Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina

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The Ashkenazi synagogue in Sarajevo , built in 1902

The Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina ( Bosnian Jevreji / Židovi u Bosni i Hercegovini ) look back on more than 500 years of history.

The beginning of Jewish settlement in Bosnia and Herzegovina

The predominantly Sephardic Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina reached the country after the Spanish Jews were expelled from their homeland in 1492. Jews were probably already living here permanently in the first half of the 16th century. This is suggested by inscriptions on some gravestones in Sarajevo that bear the Jewish date 5311, i.e. 1551 of the Christian calendar. From 1463, most of the country and especially the capital Sarajevo was part of the Ottoman Empire and the Jews, like other non-Muslim communities, were subject to certain restrictions on their rights. They were not allowed to carry weapons, ride horses within the city and pay a high poll tax.

World War II and Holocaust

Sephardic couple from Sarajevo, around 1900

Before World War II , there were about 14,000 Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina , 10,000 of them in Sarajevo , which made up about ten percent of the city's population. 10,000 Jews were murdered in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) during the Holocaust . After the Second World War, many Jews decided to relocate to Israel .

The Bosnian War and its Effects

When the Bosnian War broke out , around 2000 Jews were living in Bosnia and Herzegovina. During the clashes, most of the Jews were evacuated to Israel and the majority of them decided to stay there after the end of the war. In 2008 around 1,000 Jews lived in Bosnia and Herzegovina, around 900 Sephardim and 100 Ashkenazim . The largest congregation is that of Sarajevo with around 700 members; its chairman has been the lawyer Jakob Finci since 1995 . There are smaller Jewish communities in Banja Luka , Mostar , Tuzla , Doboj and Zenica .

literature

  • Wolfdieter Bihl : The Jews in the Habsburg Monarchy 1848–1918. In: Kurt Schubert (Hrsg.): On the history of the Jews in the eastern countries of the Habsburg Monarchy. (Studia Judaica Austriaca, Vol. VIII). Eisenstadt 1980. pp. 5-73.
  • Gordana Brusis: Jews in Bosnia-Herzegovina ( PDF )
  • Harriet Pass Freidenreich: The Jews of Yugoslavia. A Quest for Community . Philadelphia 1979.
  • Ari Kerkkänen: Yugoslav Jewry: Aspects of Post-World War II and Post-Yugoslav Developments . Helsinki 2001.
  • Moritz Levy: The Sephardim in Bosnia: A Contribution to the History of the Jews on the Balkan Peninsula . Reprint of the 1911 edition. Klagenfurt 1996.
  • Jacob Segall: The Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina . Journal for Demography and Statistics of the Jews [Old Series], year 1913, issue 7–8 (July 1913), pp. 104–110, digitized
  • Gustav Seidemann: The Jews in Bosnia and Zionism. Die Welt, year 1903, issue 25 (May 19, 1903), p. 3–4 digitized
  • Edward Serotta: Survival in Sarajevo. “La Benevolencija”: How a Jewish community became the center of help and hope for the residents of their city. Vienna 1994 ISBN 3-85447-571-3
  • Spomenica 400 godina od dolaska jevreja u Bosnu i Hercegovinu [“Memorial book 400 years since the arrival of the Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina”], 1566–1966. Sarajevo 1966.

Web links

  • Ladinos, Sephardi, Jews: The importance of the Jews in Sarajevo, a city that has been multicultural and multi-religious for centuries. Interview with David Kamhi (2004)

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/bosnia.html
  2. ↑ http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/3592-bosnia
  3. ↑ http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/bosnia.html
  4. ↑ Norbert Rütsche: Jakob Finci: He fights for reconciliation and loves bobsleigh at: swissinfo, December 8, 2008