History of the Jews in Serbia
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Jews first arrived in what is now the Republic of Serbia in Roman times. The Jewish communities of the Balkans remained small until the late fifteenth century, when Jews fleeing the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions found refuge in Ottoman-ruled areas, including Serbia. Jewish communities flourished in the Balkans until the turmoil of World War I. The surviving communities, including that of Serbia, were almost completely destroyed in the Holocaust during World War II. The Jewish community of Serbia now numbers fewer than 800.
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[edit] History of the community
[edit] Ancient communities
Jews first arrived in the region now known as Serbia in Roman times, although there is little documentation prior to the tenth century AD. For the next five hundred years, documentation on the Jews of the Balkans is sketchy.
[edit] Spanish refugees
The Jewish communities of the Balkans were boosted in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by the arrival of Jewish refugees fleeing the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions. Sultan Bayezid 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 [1].
[edit] Ottoman rule
With generally good relations between the Jews and Serbs, the Jewish communities prospered, and by the nineteenth century Jewish merchants were largely responsible for the trade routes between the Ottoman Empire's northern and southern territories [1].
Beginning in 1804, the Serbs began to fight the Ottoman Turks for independence. Many Jews were involved in the struggle by supplying arms to the local Serbs, and the Jewish communities faced brutal reprisal attacks from the Ottoman Turks [1]. The independence struggle lasted until 1830, when Serbia gained its independence.
The new Serbian government was not friendly toward the Jewish community, and by 1831 there were prohibitions against Jews entering some professions. The situation of the Jews briefly improved under the rule of Prince Mihailo Obrenović (ruled 1839-1842), but anti-Jewish provisions were reinstated under Prince Alexander (ruled 1842-1858).
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, but three years later, in 1861 Mihailo III inherited the throne and reinstated anti-Jewish restrictions.[1].
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.[2]
By 1912, the Jewish community of Serbia stood at 5,000. [1].
- See also: History of Serbia
In the aftermath of World War I, Serbia merged with Montenegro, and then united with State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs to form the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which was soon renamed Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Serbia's relatively small Jewish community of 13,000 (including 500 in Kosovo)[3], combined with the large Jewish communities of the other Yugoslav territories, numbering some 51,700. In the inter-war years (1919-1939), the Jewish communities of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia flourished.
Prior to World War II, 10,000 Jews lived in Belgrade, 80% being Ladino-speaking Sephardi Jews, and 20% being Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews[4].
[edit] The Holocaust
As the Nazis and their allies closed in on the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in March 1941, the government of Dragiša Cvetković and Vladko Maček enacted anti-Jewish edicts and signed an alliance with the Axis Powers. The alliance with the Nazis was rejected by most Yugoslavs, and in April 1941 German, Italian, Hungarian and Bulgarian troops invaded Yugoslavia.
Between 1941 and 1944 in Serbia existed the puppet Government of National Salvation. The Nazi genocide against Serbian (and Yugoslav) Jews began in September 1941, with the Jews of Banat and Belgrade being the first to be persecuted. The annihilation of Serbian Jewry was carried out with brutal efficiency by the German army, quislings and by the Ustashe whose Independent State of Croatia occupied parts of Vojvodina. The Croatian Ustashe murdered between 300,000 and 700,000 Serbs, approximately 40,000 Gypsies and 32,000 Jews in the territories they controlled. The Germans set up several concentration camps to murder Serbs, Jews and Gypsies, the two main camps being Sajmište and Banjica. The Ustaše also set up concentration camps at Kerestinac, Jadovna, Metajna and Slana. The most notorious were concentration camps in Pag and Jasenovac. At Jasenovac alone, 80,000 people were murdered[citation needed] (mostly Serbs), including 20,000 Jews[5].
By the time Serbia and Yugoslavia were liberated in 1944, most of Serbian Jewry had been murdered. Of the 82,500 Jews of Yugoslavia alive in 1941, only 14,000 (17%) survived the Holocaust[1]. Only 4,000 Serbian Jews had survived the Holocaust[6].
[edit] Post-war community
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[7]. The Federation was headquartered in Belgrade, the capital of the post-war Yugoslavia.
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. However, this power ended with dissolution of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
[edit] Yugoslav wars
The Jews of Serbia lived relatively peacefully in Yugoslavia between World War II and the 1990s. However, the end of the Cold War saw the breakup of Yugoslavia, and wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. There were also a war in the Serbian province of Kosovo-Metohija and NATO raids of Serbia and Montenegro.
While there was little anti-Semitism in Serbia during the wars[8], the Jewish community, as with all Serbians, suffered as a result of the wars. Many Jews chose to immigrate to Israel and the United States. During the Kosovo Conflict, 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[9].
[edit] Today
[edit] Numbers
Prior to the conflicts of the 1990s, approximately 2,500 Jews lived in Serbia[1], most in Belgrade.
According to the 2002 Serbian census, there were 785 Jews in Serbia. Almost all Jews (91%) in Central Serbia live in Belgrade. Forty-percent of Serbian Jews live in Vojvodina. The results of the 2002 census are displayed below[10]:
| Area | Jewish population |
Total population |
|---|---|---|
| Belgrade | 415 | 1,576,124 |
| Novi Sad | 400 | 299,294 |
| Subotica | 89 | 148,401 |
| Pančevo | 42 | 127,162 |
| Rest of Serbia | 239 | 5,646,314 |
| Total | 1,185 | 7,498,001 |
The only remaining functioning synagogue in Serbia is the Belgrade Synagogue. There are also small numbers of Jews in Zrenjanin and Sombor, with isolated families scattered throughout the rest of Serbia.
Anti-Semitism in Serbia is relatively rare and isolated, although there have been some anti-Semitic incidents. According to the US State Department Report on Human Rights practices in Serbia for 2006, "Jewish leaders in Serbia reported continued incidents of anti-Semitism, including anti-Semitic graffiti, vandalism, small circulation anti-Semitic books, and Internet postings", and that anti-Semitic incidents have been on the rise in Serbia.[11] However these have been aimed only at Ashkenazi Jews.
The Serbian government recognizes Judaism as one of the seven "traditional" religious communities of Serbia[12].
[edit] Ancestry
Even today, the majority of Serbian Jews are Sephardim (descendants of refuges from the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions).
[edit] Vojvodina
While the rest of Serbia was still ruled by the Ottoman Empire, Vojvodina – an autonomous province within the Republic of Serbia – was ruled by the Habsburg Monarchy from the end of the 17th century. Vojvodina too had previously been ruled by the Ottoman Empire, and it was under Ottoman rule that the first Jews settled in the region.
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 Habsburg Monarchy, including Vojvodina. The Jewish communities of Vojvodina flourished, and by the end of the 19th Century the region had nearly 40 Jewish communities.[13]
The 1931 census counted 21,000 Jews in the province. The Jewish communities of Vojvodina, as in the rest of Serbia, were largely destroyed in the Holocaust, particularly in Banat, which was under direct German occupation, and in Bačka, which was under Hungarian occupation. In 1942 raid, the Hungarian troops killed many Jewish and Serb civilians in Bačka. Synagogues in Zrenjanin and Kikinda were demolished during war, while the synagogue in Pančevo was demolished after war because there were only a few Jews remaining there.
Today, 329 Jews – almost half of Serbian Jewry – live in Vojvodina, most in Subotica, Pančevo, Zrenjanin and Sombor.
[edit] Notable people
- Moša Pijade, politician, painter, art critic and publicist
- Oskar Davičo, Serbian poet
- Danilo Kiš, Serbian writer
- David Albahari, Serbian writer
- Sonja Licht
- Erich Šlomović art collector
[edit] Notes and references
- ^ a b c d e f g Virtual Jewish History Tour - Serbia and Montenegro
- ^ Virtual Jewish History Tour - Serbia and Montenegro
- ^ "Jews of Yugoslavia 1941 – 1945", by Jasa Romano, Federation of Jewish Communities of Yugoslavia, 1980; pp. 573-590.
- ^ Belgrade Synagogue
- ^ "Jews of Yugoslavia 1941 – 1945", by Jasa Romano, p7
- ^ Synagogues Without Jews-Croatia and Serbia
- ^ Jews of the Former Yugoslavia After the Holocaust
- ^ Serb backers blame talmudic Zionist Jews
- ^ Synagogues Without Jews-Croatia and Serbia
- ^ Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia, 2002 Census Results, p12 (Serbian)
- ^ Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, Serbia, 2006
- ^ http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2005/51578.htm International Religious Freedom Report 2005, Serbia and Montenegro (includes Kosovo) (released by US Department of State)
- ^ Synagogues Without Jews-Croatia and Serbia
- Jewish Virtual Libray, Serbia and Montenegro
- Synagogues Without Jews - Serbia and Croatia
- Jews of the Former Yugoslavia After the Holocaust
- American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Serbia-Montenegro
- Belgrade Synagogue
- "Jews of Yugoslavia 1941 - 1945 Victims of Genocide and Freedom Fighters", by Jasa Romano, from the English summary in the book Jevreji Jugoslavije 1941-1945. Zrtve Genocida I Ucesnici Narodnosloodilckog Rata, Belgrade: Federation of Jewish Communities of Yugoslavia, 1980; pp. 573-590.
[edit] External links
- (Serbian) Official city of Belgrade site about Belgrade Jews
- (Serbian) Jewish community of Belgrade
- (Serbian) (English) Jewish community of Zemun (a district in Belgrade)
- (Serbian) (English) Jewish Historical Museum in Belgrade
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