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JEWISH HERITAGE EUROPE

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SERBIA 1

Jewish Heritage in Serbia - General

Serbia 2 (Belgrade)              Serbia 3 (outside Belgrade)

Jews in Serbia
Contacts
Sources

Jews in Serbia
Serbia, including the provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo, was the former Yugoslavia's largest republic. It was an independent kingdom until conquered by the Turks in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. After this, like other Balkan states, it was frequently caught up in events associated with its location on the fracture-line of the Ottoman and Habsburg empires. Serbia's northern province of Vojvodina, for example, was from the late 18th century until 1918 mostly part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and a centre of Serbian (Christian) Orthodoxy. Vojvodina became an important centre of Jewish culture, following essentially the same lines of religious and cultural development as Hungary itself.

The Jewish population in what is now Serbia increased greatly following the expulsions of Jews from Spain and Portugal in the 1490s. Sephardi Jews made their way east and settled in areas that were part of the Ottoman empire, where they were welcomed. Jews prospered during the ensuing centuries, working as merchants and traders in an atmosphere relatively free from violent persecution or governmental interference.

When the new nation of Yugoslavia was created following the First World War, Serbian Jews found themselves in a federation of previously separate states, each with its own Jewish populations, organisations and customs. With their mixed heritage and prosperous communities, Serbian Jews took a leadership role in the state. Destruction of the Jews of this twenty-three year-old nation commenced with the German invasion and occupation of Serbia in April 1941, and was at once intensified and complicated by German support for the ultra-nationalist serb Chetniks. This period of persecution and murder had three phases: from late April to August 1941, when the German administration began a legal campaign restricting Jews' freedoms; from August to December 1941, when the uprising of the Serbs against the Germans led to brutal crackdowns against all Serbs, including Jews, and many were imprisoned or murdered; and from December 1941 to May 1942, when the Germans decided to concentrate surviving Jews (between 7,500 and 8,000 people) in the Sajmiste [Sajmište] concentration camp. Here, from March to May of 1942, all Jewish inmates were killed, mostly using poison gas. In August, a German report stated that 'the problem of Jews and Gypsies has been solved; Serbia is the only country where this problem no longer exists'. Belgrade was the first city in Europe officially declared Judenrein - that is, officially 'free' of Jews. A number of Yugoslav Jews who managed to evade the round-ups and camps subsequently distinguished themselves in the partisan struggle against the Nazis.

Post-Second World War communist Yugoslavia was a loose federation of six republics - Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, and Montenegro - ruled by former partisan hero Marshal Josip Broz Tito. During this period Jewish life began to return to the Balkans. Approximately 14,500 out of a pre-war population of 16,000 Serbian Jews had been killed, and from 1948 many of those who had survived migrated to Israel. Although communities of survivors returned to major towns, a great many communities were never revived. Abandoned and ruined synagogues and cemeteries dotted the country. Former synagogues were gradually either demolished or put to new uses. Many cemeteries were abandoned; some were pillaged and their gravestones used for construction. Others became overgrown and almost forgotten until researchers began to identify them in the 1990s.

Nevertheless Jews were represented throughout the state by autonomous republic-wide organisations which in turn were members of a nationwide Federation of Jewish Communities based in Belgrade. Legally, the Jewish community – consisting of about 6,000 people throughout the former Yugoslavia – was recognised as both an ethnic and a religious community. Communist Yugoslavia was not a part of the Soviet bloc, and local Jews were not persecuted or isolated as were Jews in other communist states. But they further assimilated into society and lost contact with religious life: they were ‘Yugoslavs’ first, and ‘Jews’ second. There was only one rabbi in the country.

The Federation of Yugoslav Jewish Communities was responsible for caring for Jewish cemeteries, synagogues and other infrastructure in towns where no communities existed any more. Some of these cemeteries were moved elsewhere, while others were maintained at considerable expense. The Jewish community also erected close to thirty memorials around Yugoslavia, to commemorate Jews who had lost their lives during the war. Throughout the 1980s, there was growing participation in wide-ranging programmes and activities run by the Federation and the individual Jewish communities, with the help of international Jewish philanthropic organisations.

Yugoslavia maintained an independent foreign policy, and its Jewish communities likewise maintained lively contact with Jews in Israel and the West. Such contact only became easier with the disintegration of the Eastern Bloc, in spite of the gradual collapse of Yugoslavia itself.

This began with the secession of Slovenia, and then of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, in 1991. A series of bloody Balkan wars tore apart the country, left hundreds of thousands of dead and millions displaced, and destroyed thousands of religious, cultural and historic heritage sites. The state’s collapse made the the continuation of Jewish institutions particularly difficult, even without the trauma of war and the Jewish emigration that resulted. Gradually the small Jewish communities of the former Yugoslavia have recreated themselves as more locally-based organisations, gradually rebuilt earlier connections, and expanded their association with Jewish communities and institutions in Israel and throughout Europe.

With Serbia once again an independent state, the Jewish community, which played no specific role in the Balkan wars of the 1990s, is in the process of redefining its role in the nation. The country's 2002 census reported 785 Jews in the country, with almost all of those (91%) in Serbia proper living in Belgrade and 40% of all Serbian Jews living in Vojvodina. This is probably a low figure; it is estimated that about 2,200 Jews live in Belgrade, which remains the centre of Jewish communal life in the country. The Jewish Joint Distribution Committee has been especially active in providing material aid to the community.

For more on the history of the Jews of Serbia and Montenegro see:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/serbia.html

Contacts
Federation of Jewish Communities in Serbia and Montenegro:

Address



Telephone
Ulica Kralja Petra 71a/111
Belgrade 11001
Serbia

+381 2621 837 [?]

Local community contacts in places with large communities are given under the appropriate town.

Sources


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