Jewish presence in Bosnia and Herzogovina date back to the second century CE.[3] Some scholars have argued that there has been a more or less continuous presence of Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina since the Roman Empire.[4] Bosnia, then a self-governing province of the Ottoman Empire, was one of the few territories in Europe that welcomed Jews after their expulsion from Spain.
At its peak, the Jewish community of Bosnia and Herzegovina numbered between 14,000 and 22,000 members in 1941. Of those, 12,000 to 14,000 lived in Sarajevo, comprising 20% of the city's population.[5]
Today, there are 281 Jews living in Bosnia and Herzegovina, recognised as a national minority. They have good relations with their non-Jewish neighbors.[6][7][8][9]
Sephardi Jewish couple from Sarajevo in traditional clothing. Photo taken in 1900.
History
Rabbi Judah Alkalai and his spouse Esther in Vienna in 1874
Pre-Ottoman
In 1189, Ban Kulin of Bosnia issued a charter that guaranteed mutual free trade and movement for merchants from Dubrovnik through Bosnian territory, which enticed some Jewish merchants to settle in the area.[10] At least one Jewish house of worship from the Middle Ages has survived to provide physical evidence of the presence of Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina.[10] The remains of a Roman or Byzantine synagogue were found in the village of Dabravine, near Zenica.[10]
Jews had been forced to leave Spain by 31 July 1492 by the Alhambra Decree; the day was further delayed to 2 August 1492, which coincided with Tisha B'Av.[11] The first Jews from Spain and Portugal arrived in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the early 1500s.[12]
As tens of thousands of Jews fled the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, SultanBayezid II of the Ottoman Empire welcomed Jews who were able to reach his territories. Sephardi Jews fleeing Spain and Portugal were welcomed in–and found their way to–Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Thrace and other areas of Europe under Ottoman control. Jews from the Ottoman Empire began arriving in numbers in the 16th century, settling mainly in Sarajevo. The first Ashkenazi Jews arrived from Hungary in 1686, when the Ottoman Turks were expelled from Hungary[13] Among them was Tzvi Ashkenazi, who remained in Sarajevo for three years as rabbi. The Jewish community prospered in Bosnia, living side by side with their Bosnian Muslim neighbors, as one of the largest European centres for Sephardi Jewry outside of Spain.[6]
Jews in the Ottoman Empire were generally well-treated and were recognized under the law as non-Muslims. Despite some restrictions, the Jewish communities of the Empire prospered. They were granted significant autonomy, with various rights including the right to buy real estate, to build synagogues and to conduct trade throughout the Ottoman Empire.[14] Jews, along with the other non-Muslim subjects of the Empire, were granted full equality under Ottoman law by 1856.
In the late Ottoman time, the Sarajevo-based Sephardi rabbi Judah Alkalai played a prominent role as a precursor of modern Zionism by advocating in favor of the restoration of the Jews to the Land of Israel.
Habsburg rule
The Sarajevo Ashkenazi Synagogue in 1914 on the banks of the Miljacka
Sephardic Jews have certainly had a stronger role in BiH, given that only in Sarajevo, Banja Luka and Tuzla separate Ashkenazi communities were active, whereas Tuzla was the only city in which the Ashkenazi were numerous (there Hilde Zaloscer was born). In this period Moshe ben Rafael Attias achieved prominence as scholar of the Islamic faith and of medieval Persian literature.
The Bosnian Jewish community remained prominent after the unification of Yugoslavia. In the 1920s and 1930s Kalmi Baruh was a pioneer of Sephardic studies and Hispanic studies and an eminent leftist intellectual. Daniel Ozmo was active in Belgrade as a progressive painter and printmaker. Isak Samokovlija also started his literary career in the 1930s, which he continued after the war. Laura Papo Bohoreta was an active feminist and writer.
On 22 July 1941, Mile Budak–a senior Minister in the Croatian government and one of the chief ideologists of the Ustaše movement– declared that the goal of the Ustaše was the extermination of "foreign elements" from the Independent State of Croatia. His message was simple: "The basis for the Ustasha movement is religion. For minorities such as Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies, we have three million bullets."[16] In 1941, Ante Pavelić–leader of the Ustaše movement–declared that "the Jews will be liquidated in a very short time".[16]
In September 1941 deportations of Jews began, with most Bosnian Jews being deported to Auschwitz (many first to Kruščica concentration camp) or to concentration camps in Croatia. The Ustaše set up concentration camps at Kerestinac, Jadovna, Metajna and Slana. The most notorious, where cruelty of unimaginable proportions was perpetrated against Jewish and Serbian prisoners, were at Pag and Jasenovac. At Jasenovac alone, approximately one hundred thousand people were murdered (half of whom were Serbs), including 20,000 Jews.
By War's end, 10,000 of the pre-War Bosnian Jewish population of 14,000 had been murdered.[5] Most of the 4,000 who had survived did so by fighting with the Yugoslav, Jewish or Soviet Partisans[17] or by escaping to the Italian controlled zone[16] (approximately 1,600 had escaped to the Italian controlled zone on the Dalmatian coast[7] - among them Flory Jagoda, née Papo). Jewish members of the Yugoslav Army became German prisoners of war and survived the war. They returned to Sarajevo after the war.[16]Avraham Levi-Lazzaris, who emigrated to Brasil, became explorer of the first mines of diamonds in Rondônia, while Moses Levi-Lazzaris (1944–1990), mechanical engineer, became a Trotskyist militant.
Righteous among the Nations from Bosnia and Herzegovina
The people of Sarajevo helped many Jews to abscond and exfiltrate - among many, the story of the Hardaga and Kabilio families[18] as well as of the Sober-Dragoje and Besrević families[19] became particularly noteworthy after the war. The Righteous among the Nations from Bosnia and Herzegovina are those Bosnians who were honored by the Yad Vashem Memorial as Righteous Among the Nations, i.e. non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews from being murdered. Forty-nine Bosnians have been awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations.[20]
The Jewish Community of Bosnia and Herzegovina was reconstituted after the Holocaust, but most survivors chose to emigrate to Israel.[16] The community came under the auspices of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Yugoslavia, based in the capital, Belgrade.
Jewish personalities remained prominent in Socialist Bosnia and Herzegovina. Cvjetko Rihtman was the first director of the Sarajevo Opera in 1946–1947; his son Ranko would later be part of the Sarajevo rock band Indexi. Oskar Danon also achieved fame as composer and conductor during Yugoslav times. Ernest Grin was one of the leading Yugoslav medical doctors and a member of the Bosnia and Herzegovina Academy of Sciences and Arts. Emerik Blum, founder of Energoinvest, was Sarajevo's mayor from 1981 to 1983 and a member of the Organizational Committee of the 1984 Winter Olympics. Ivan Ceresnjes was active as an architect, supervising the restoration of Jewish buildings and sites, including the Ashkenazi Synagogue, the Kal Nuevo temple, and the 16th-century Old Jewish Cemetery, Sarajevo, whose project he was slated to present 24h before the war broke out in March 1992.
The Sarajevo Jewish humanitarian society, La Benevolencija, also provided aid to thousands of besieged Sarajevo residents, supplying food, medicine, and postal and radio communications.[27][28] Ceresnjes told a local paper that the nonsectarian relief effort was partly a gesture of gratitude to local Muslims who had hidden Jews during the Nazioccupation of Yugoslavia.[29] After the war started, La Benevolencija assisted the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in the evacuation of 2,500 Sarajevo residents, only one-third of whom were Jewish. There were 11 evacuations in all, three by air early on in the war, and eight by bus convoy after the airport had been closed to civilian traffic.[27] While other convoys were stopped, the Ceresnjes convoys all got through, as field staff from the Joint negotiated cease fires to ensure safe transfer.[30]
In 1997, the Jewish population of Bosnia and Herzegovina was 600, about half of whom were living in Sarajevo.[31] Most Jews who had fled Sarajevo and Bosnia chose to remain in Israel after the wars had ended, though some returned[7] and others moved elsewhere, such as Robert Rothbart (born Boris Kajmaković).
Independent Bosnia and Herzegovina
Sven Alkalaj, Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2007 until 2012
The Sarajevo Haggadah is a 14th-century illuminated manuscript which has survived many close calls with destruction. Historians believe that it was taken out of Spain by Spanish Jews who were expelled by the Inquisition in 1492. Notes in the margins of the Haggadah indicate that it surfaced in Italy in the 16th century. It was sold to the national museum in Sarajevo in 1894 by a man named Joseph Kohen.
During World War II, the manuscript was hidden from the Nazis by Dr. Jozo Petrovic,[35] the director of the city museum[36] and by Derviš Korkut, the chief librarian, who smuggled the Haggadah out to a Muslim cleric in a mountain village near Treskavica, where it was hidden in the mosque among Korans and other Islamic texts.[37] During the Bosnian War of 1992–1995, when Sarajevo was under constant siege by Bosnian Serb forces, the manuscript survived in an underground bank vault.
Afterwards, the manuscript was restored through a special campaign financed by the United Nations and the Bosnian Jewish community in 2001, and went on permanent display at the museum in December 2002.[6]
The oldest synagogues in Bosnia and Herzegovina were built by the Sephardi community in the 16th century. During the Austro-Hungarian period, the new Ashkenazi community also built their own temples, often adopting the Moorish Revival architectural style, as in the case of Sarajevo's Ashkenazi Synagogue. Most of them were destroyed during World War Two, including Sarajevo's Il Kal Grande.[38] Four synagogues remain in Sarajevo:
The Old Temple (Stari Hram/Kal Vježu, also known as Sijavuš-pašina daira or Velika Avlija): A Sephardi synagogue together with a large inn named the Great Courtyard is known to have been built in 1581 with the donation of Turkish Beylerbey Sijamush Pasha to help the poor members of the Jewish community in Sarajevo. It endured two fires in 1697 and 1768. The temple's current looks stems from restoration/renovations in 1821. It now serves as a Jewish museum.
The New Temple (Novi Hram/Kal Nuevo): Built alongside the Old Temple, today it serves as an art gallery owned by the Jewish community of Sarajevo.
The Bjelave Synagogue (Kal Di La Bilava): During WW2 the building was confiscated by the Ustaše and was used as a detention facility.
The history of Jewish immigration to Bosnia and Herzegovina and Sarajevo began in 1492 after the Spanish Catholic state under Ferdinand and Isabella managed to break the power of the Muslim rulers in Spain. For the remaining citizens of the Muslim and Jewish faiths, a time of discrimination and pressure to accept Christianity or leave has begun. At that moment, the Ottoman government allowed Jewish exiles from Spain to settle in their territory. Around 1551, the first Jewish families moved to Sarajevo, and as early as 1565, a Jewish (Sephardic) municipality was founded in Sarajevo. At the request of Sarajevo's Muslim leaders, Kanijeli Siyavuş Pasha, when he arrived in Sarajevo in 1581, had a large inn built as apartments for Jews, in order to live as a special people in the city. However, the Ottoman government did not impose on the Jews the ghetto provisions first established by the Christian rulers. Siyavuş Pasha managed to get permission from the sultan for the Jews of Sarajevo to build their own synagogue.[39]
In other cities and towns
Jewish community in Doboj
In the rest of the country some synagogue buildings have been preserved and renovated (such as in Doboj) but they do not host services.
Sephardi Jews were first mentioned in Banja Luka in the 16th century. Till the Austro-Hungarian time, the Jewish population of Banja Luka was exclusively of Sephardi Jews, originating from Spain and Portugal. They were into crafts and trade; crafts are practiced by the poorer Jews while those somewhat better off were into trade. Since 1878, Jews have given great impetus expansion of the capitalist economy and the spread of Western European ideas in Banja Luka. According to data from 1815 to 1878, holders of import-export trade were Serbs, Jews, and Muslims are oriented towards the internal trade and handicrafts. [40] Ashkenazi also settled in town in the 19th century. Before World War II, Banja Luka's Jewish Community consisted of a few hundred families. They were nearly all wiped out during the Holocaust in Yugoslavia. Today the number of Jewish families in Banja Luka is in the order of tens. The Jewish cultural center Arie Livne was opened in Banja Luka in 2015.
Sarajevo's Old Temple (Kal Vježu)
Sarajevo's New Temple (Kal Nuevo)
Sarajevo's Bjelave (Mejtaš) Synagogue (Kal di la Bilava)
Rogatica Jewish Cemetery: established in 1900, it hosts 16 tombstones plus 10 others probably older, stones sunk in the ground. Tumbs hold inscriptions in Hebrew, Ladino and Serbo-Croatian. There is also a memorial to the victims in the Second World War.[41]
Burial site of Rabbi Moshe Danon in Stolac (1832, The Sarajevo Megilla), restored by Ivan Ceresnjes in 1990-1991
Ivan Ceresnjes, architect-researcher, former president of the Jewish community of Bosnia and Herzegovina and vice-chairman of the Yugoslav Federation of Jewish Communities from 1992 to 1996[44]
Jakob Finci, current spiritual leader of the Bosnian Jewish community.
Moshe David Gaon (1889-1958), historian, scholar of the Sephardic world, bibliographer, educator, journalist, poet, pioneer of Ladino research.
Ernest Grin (1899–1976), Academician, professor, medical doctor, member of Bosnia and Herzegovina Academy of Sciences and Arts, laureate of AVNOJ award, WHO expert, founder of several medical establishments in the aftermath of WW2
Bosnia and Herzegovina is a country in Southeast Europe on the Balkan Peninsula. It has had permanent settlement since the Neolithic Age. By the early historical period it was inhabited by Illyrians and Celts. Christianity arrived in the 1st century, and by the 4th century the area became part of the Western Roman Empire. Germanic tribes invaded soon after, followed by Slavs in the 6th century.
The Serbs of Bosnia and Herzegovina, often referred to as Bosnian Serbs or Herzegovinian Serbs, are native and one of the three constituent nations of the country, predominantly residing in the political-territorial entity of Republika Srpska. Most declare themselves Eastern Orthodox Christians and speakers of the Serbian language.
The history of the Jews in Croatia dates back to at least the 3rd century, although little is known of the community until the 10th and 15th centuries. According to the 1931 census, the community numbered 21,505 members, and it is estimated that on the eve of the Second World War the population was around 25,000 people. Most of the population was murdered during the Holocaust that took place on the territory of the Nazi puppet state called the Independent State of Croatia. After the war, half of the survivors chose to settle in Israel, while an estimated 2,500 members continued to live in Croatia. According to the 2011 census, there were 509 Jews living in Croatia, but that number is believed to exclude those born of mixed marriages or those married to non-Jews. More than 80 percent of the Zagreb Jewish Community were thought to fall in those two categories.
The Sarajevo Synagogue is an Orthodox Jewish congregation and synagogue, located on the south bank of the river Miljacka, in Sarajevo, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The synagogue was constructed in 1902 and is the only functioning synagogue in Sarajevo today. The congregation worships in the Ashkenazi rite.
The Croats of Bosnia and Herzegovina, often referred to as Bosnian Croats or Herzegovinian Croats, are native to Bosnia and Herzegovina and constitute the third most populous ethnic group, after Bosniaks and Serbs. They are also one of the constitutive nations of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Croats of Bosnia and Herzegovina have made significant contributions to the culture of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Most Croats declare themselves Catholics and speakers of the Croatian language.
Ivan Čerešnješ, also known as Ivica Čerešnješ, is a Bosnian architect-researcher at the Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem specializing in the documentation of the Jewish architectural-cultural heritage in the former Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe. During the Bosnian War of 1992–1995 he served as the president of the Jewish community of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and played a central role in the rescue and evacuation of thousands of Sarajevo residents.
The Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia involved the genocide of Jews, Serbs and Romani within the Independent State of Croatia, a fascist puppet state that existed during World War II, led by the Ustaše regime, which ruled an occupied area of Yugoslavia including most of the territory of modern-day Croatia, the whole of modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina and the eastern part of Syrmia (Serbia). Of the 39,000 Jews who lived in the NDH in 1941, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum states that more than 30,000 were murdered. Of these, 6,200 were shipped to Nazi Germany and the rest of them were murdered in the NDH, the vast majority in Ustaše-run concentration camps, such as Jasenovac. The Ustaše were the only quisling forces in Yugoslavia who operated their own extermination camps for the purpose of murdering Jews and members of other ethnic groups.
The Resolution of Sarajevo Muslims or Muslim Resolution of 1941 was one of the Resolutions of Muslims from Bosnia and Herzegovina declared by 108 notable Muslim citizens of Sarajevo during the Second World War in Sarajevo on October 12, 1941.
Viktor Gutić was a Croatian army colonel who was an Ustaše commissioner for Banja Luka and the Grand Prefect of Pokuplje in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) during World War II. He was responsible for the persecution of Serbs, Jews and Roma in the Bosanska Krajina region of Bosnia between 1941 and 1945, and reported to the principal commissioner for Bosnia and Herzegovina, Jure Francetić.
Uroš Drenović was a Bosnian Serb military commander in the central Bosnia region of the fascist puppet state known as the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), led by the Ustaše, during World War II. After distinguishing himself in resisting the Ustaše alongside communist-led rebels, Drenović betrayed the communist-led Partisans and began to collaborate with the Ustaše, Italians and Germans against them.
The May 1941 Sanski Most revolt occurred near the town of Sanski Most in what was at the time Axis-occupied Yugoslavia. The Serb population revolted against oppression by the Ustaše regime, the rulers of the Independent State of Croatia who were sponsored by Nazi Germany. Many civilians died during the three days of hostilities.
Berta Bergman was a Bosnian Jewish physician and partisan. She is also well known for being the first woman to finish high school in Bosnia.
Kruščica was a concentration camp established and operated by the fascist, Croatian nationalist Ustaše movement near the town of Vitez, in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), between August and October 1941, during World War II.
Il Kal Grande, also spelled Il Kal Grandi, is a former Orthodox Jewish congregation and synagogue, located in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The congregation worshiped in the Sephardi rite. The building has been used as a cultural center since 1993.
La Benevolencija is a Jewish humanitarian organization based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. During the Siege of Sarajevo in the 1990s, the organization provided medical aid, food rations and educational services for the people trapped in the city.
Hieromartyr Platon, Bishop of Banja Luka was a Serbian Orthodox cleric who served as the Bishop of Banja Luka between 1940 and 1941. His tenure ended in May 1941, when he was abducted, tortured and killed by followers of the Ustaše movement.
See also History of the Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Balkan Jews refers to Jews who live or lived in the Balkans.
The Jewish Municipality of Sarajevo, also the Jewish community of Sarajevo, is a religious organization of citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina of Jewish origin. The seat of the municipality is in Sarajevo.
References
↑ Konačni rezultati Popisa 2013 KNJIGA 2 – ETNIČKANACIONALNA PRIPADNOST,VJEROISPOVJEST, MATERNJI JEZIK/ NATIONALITY,RELIGION,LANGUAGE. Federalni zavod za statistiku. 13 April 2017.
Friedman, Francine (2022). Like salt for bread: the Jews of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Studia Judaeoslavica. Leiden; Boston: Brill. ISBN978-90-04-47104-7.
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