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JEWISH HERITAGE EUROPE
An Online Resource Centre
SERBIA 3
There were Jewish communities throughout Serbia before the Holocaust, with an especially high number of settlements in Vojvodina, the northern part of Serbia, which was for many years part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The ravages of the Holocaust destroyed most of those communities. Survivors were often too small in number to form a viable Jewish community. Many moved to Belgrade or emigrated, often to Israel. Some assimilated, losing their Jewish identity. After the war there were thus abandoned or neglected Jewish sites in many Serbian towns and villages; many were torn down in the ensuing decades, but about twenty synagogues, and many other Jewish sites, survive in one form or another.
By far the majority of these are in Vojvodina, where cemeteries and/or synagogues existed in as many as 80 locations before the Second World War. Historic photos and drawings of several can be seen in Sosberger 1998. Today, most synagogue buildings that remain - such as the grand structures at Novi Sad and Subotica - are protected monuments. Many are being (slowly) restored or adapted to new uses, and nowadays this is usually done in ways that incorporate visible reminders of their Jewish origins. Dozens of Jewish cemeteries also exist in Serbia, but most are in poor condition.
Outside Belgrade and Zemun, Jewish communities survive in Novi Sad, Niš, Subotica and Zrenjanin.
Ada
The architecturally eclectic synagogue was built in 1896. It had a tripartite façade, the central bay of which comprised three arched doors with arched windows above, topped by a circular window and a corbel table handled in the romanesque manner. There was probably a stone Decalogue (the Ten Commandments), at the apex of the gable. Two identical towers flanked the central bay, divided into three registers and surmounted by small pediments. At the top of each was a large, nearly spherical cap, resembling those at the Dohany Street synagogue in Budapest. These were further surmounted by a metal Star of David.
The synagogue was destroyed in 1973. A commemorative plaque was placed on the site in 1994.
Apatin
Apatin's community of about 60 Jews was annihilated in the Holocaust. Their simple Romanesque/Rundbogenstil synagogue had been built in 1885. The building was used as a Baptist church in the 1950s. It is now vacant.
The structure is noteworthy for the large painting on its ceiling, in which the Decalogue (Ten Commandments) is revealed beneath a radiant sunburst in an otherwise cloud-filled sky. The Hebrew text of the commandments is painted in reverse, perhaps indicating that the artist used a mirror or a reverse-transfer technique to create the image. A rabbi's house survives near the synagogue; there is also a cemetery dating from 1780, which includes an Ohel.
See 'Baffling painting in Serbian shul,' Jewish Telegraphic Agency (6 September 2004). Online at:
www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/news/article/20040906InoldSerbianshul.html
Backa Topola [Bačka Topola] Topolya (Hungarian)
There was a Jewish community here from 1770 and a synagogue by 1833. The synagogue of 1863 was demolished in 1950. A rabbi's house with prayer room, built in 1920, is now used as a library. It is recognisable by the Star of David inscribed in a roundel above the main entrance.
The town also has a Jewish cemetery with Secession-period Ohel and Holocaust memorials. Volunteers from Hungary cleaned the cemetery in February 2004.
Bajsa [Bajša]
The synagogue, built in 1780, has been converted into apartments.
Cantavir [Čantavir]
Synagogue built in 1860, destroyed in 1950. The cemetery survives, its Ohel destroyed.
Celarevo [Čelarevo]
Archaeological excavations in 1972 at a large late 8th- and early 9th-century necropolis about 20 miles west of Novi Sad unearthed hundreds of brick fragments, some inscribed with menorot, Hebrew letters and other Jewish symbols. What this tells us about the individuals commemorated is unclear; it is possible that they had merely appropriated some Jewish customs or symbols.
Several hypotheses have been put forward to explain the site, which dates from the period during which the area was dominated by the Avars, a nomadic people who entered Europe in the 6th century CE. It has been suggested that those buried in the cemetery were from a Central Asian tribe newly migrated into the region, or that the culture of the Crimean Khazars, whose leaders converted to Judaism in the 8th century, influenced those who created it. There were many points of contact between Asian tribes and Central Asian Jews, so the possibilities are varied.
Artefacts from the site are on view at Novi Sad City Museum:
Opening hours
Monday
10:00 - 17:00
closed
Address
Telephone
Email
Mamula's barracks
Upper Terrace
Petrovaradin Fortress
Novi Sad
+381 21 433 145
+381 21 433 613
muzgns@eunet.yu
Erdevik
Synagogue built in 1897, now used as an apartment building.
Hajdukovo
Synagogue from 1900, now used as a warehouse.
Kovilj
The synagogue was built in 1900, and is now used a residential block.
Kucura
The synagogue was built in 1920, and is now used as an apartment building.
Mali Idos [Mali Iđoš]
The synagogue was built in 1926 and destroyed in 1948.
Cemetery - gravestones removed in 2000 and taken to Subotica; Ohel destroyed.
Former synagogue
This synagogue was last rebuilt in 1924. Its façade is an interesting design in a geometrically patterned Modernism. Today, the building is a protected historical monument and houses an art gallery.
For a photo, see: www.yuheritage.com/niscentar.htm
Jewish cemetery
The Jewish cemetery is located on the northwestern outskirts of the city, near the former cattle market. According to oral reports, the cemetery contains the remains of over 1,000 Jews, primarily Sephardim from Niš and nearby Prokuplje. It also serves as a resting place for the approximately 1,100 Jews of Niš who perished in the Second World War.
As is common Sephardi practice, the gravestones in the cemetery are either shaped like sarcophagi - though the burials are actually below ground - or are horizontal stone slabs (many monolithic), many with stylised decorations, often symbols connected to the Kabbalah.
The cemetery is thought to date from the 17th century, but due to widespread deterioration and desecration, it is difficult to pinpoint its exact age; the oldest gravestones appear to date from the 18th century. Overall, the cemetery represents, in addition to its powerful visual qualities and significance as a memorial, a valuable record of several centuries of Jewish presence in Niš.
The cemetery was taken over by the Communist authorities in 1948 and closed to new burials after 1965. It was neglected for decades. Part of the cemetery has been for many years the site of an illegal Roma settlement, now comprising 120 homes, in which gravestones have been used as house foundations, for paving, and even as domestic furniture. On the opposite side of the graveyard, the illegal erection of a four-metre wall destroyed a large number of tombstones.
Since 2004, the Federation of Jewish Communities in Yugoslavia (now Serbia), the City Assembly of Niš and private donors assisted by the US-based Joint Distribution Committee have been working together to restore the site. Thanks to an agreement engineered by Jasna Ciric, president of the Niš Jewish community, thirty soldiers worked to restore the cemetery, clearing tons of rubbish from the site. The Niš authorities have agreed to provide improved sanitation for the Roma settlement, which has been walled off from the cleared area of the cemetery.
Address
Cairska 28/2
Holocaust memorial on Bubanj hill
Three large sculptures shaped like raised fists commemorate the site where more than 10,000 people, including over 1,100 Jews from Niš and surrounding areas, were executed during the Second World War. The monument is the work of sculptor Ivan Sabolic and was erected in 1963. It symbolises the resistance of the people during the Second World War.
Ujvidek [Újvidék] (Hungarian); Neusatz (German)
The city of Novi Sad stands on the banks of the Danube in the northern part of Serbia. It is capital of the autonomous region of Vojvodina, long under Austro-Hungarian domination, and has the second largest surviving Jewish community in Serbia. The city was founded in 1694 by the Austrians to protect a key bridge across the Danube from the Turks. Jewish presence here is first recorded in 1699. By the eve of the Second World War, more than 4,000 Jews lived in the city. About 1,200 survived.
Synagogue
The synagogue in Novi Sad was designed by the Budapest architect Lipot [Lipót] Baumhorn (1860-1932), Europe's most prolific twentieth-century designer of synagogues. Built between 1906 and 1909, it is part of a complex that includes both private flats and the offices and function rooms of the city's Jewish community. The eclectic design combines medieval elements with those borrowed from Hungarian folk culture. The three-aisled main sanctuary space is topped by a 130-foot high Renaissance-inspired dome with stained glass in its cupola. Two fanciful towers, harking back to the two-towered synagogue façades of mid-19th century Vienna and Budapest, flank the grandiose entrance façade, which features a large rose window under an arch (see Ruth
Gruber 2007).
In the 1940s Jews from Novi Sad were imprisoned in the synagogue before their deportation to Nazi death camps.
The building was also used as a storehouse for furniture and other possessions left behind by the city's Jews.
The synagogue underwent renovation in the early 1990s and is currently used for concerts and performances as well
as for the celebration of major Jewish holidays.
For more information, see:
www.bh.org.il/Communities/Synagogue/NoviSad.asp
Address
11 Jevrejska Street
Jewish cemetery
Novi Sad's large Jewish cemetery dates back to 1717; the 19th- and early 20th-century monuments in the cemetery are comparable to those in Hungary. There is an Ohel, built in 1905. Next to it stands a Holocaust memorial.
Holocaust memorial
A monument to civilian victims of the Second World War stands on the Danube riverbank as it runs through Novi Sad. The monument particularly commemorates the 1,246 citizens of Novi Sad - men, women, and children - who were murdered by the combined Hungarian gendarmerie and army on 23 January 1942. This mass murder was one of a series of executions of Jews, Serbs and Gypsies in the Vojvodina district, annexed by Hungary as a result of its capitulation to Nazi Germany. Most of those murdered were thrown into the Danube, whose ice had been broken by the gunfire.
Jewish Community of Novi Sad
Address
Telephone
Fax
11 Jevrejska Street
21000 Novi Sad
+381 21 615 750
+381 21 423 882
Selenca [Selenča]
The synagogue, of unknown date, is now in residential use.
Senta
One synagogue was built in 1873 and destroyed in 1957. The Sephardi Synagogue, built in 1929, survives and is now used as a gym.
Sombor
The Neo-Romanesque synagogue was built in 1860 and is now used as school/offices. The Jewish Cemetery dates from about 1800.
Stara Moravica
The synagogue was built in 1896 and destroyed in 1963. The Jewish Cemetery survives.
Jewish community
The Subotica Jewish community was established around 1775. Before the Holocaust, the town was a thriving regional centre of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and home to about 6,000 Jews, almost all of whom were deported to Auschwitz in 1944. At about 200 members, the Subotica community is today the third largest of Serbia's Jewish communities; only Novi Sad and Belgrade are larger.
Synagogue
Photographic documentation and detailed information about the history, architecture and conservation of the Subotica synagogue can be found at the website of Save Our Subotica Synagogue (SOS Synagogue):
www.sos-sinagoga.org.yu/
For further information, see International Survey of Jewish Monuments 2000, online at:
www.isjm.org/jhr/IInos3-4/subotica.htm
Address
Rákóczi Circle Street
S.O.S. (Save our Synagogue) Foundation, Subotica
Address
Telephone
Fax
Email
Website
Jewish cemetery
The Jewish cemetery is large and well-maintained. It was founded soon after the establishment of the Subotica Jewish community was established in 1780. It contains both an Ohel and a Holocaust memorial. Major maintenance work began in 1999. The cemetery also includes gravestones (including many black marble obelisks) moved there in 2000 from the disused cemetery at Mali Iđoš.
Holocaust memorials
A Holocaust memorial in the shape of a matzevah (gravestone) was dedicated in front of the synagogue in 1994, on the 50th anniversary of the deportation of Subotica's Jews to Auschwitz.
There is also a large Holocaust memorial in the Jewish cemetery.
Jewish Community Headquarters
Address
Dimitrija Tucociva 13/I
Svetozar Miletic [Svetozar Miletić]
The synagogue was built in 1902.
In addition, many synagogues built in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were destroyed during and after the Second World War. The following sites had a synagogue (year of building and year of destruction given in brackets):
Bac [Bač] (1750 - 1980) Baroque-style.
Surviving photos show it with an arched loggia facing the street.
Backa Palanka [Bačka Palanka] (1806 - 1956)
The impressive synagogue was notable for its interior galleries and large two-level Ark.
Backi Brestovac [Bački Brestovac] (1880 - 1948)
Backo Gradiste [Bačko Gradište] (1890 - 1955)
(large two storey, two-towered synagogue). There was also a large Jewish school in the town.
Backi Petrovac [Bački Petrovac] (Labata Ulica 4) (1905 - 1962)
Backo Petrovo Selo [Bačko Petrovo Selo] (1: 1854 - 1950); (2: 1905 - 1951)
Bajmok (1896 - 1948)
Banatsko Arandelovo [Banatsko Aranđelovo] (1880 - 1948)
Begejci (1870 - 1941)
Bela Crkva (1848 - 1950)
Beodra (1880 - 1941)
Bezdan (1807 - 1948)
Coka [Čoka] (1900 - 1941)
Conoplja [Čonoplja] (1763 - 1948)
Crvenka (d. 1948)
Curug [Čurug] (1880 - 1950)
Debeljaca [Debeljača] (1895 - 1941)
Durdevo [Ðurđevo] (1900 - 1948)
Ecka [Ečka] (1870 - 1941)
Feketic [Feketić] (1900 - 1948)
Gospodinci [Gospođinci] (1900 - 1948)
Horgos [Horgoš] (1910 - 1948)
Indija [Inđija] (1903 - 1943)
Kanjiza [Kanjiža] (1861, remodeled 1900, d. 1948) (two-storey synagogue).
A commemorative plaque was placed at the site on Dože Derda Ulica in April 1994.
Kikinda (1880 - 1955)
Kula (1861 - 1948)
Martonos [Martonoš] (1800 - 1949)
Mokrin (1876 - 1941)
Mol (1877 - 1960)
Novi Becej [Novi Bečej] (1865 - 1947)
Novi Knezevac [Novi Kneževac] (1910 - 1948)
Pacir [Pačir] (1850 - 1948)
Padej (1880 - 1947)
Pancevo [Pančevo] (1902 - 1954)
Pivnice (1900 - 1944)
Prigrevica (1880, ca. 1948)
The cemetery and Ohel have also been destroyed.
Ratkovo Parabuc [Parabuć] (1870 - 1948)
Ruma (1935 - 1943)
An unusual Modernist synagogue
Ridica [Riđica] (1900 - 1948)
Sid [Šid] (1900 - 1942)
Silbas [Silbaš] (1900 - 1948)
Sivac (1878 - 1948)
Sonta (1900 - 1948)
Srbobran (1900 - 1956)
Sremska Mitrovica (1904 - 1942)
Stanisic [Stanišić] (1870 - 1950)
Stara Pazova (1903 - 1942)
Stari Becej [Stari Bečej] (1883 - 1962)
Temerin (1878 - 1947)
Titel (1900 - 1950)
Tovarisevo [Tovariševo] (1900 - 1948)
Vrbas (1914 - 1948)
Vrsac [Vršac] (1828 - 1966)
Zabalj [Žabalj] (1904 - 1950)
Zrenjanin (1896 - 1941)
The Moorish style synagogue was built by Lipót Baumhorn and demolished by the Nazis.
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