A plaque dedicated to the Jews of Subotica murdered in the Holocaust says: "In memory of the 4000 Jews with whom we lived and built Subotica together who perished in fascist death camps in World War II."
The history of the Jews in Serbia is some two thousand years old. The Jews first arrived in the region during Roman times. The Jewish communities of the Balkans remained small until the late 15th century, when Jews fleeing the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions found refuge in the Ottoman-ruled areas, including Serbia.
The community flourished and reached a peak of 33,000, of whom almost 90% were living in Belgrade and Vojvodina, before World War II. About two-thirds of Serbian Jews were murdered in The Holocaust, having been particularly targeted as Hitler sought to punish both ethnic Serbs and Jews for German defeat in World War I. After the war, most of the remaining Jewish Serbian population emigrated, chiefly to Israel.
In the 2011 census only 787 people declared themselves as Jewish. The Belgrade Synagogue continues to function as a synagogue. The renovated Subotica Synagogue, once the fourth largest synagogue building in Europe, is now mainly a cultural space, but is available for services and other religious purposes.[2] The Novi Sad Synagogue has been converted into a cultural art space.
Ancient
Jews first arrived on the territory of present-day Serbia in Roman times,[citation needed] although there is little documentation prior to the 10th century.
The Jewish communities of the Balkans were boosted in the 15th and 16th centuries by the arrival of Jewish refugees fleeing the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions. SultanBayezid II of the Ottoman Empire welcomed the Jewish refugees into his Empire. Jews became involved in trade between the various provinces in the Ottoman Empire, becoming especially important in the salt trade.[3] In 1663, the Jewish population of Belgrade was 800.[4]
While the rest of modern-day Serbia was still ruled by the Ottoman Empire, territory of present-day Vojvodina was part of the Habsburg monarchy. In 1782, Emperor Joseph II issued the Edict of Tolerance, giving Jews some measure of religious freedom. The Edict attracted Jews to many parts of the Monarchy. The Jewish communities of Vojvodina flourished, and by the end of the 19th century the region had nearly 40 Jewish communities.[5]
Independent Serbia and Habsburg Vojvodina
Many Jews were involved in the struggle of Serbs for independence from the Ottoman Empire, by supplying arms to the local Serbs, and the Jewish communities faced brutal reprisal attacks from the Ottoman Turks.[3] In 1804, when Karađorđe's forces invaded the Ottoman Fortress of Smederevo, the Jews were expelled from Šabac and Požarevac. The independence struggle lasted until 1830, when Serbia gained its independence.
After Belgrade was liberated, the Jews fell victim to decades of discriminatory taxation and residential restrictions. [6] During the liberation of Belgrade, contrary to the strict orders issued by Serb leader Karađorđe, some of the rebels destroyed Jewish shops and synagogues. Some Jews were killed and a part of them was forcibly baptised. At the same time in the interior of Serbia rebels expelled Jews from towns and small places.[7]
House of Obrenović
With the reclamation of the Serbian throne by the Royal House of Obrenović under Miloš Obrenović in 1858, restrictions on Jewish merchants were again relaxed for some time, but only three years later they faced isolation and humiliation.[8] In 1861 Mihailo III inherited the throne and reinstated anti-Jewish restrictions.[3] In 1839, Jews were forbidden to open shops on Sundays and during Serbian holidays, causing them great damage because their shops were closed on Saturdays and all Jewish holidays.[9] In 1877 a Jewish candidate was elected to the National Assembly for the first time, after receiving the backing of all parties.[10][11]
In the 1860s–70s, a part of Serbian newspaper began publishing anti-Jewish articles resulting in threats being raised against the Jews.[12] In 1862, a fight broke out between the Austrians and Serbians and Jews in Belgrade had their rights revoked, similar to local uprisings in the 1840s.[13]
Sephardi Jews fleeing from Belgrade to Zemun in 1862
During the final stages of the 1877–1878 Serbo-Turkish wars thousands of Jews emigrated or were expelled by the advancing Serbian Army along with Turkish and Albanian families.
In 1879, the "Serbian-Jewish Singer Society" was founded in Belgrade to encourage Serbian-Jewish interaction and friendship. During World War I and World War II the choir was not allowed to perform. It was renamed "Baruch Brothers Choir" in 1950 and is one of the oldest Jewish choirs in the world still in existence.[14] The choir remains a symbol of community unification, although only 20% of the choir members are actually Jewish due to the dwindling Jewish population in the country (in World War II, half of the Jewish population of Serbia was killed).[15] By 1912, the Jewish community of Kingdom of Serbia stood at 5,000.[3] Serbian-Jewish relations reached a high degree of cooperation during World War I, when Jews and Serbs fought side by side against the Central Powers.[16] 132 Jews died in the Balkan Wars and World War I and in their honour a monument to them was erected in Belgrade at the Jewish Sephardic cemetery.[17]
The waxing and waning of the fortunes of the Jewish community according to the ruler continued to the end of the 19th century, when the Serbian parliament lifted all anti-Jewish restrictions in 1889.[3]
The Vidovdan Constitution guaranteed equality to Jews, and the law regulated their status as a religious community.[21]
World War II
Monument in Novi Sad dedicated to killed Jewish and Serb civilians in 1942 raid
The Kingdom of Yugoslavia attempted to maintain neutrality during the period preceding World War II. Milan Stojadinović, the prime minister, tried to actively woo Adolf Hitler while maintaining the alliance with former Entente Powers, UK and France. Nonwithstanding overtures to Germany, Yugoslav policy was not anti-Semitic: for instance, Yugoslavia opened its borders to Austrian Jews following the Anschluss.[22] Under increasing pressure to yield to German demands for safe passage of its troops to Greece, Yugoslavia signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy, like Bulgaria and Hungary. Unlike the other two, the signatory government of Maček and Cvetković was overthrown three days later in a British-supported coup of patriotic, anti-German generals. The new government immediately rescinded the Yugoslav signature on the Pact and called for strict neutrality. German response was swift and brutal: Belgrade was bombed without the declaration of war on 6 April 1941 and German, Italian, Hungarian and Bulgarian troops invaded Yugoslavia.
In Serbia, German occupiers established concentration camps and extermination policies with the assistance of the puppet government of Milan Nedić.[23]
The Nazi genocide against Yugoslav Jews began in April 1941.[24] The state of Serbia was completely occupied by the Nazis. The main race laws in the State of Serbia were adopted on 30 April 1941: the Legal Decree on Racial Origins (Zakonska odredba o rasnoj pripadnosti). Jews from Srem were sent to Croatian camps, as were many Jews from other parts of Serbia. In rump Serbia, Germans proceeded to round up Jews of Banat and Belgrade, setting up a concentration camp across the river Sava, in the Syrmian part of Belgrade, then given to Independent State of Croatia. The Sajmište concentration camp was established to process and eliminate the captured Jews and Serbs. As a result, Emanuel Schäfer, commander of the Security Police and Gestapo in Serbia, famously cabled Berlin after last Jews were killed in May 1942:
Similarly. Harald Turner of the SS stated in 1942 that:
"Serbia is the only country in which the Jewish question and the Gypsy question has been solved."[26]
By the time Serbia and Yugoslavia were liberated in 1944, most of the Serbian Jewry had been murdered. Of the 82,500 Jews of Yugoslavia alive in 1941, only 14,000 (17%) survived the Holocaust.[3] Of the Jewish population of 16,000 in the territory controlled by Nazi puppet government of Milan Nedić, police and secret services murdered approximately 14,500.[27][28]
There was a similar persecution of Jews in the territory of present-day Vojvodina, which was annexed by Hungary. In the 1942 raid in Novi Sad, the Hungarian troops killed many Jewish and non-Jewish Serb civilians in Bačka.
Historian Christopher Browning who attended the conference on the subject of Holocaust and Serbian involvement stated:[29]
Serbia was the only country outside Poland and the Soviet Union where all Jewish victims were killed on the spot without deportation, and was the first country after Estonia to be declared "Judenfrei", a term used by the Nazis during the Holocaust to denote an area free of all Jews.
Serbian civilians were involved in saving thousands of Yugoslavian Jews during this period. Miriam Steiner-Aviezer, a researcher into Yugoslavian Jewry and a member of Yad Vashem's Righteous Gentiles committee states: "The Serbs saved many Jews."[30] Currently[when?], Yad Vashem recognizes 131 Serbians as Righteous Among Nations, the highest number among Balkan countries.[31]
Chetniks
According to Yad Vashem, the Chetniks initially had an ambivalent attitude towards Jews and, given their status early in the war as a resistance movement against Nazi occupation, a number of Jews served among the Chetnik ranks.[32] As the Yugoslav Partisans grew in number and power, the anti-communist Chetniks became increasingly collaborationist and Jewish Chetniks switched to the partisan ranks. Subsequently, after the first half of 1942, Chetnik propaganda with chauvinist and antisemitic themes became a constant.[33] In various places in Serbia in the period from the middle of 1942, several hundred Jews were hiding, mostly women and children. According to the testimonies of surviving Jews, the Chetniks of Draža Mihailović persecuted the Jews in that area, and took part in their killing.[34] On many occasions, the Chetniks also handed them over to the Germans.[35]
The Federation of Jewish Communities in Yugoslavia was formed in the aftermath of World War II to coordinate the Jewish communities of post-war Yugoslavia and to lobby for the right of Jews to immigrate to Israel.[36] More than half of Yugoslav survivors chose to immigrate to Israel after World War II.
The Jewish community of Serbia, and indeed of all constituent republics in Yugoslavia, was maintained by the unifying power of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Yugoslavia. This power stopped with the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
Yugoslav wars
Prior to the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s, approximately 2,500 Jews lived in Serbia,[3] mostly in Belgrade.
The Jews of Serbia lived relatively peacefully in Yugoslavia between World War II and the 1990s, when the end of the Cold War caused the breakup of Yugoslavia and ensuing civil wars.
During the Yugoslav Wars, and international sanctions many Jews chose to immigrate to Israel and the United States. During the NATO bombing in 1999, the Federation of Jewish Communities in Yugoslavia relocated many of Belgrade's Jewish elderly, women and children to Budapest, Hungary for their safety; many of them emigrated permanently.[5]
David Bruce Macdonald states that Serbian nationalists used Jewish imagery, such as the Legend of Masada, in order to justify claims of Kosovo by comparing anti-semitism and serbophobia.[37] This theory is supported by Jovan Byford who writes that Serbian nationalists used the Jewish question for the martyrdom myth characteristic of Serbian nationalist discourse in the 1980s.[38]
Modernity
Manifestations of antisemitism in Serbia are relatively rare and isolated. According to the US State Department Report on Human Rights practices in Serbia for 2006: "Jewish leaders in Serbia reported rare incidents of anti-Semitism, including anti-Semitic graffiti, vandalism, small circulation anti-Semitic books, and Internet postings", incidents which must be viewed in the context of small but growing anti-Semitism in Serbia.[39] In 2013, downtown Belgrade was covered by posters, reportedly distributed by the Serbian branch of Blood & Honour, accusing Jews of being responsible for the 1999 bombing of the former Yugoslavia.[40]
The Serbian government recognizes Judaism as one of the seven "traditional" religious communities of Serbia.[41] The only remaining functioning synagogues in Serbia are the Belgrade Synagogue and the Subotica Synagogue.
In the 2011 census 787 people declared themselves as Jewish,[1] while 578 stated their religion as Judaism.[43] About half of them live in Belgrade alone, while almost all the rest are found in Vojvodina (especially in its three largest cities: Novi Sad, Subotica and Pančevo). The results of the 2002 census based on ethnicity and 2011 census based on religion are displayed below:
Subotica is a city and the administrative center of the North Bačka District in the autonomous province of Vojvodina, Serbia. Formerly the largest city of Vojvodina region, contemporary Subotica is now the second largest city in the province, following the city of Novi Sad. According to the 2022 census, the city itself has a population of 94,228, and the population of metro area stands at 123,952 people.
Serbia has been traditionally a Christian country since the Christianization of Serbs by Clement of Ohrid and Saint Naum in the 9th century. The dominant confession is Eastern Orthodoxy in the fold of Serbian Orthodox Church.
The history of the Jews in North Macedonia stretches back two thousand years, beginning during Roman antiquity, when Jews first arrived in the region. Today, following the Holocaust and emigration, especially to Israel, around 200 Jews remain in North Macedonia, mostly in the capital, Skopje and a few in Štip and Bitola.
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 Jewish people of Bosnia and Herzegovina are one of the minority peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina, according to country's constitution. The history of Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina 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. 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 500 years old, in terms of permanent settlement. Then a self-governing province of the Ottoman Empire, Bosnia was one of the few territories in Europe that welcomed Jews after their expulsion from Spain.
Novi Sad Synagogue is one of many cultural institutions in Novi Sad, Serbia, in the capital of Serbian the province of Vojvodina. Located on Jevrejska (Jewish) Street, in the city center, the synagogue has been recognized as a historic landmark. It served the local Neolog congregation.
The history of the Jews in Kosovo largely mirrors that of the history of the Jews in Serbia, except during the Second World War, when Kosovo, as part of Kingdom of Albania, was under Italian control and later under German control. The other exception is following the Kosovo War of 1999, when the province began its political separation from Serbia.
The diplomatic relations between Israel and Serbia were established on January 31, 1992, when Serbia was part of FR Yugoslavia. Israel has an embassy in Belgrade and Serbia had an embassy in Tel Aviv. Yugoslavia was the second country in Europe to recognize Israel in 1948. The two countries have economic and cultural ties, helped by a sizable community of Jews from the former Yugoslavia in Israel. Serbia agreed to move its embassy to Jerusalem on 4 September 2020 but decided not to after Israeli recognition of Kosovo as a sovereign state.
Full diplomatic relations between Croatia and Israel were established on April 9, 1997 following Croatia's independence from SFR Yugoslavia. Croatia has an embassy in Tel Aviv and honorary consulates in Ashdod, Caesarea, Jerusalem and Kfar Shmaryahu. Israel has an embassy in Zagreb. Relations between the two countries are described as friendly and highly cooperative. In recent years, Croatia and Israel intensified bilateral relations and cooperation in the field of defence and security. Croatia is one of the countries Israel occasionally turns to inside the EU to advocate on its behalf and it generally abstains or votes with Israel on key EU votes at the UN. Israeli president Reuven Rivlin described Croatia in 2019 as "Israel's strong ally in the EU, the UN and other multilateral organizations."
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 Holocaust in German-occupied Serbia was part of the European-wide Holocaust, the Nazi genocide against Jews during World War II, which occurred in the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia, the military administration of the Third Reich established after the April 1941 invasion of Yugoslavia. The crimes were primarily committed by the German occupation authorities who implemented Nazi racial policies, assisted by the collaborationist forces of the successive puppet governments established by the Germans in the occupied territory.
The Holocaust in Albania consisted of crimes committed against Jews in Albania while Albania was under Italian and German occupation during World War II. Throughout the war, nearly 2,000 Jews sought refuge in Albania-proper. Most of these Jewish refugees were treated well by the local population, despite the fact that Albania-proper was occupied first by Fascist Italy, and then by Nazi Germany. Albanians often sheltered Jewish refugees in mountain villages and transported them to Adriatic ports from where they fled to Italy. Other Jews joined resistance movements throughout the country.
Philip J. Cohen is a former United Nations advisor on Bosnia and Herzegovina who has written several works on the history of the former Yugoslavia. He authored a noted book Serbia’s Secret War: Propaganda and the Deceit of History, first published in 1996 by Texas A&M University Press to mixed reviews. He followed this in 1997 with the publishing of The World War II and contemporary Chetniks: Their historico-political continuity and implications for stability in the Balkans by Ceres. In 1998, he received an award from Franjo Tuđman the President of Croatia for his "contribution in spreading the truth about the aggression against Croatia" and "exposing Great Serb and anti-Croat propaganda" through his books.
Jasenovac – istina is a 2016 Holocaust denial documentary film by the Croatian filmmaker Jakov Sedlar. The film contends that the extent of The Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia, an Axis puppet state, and the World War II-era genocide of the country's Serb population was exaggerated through post-war communist propaganda. It focuses primarily on Jasenovac, a concentration camp run by state’s wartime fascist Ustaše government where an estimated 100,000 are believed to have perished, and suggests that the actual death toll never exceeded 18,000. The film also argues that Jasenovac continued being used as a concentration camp by Yugoslavia's communist authorities well after World War II, and that more inmates perished when it was run by the communists than when it was run by the Ustaše.
Milenković family refers to a group of three people: Svetozar Milenković (1907-1983), Vida Milenković (1912-1992), and Aleksandar Petrović (1917-1944). They are honoured as Righteous Among the Nations for saving Jews from the Nazis in Serbia during World War II.
Ljubica Štefan (1921–2002) was a Croatian historian. She was awarded honorific title Righteous Among the Nations.
Freedom of religion in Serbia refers to the extent to which people in Serbia are freely able to practice their religious beliefs, taking into account both government policies and societal attitudes toward religious groups.
Balkan Jews refers to Jews who live or lived in the Balkans.
Israel–Yugoslavia relations were historical foreign relations between Israel and now split-up Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Positive initial relations between the two states were subsequently negatively affected by the Arab–Israeli conflict and close relations between Yugoslavia and some Arab states, particularly Yugoslav relations with Egypt. Despite cancelation of the formal relations after the Six-Day War informal, commercial and cultural exchanges continued throughout the Cold War period.
A History of the Jews in Macedonia is a history book by Aleksandar Matkovski, published in Macedonian in 1982 and in English in 1983. It was the first Macedonian language book on the topic of the history of the Jews in Macedonia.
↑ Jovan Byford; (1995) Potiskivanje i poricanje antisemitizma: Secanje na vladiku Nikolaja Velimirovica u savremenoj srpskoj pravoslavnoj kulturi(in Serbian) p. 103-104; Helsinški odbor za ljudska prava u Srbiji, Beograd, ISBN86-7208-117-X
↑ "Chetniks"(PDF). Yad Vashem - The World Holocaust Remembrance Center. Retrieved 29 December 2023.
↑ Hoare n.d. {Chauvinist and antisemitic themes in Chetnik propaganda were not confined to the winter and spring of 1941–42, but remained a constant in the months and years that followed – an integral element in a movement whose goal was an ethnically pure Great Serbia inhabited solely by Orthodox Serbs}
↑ Hoare n.d. {As the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust notes: ‘As the Chetniks increased their cooperation with the Germans, their attitude toward the Jews in the areas under their control deteriorated, and they identified the Jews with the hated Communists. There were many instances of Chetniks murdering Jews or handing them over to the Germans.’}
"Jews of Yugoslavia 1941 – 1945 Victims of Genocide and Freedom Fighters", by Jaša Romano, from the English summary in the book Jevreji Jugoslavije 1941–1945. Žrtve Genocida i učesnici Narodnooslobodilačkog Rata, Belgrade: Federation of Jewish Communities of Yugoslavia, 1980; pp.573–590.
Hoare, Marko (n.d.). "The Chetniks and the Jews"(PDF). Archived(PDF) from the original on 15 August 2011. Extract from Genocide and Resistance in Hitler’s Bosnia: The Partisans and the Chetniks, 1941–1943, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006 (pp.156–162).
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