Jewish Community of Dubrovnik

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The Jewish community in Dubrovnik is one of ten Jewish communities in Croatia . The other Jewish communities in Croatia are located in Čakovec , Daruvar , Koprivnica , Osijek , Slavonski Brod , Split , Virovitica and Zagreb . The chairperson of the Jewish Community in Dubrovnik is Sabrina Horović.

Dubrovnik in Jewish Literature

One of the first and oldest Jewish mentions of Dubrovnik can be found in Benjamin von Tudela's travelogues, the "Massa'ot". Benjamin mentions the localities of Dubrovnik on his return trip: from Spain in 1158 to Mesopotamia via Dubrovnik, and again on his return to Spain in 1173. Benjamin also mentions the name of Croatia and probably Slavonia as "Qrothia" in his travelogue "And" Ashqlavonia ".

A few centuries later, Dubrovnik is mentioned again in Meshullam da Volterra . During his return trip from the Holy Land to Italy to his hometown Florence , Meschullam got caught in a storm. To avoid this, he spent his stay in the then Republic of Dubrovnik in 1481 . His travelogue, in which Volterra describes the republic as a beautiful and prosperous city, was preserved for posterity, and he dared himself to compare the emerging republic with Florence at that time. The existing wealth of the republic is mentioned. In his writing, Volterra also considered the ambitious merchants and the freedom of the inhabitants.

It was also in the journalism of the Middle Ages Dubrovnik Business Information passed on so-called "avvisi". A Jewish informant, not known by name, mentioned the Republic of Dubrovnik in 1533 and reported to the Spanish king about the sixty merchant ships that were in existence and the population was not too large. The weak jurisdiction of the republic at the time , the wealth and also the “protection money” to be paid to the Ottoman Empire were passed on to the Spanish king as information.

History of the Jewish Community

The history of Dubrovnik's Jewish community begins in the thirteenth century with the arrival of Sephardic Jews who fled here from Spain , Portugal and southern Italy and culminated in the fourteenth century. In 1546 a ghetto was established in Dubrovnik .

In the fifteenth century the Jewish community began building a synagogue . The church was completed in the Baroque art style in 1652. The Dubrovnik Synagogue is the second oldest surviving Sephardic synagogue in the world. It also houses a museum in which the Jewish history of Dubrovnik from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries is presented. Some of the treasures are the Torah scrolls that have been preserved through the centuries . There is also a Jewish cemetery and a fountain in Dubrovnik .

One of the most famous Jewish families in Dubrovnik was that of Aaron David ha-Kohen . In the eighteenth century, for every six thousand inhabitants, two hundred and eighteen Jews lived in Dubrovnik.

In the city archive of Dubrovnik there are reports on Jewish schools, teachers, wedding celebrations, publishers as well as shipowners. Jewish life in Dubrovnik was predominantly shaped by the history of Jewish emancipation , as everywhere in Europe .

Through Napoleon's “ Consistoire ” from 1808, the Jewish community achieved administrative equality in the French Illyrian provinces , to which Dubrovnik belonged. Equality was also guaranteed under Austria-Hungary from 1815 onwards. Complete emancipation can only be assumed from 1873 onwards. The number of Jews in Dubrovnik decreased from a total of three hundred and eight in 1815 to two hundred and fifty inhabitants in 1939.

Second World War

During the Second World War , in the so-called Independent State of Croatia , the city of Dubrovnik came under Italian military administration in April 1941. Jewish property was confiscated and Jewish residents deported to concentration camps on Croatian territory. The city's Jewish population was not exposed to mass deportation . Many Jewish refugees from all over the former Yugoslavia found a place in Dubrovnik.

In November 1942, seven hundred and fifty Jews were brought to the islands of Gruž and Lopud by German orders and imprisoned there. From June 1943 the Jewish residents of Dubrovnik were brought to the Kampor concentration camp on the island of Rab along with other Jews from the entire Italian military administration .

After the capitulation of Italy in 1943 and the German occupiers, the prisoners were taken to free parts of the country by the Yugoslav People's Liberation Army . Between one hundred and eighty and two hundred Jews who were unable to leave the island of Rab were abducted and taken to the Nazi state's extermination camps by the German occupiers .

Modern times

In 1969 the Jewish Community of Dubrovnik had thirty-one members. The rabbi of the community was pastorally responsible as the chief rabbi for the Jewish believers in the areas of South Dalmatia , Herzegovina and Montenegro . Services were held irregularly in the Dubrovnik synagogue. The synagogue was damaged during the Croatian War . It is worth noting that the synagogue's art treasures from 1510 were loaned to Yeshiva University in 1964 . Since 1988 they have been exhibited again in the synagogue museum.

swell

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g cf. History of the Dubrovnik Jewish Community , accessed December 30, 2009.

literature

  • Vesna Miović: Židovski geto u Dubrovniku (1546–1808) (= Posebna izdanja. Volume 13). Hrvatska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti, Zagreb 2005, ISBN 953-154-645-2 .
  • Vesna Miović: The Jewish Ghetto in the Dubrovnik Republic (1546–1808) (= Studies in the history of Dubrovnik. 1). HAZU, Zagreb 2005, ISBN 953-154-675-7 .

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