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Thehistory of the Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Serbo-Croatian:Jevreji Bosne i Hercegovine;Jevrejski narod Bosne i Hercegovine) spans from the arrival of the first Bosnian Jews as a result of theSpanish Inquisition to the survival of the Bosnian Jews through theHolocaust and theYugoslav Wars. Jews are one of the minority peoples ofBosnia and Herzegovina, according to thecountry's constitution. The Bosnian Jewish community is composed of bothSephardic andAshkenazi Jews.[2]
Judaism and theJewish community inBosnia and Herzegovina have one of the oldest and most diverse histories of all the formerYugoslav states, and is more than 400 years old, in terms of permanent settlement; records of Jewish presence in Bosnia and Herzegovina date back to the second century CE.[3] Some scholars have argued that there has been a more or less continuous presence ofJews in Bosnia and Herzegovina since theRoman Empire.[4] Bosnia, then aself-governing province of the Ottoman Empire, was one of the few territories in Europe that welcomed Jews after their expulsion from Spain.
At its peak, the Jewish community of Bosnia and Herzegovina numbered between 14,000 and 22,000 members in 1941. Of those, 12,000 to 14,000 lived inSarajevo, comprising 20% of the city's population.[5]
Today, there are 281 Jews living in Bosnia and Herzegovina, recognised as a national minority. They have good relations with their non-Jewish neighbors, both Muslim and Christian.[6][7][8][9]
In 1189,Ban Kulin of Bosnia issued a charter that guaranteed mutual free trade and movement for merchants fromDubrovnik through Bosnian territory, which enticed some Jewish merchants to settle in the area.[10] At least one Jewish house of worship from the Middle Ages has survived to provide physical evidence of the presence of Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina.[10] The remains of a Roman or Byzantine synagogue were found in the village ofDabravine, nearZenica.[10]
Jews had been forced to leave Spain by 31 July 1492 by theAlhambra Decree; the day was further delayed to 2 August 1492, which coincided withTisha B'Av.[11] The first Jews from Spain andPortugal arrived in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the early 1500s.[12]
As tens of thousands of Jews fled theSpanish andPortuguese Inquisitions,SultanBayezid II of the Ottoman Empire welcomed Jews who were able to reach his territories.Sephardi Jews fleeingSpain andPortugal were welcomed in – and found their way to – Bosnia and Herzegovina,Macedonia,Thrace and other areas of Europe under Ottoman control. Jews from the Ottoman Empire began arriving in numbers in the 16th century, settling mainly inSarajevo. The firstAshkenazi Jews arrived from Hungary in 1686, when the Ottoman Turks were expelled from Hungary[13] Among them wasTzvi Ashkenazi, who remained in Sarajevo for three years as rabbi. The Jewish community prospered inBosnia, living side by side with theirBosnian Muslim neighbors, as one of the largest European centres forSephardi Jewry outside of Spain.[6]
Jews in the Ottoman Empire were generally well-treated and were recognized under the law as non-Muslims. Despite some restrictions, the Jewish communities of the Empire prospered. They were granted significant autonomy, with various rights including the right to buy real estate, to build synagogues and to conduct trade throughout the Ottoman Empire.[14] Jews, along with the other non-Muslim subjects of the Empire, were granted full equality under Ottoman law by 1856.
In the late Ottoman time, the Sarajevo-based Sephardi rabbiJudah Alkalai played a prominent role as a precursor of modernZionism by advocating in favor of the restoration of the Jews to the Land of Israel.
TheAustro-Hungarian Empire occupiedBosnia and Herzegovina in 1878, and brought with them an injection of European capital, companies and methods. Many professional, educatedAshkenazi Jews arrived with theAustro-Hungarians. TheSephardi Jews continued to engage in their traditional areas, mainly foreign trade and crafts.[13]
Sephardic Jews have certainly had a stronger role in BiH, given that only inSarajevo,Banja Luka andTuzla separate Ashkenazi communities were active, whereasTuzla was the only city in which the Ashkenazi were numerous (thereHilde Zaloscer was born).In this period Moshe ben Rafael Attias achieved prominence as scholar of the Islamic faith and of medieval Persian literature.
World War I saw the collapse of theAustro-Hungarian Empire, and after the warBosnia and Herzegovina was incorporated into theKingdom of Yugoslavia.In the census of 1921,Ladino was the mother language of 10,000 out of 70,000 inhabitants of Sarajevo.[15]By 1926, there were 13,000 Jews inBosnia and Herzegovina.[5]
The Bosnian Jewish community remained prominent after the unification of Yugoslavia. In the 1920s and 1930sKalmi Baruh was a pioneer of Sephardic studies andHispanic studies and an eminent leftist intellectual.Daniel Ozmo was active in Belgrade as a progressive painter and printmaker.Isak Samokovlija also started his literary career in the 1930s, which he continued after the war.Laura Papo Bohoreta was an active feminist and writer.
In 1940, there were approximately 14,000 Jews inBosnia and Herzegovina,[13] with 10,000 inSarajevo.
With the invasion ofYugoslavia in April 1941 by theNazis and their Allies,Bosnia and Herzegovina came under the control of theIndependent State of Croatia, aNazi puppet-state. TheIndependent State of Croatia was headed by the notoriouslyanti-SemiticUstaše, and they wasted little time in persecuting non-Croats such asSerbs, Jews andRomani people.
On 22 July 1941,Mile Budak – a senior Minister in the Croatian government and one of the chief ideologists of theUstaše movement – declared that the goal of the Ustaše was the extermination of "foreign elements" from theIndependent State of Croatia. His message was simple: "The basis for the Ustasha movement is religion. For minorities such asSerbs, Jews, andGypsies, we have three million bullets."[16] In 1941,Ante Pavelić – leader of the Ustaše movement – declared that "the Jews will be liquidated in a very short time".[16]
In September 1941 deportations of Jews began, with most Bosnian Jews being deported toAuschwitz (many first to Kruščica concentration camp) or toconcentration camps inCroatia. The Ustaše set upconcentration camps atKerestinac,Jadovna,Metajna andSlana. The most notorious, where cruelty of unimaginable proportions was perpetrated against Jewish andSerbian prisoners, were atPag andJasenovac. AtJasenovac alone, approximately one hundred thousand people were murdered (half of whom were Serbs), including 20,000 Jews.
ByWar's end, 10,000 of the pre-War Bosnian Jewish population of 14,000 had been murdered.[5] Most of the 4,000 who had survived did so by fighting with theYugoslav,Jewish orSoviet Partisans[17] or by escaping to the Italian controlled zone[16] (approximately 1,600 had escaped to the Italian controlled zone on theDalmatian coast[7] - among themFlory Jagoda,née Papo). Jewish members of theYugoslav Army became German prisoners of war and survived the war. They returned toSarajevo after the war.[16]Avraham Levi-Lazzaris, who emigrated to Brasil, became explorer of the first mines of diamonds inRondônia, whileMoses Levi-Lazzaris (1944–1990), mechanical engineer, became a Trotskyist militant.
The people of Sarajevo helped many Jews to abscond and exfiltrate - among many, the story of the Hardaga and Kabilio families[18] as well as of the Sober-Dragoje and Besrević families[19] became particularly noteworthy after the war. The Righteous among the Nations from Bosnia and Herzegovina are those Bosnians who were honored by theYad Vashem Memorial asRighteous Among the Nations, i.e. non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews from being murdered. Forty-nine Bosnians have been awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations.[20]
The Jewish Community ofBosnia and Herzegovina was reconstituted after theHolocaust, but most survivors chose to emigrate toIsrael.[16] The community came under the auspices of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Yugoslavia, based in the capital,Belgrade.
Jewish personalities remained prominent in Socialist Bosnia and Herzegovina.Cvjetko Rihtman was the first director of the Sarajevo Opera in 1946–1947; his sonRanko would later be part of the Sarajevo rock band Indexi.Oskar Danon also achieved fame ascomposer andconductor during Yugoslav times.Ernest Grin was one of the leading Yugoslav medical doctors and a member of the Bosnia and Herzegovina Academy of Sciences and Arts.Emerik Blum, founder ofEnergoinvest, was Sarajevo's mayor from 1981 to 1983 and a member of the Organizational Committee of the1984 Winter Olympics.Ivan Ceresnjes was active as an architect, supervising the restoration of Jewish buildings and sites, including theAshkenazi Synagogue, theKal Nuevo temple, and the 16th-centuryOld Jewish Cemetery, Sarajevo, whose project he was slated to present 24h before the war broke out in March 1992.
In the early 1990s, before theYugoslav Wars, the Jewish population ofBosnia and Herzegovina was over 2,000,[5] and relations between Jews and their Catholic,Orthodox, andMuslim neighbors were very good.
The Jewish community of Bosnia and Herzegovina was headed byIvan Ceresnjes from 1992 until his emigration toIsrael in 1996.[21][22][23][24] His tenure coincided with theBosnian War of 1992–1995.[22][25] When thebesieging Serb army occupied the Jewish cemetery in Sarajevo, from where they sniped on the city, Ceresnjes gave permission to theArmy of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina to target the cemetery.[26]
The Sarajevo Jewish humanitarian society,La Benevolencija, also provided aid to thousands of besieged Sarajevo residents, supplying food, medicine, and postal and radio communications.[27][28] Ceresnjes told a local paper that the nonsectarian relief effort was partly a gesture of gratitude to local Muslims who had hidden Jews during theNazioccupation of Yugoslavia.[29]After the war started,La Benevolencija assisted theAmerican Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in the evacuation of 2,500 Sarajevo residents, only one-third of whom were Jewish. There were 11 evacuations in all, three by air early on in the war, and eight by bus convoy after the airport had been closed to civilian traffic.[27] While other convoys were stopped, the Ceresnjes convoys all got through, as field staff from the Joint negotiatedcease fires to ensure safe transfer.[30]
In 1997, the Jewish population of Bosnia and Herzegovina was 600, about half of whom were living in Sarajevo.[31] Most Jews who had fled Sarajevo and Bosnia chose to remain in Israel after the wars had ended, though some returned[7] and others moved elsewhere, such asRobert Rothbart (born Boris Kajmaković).
The Jewish Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina has been led byJakob Finci since 1995.TheConstitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina reserves certain top political positions, including membership of thePresidency and of theHouse of Peoples to members of the threeconstitutive peoples (Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs).[32] In 2009 theEuropean Court of Human Rights established in theSejdić and Finci v. Bosnia and Herzegovina ruling that the country's Constitution violates theEuropean Convention on Human Rights. An agreement between political parties to amend the Constitution accordingly is still pending, notwithstanding international pressure.[33]This has not prevented Bosnian Jews from achieving prominent positions: among them,Sven Alkalaj wasMinister of Foreign Affairs from 2007 to 2012.
In 2024, Jews and Muslims from Bosnia and Herzegovina jointly observedInternational Holocaust Remembrance Day to facilitate dialogue and respect in response to theGaza war.[34]
The SarajevoHaggadah is a 14th-centuryilluminated manuscript which has survived many close calls with destruction. Historians believe that it was taken out of Spain bySpanish Jews who were expelled by theInquisition in 1492. Notes in the margins of the Haggadah indicate that it surfaced in Italy in the 16th century. It was sold to thenational museum inSarajevo in 1894 by a man named Joseph Kohen.
DuringWorld War II, the manuscript was hidden from theNazis by Dr. Jozo Petrovic,[35] the director of the city museum[36] and by Derviš Korkut, the chief librarian, who smuggled the Haggadah out to a Muslim cleric in a mountain village near Treskavica, where it was hidden in themosque amongKorans and otherIslamic texts.[37] During the Bosnian War of 1992–1995, when Sarajevo was under constant siege by Bosnian Serb forces, the manuscript survived in an underground bank vault.
Afterwards, the manuscript was restored through a special campaign financed by the United Nations and the Bosnian Jewish community in 2001, and went on permanent display at the museum in December 2002.[6]
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The oldest synagogues in Bosnia and Herzegovina were built by the Sephardi community in the 16th century.During the Austro-Hungarian period, the new Ashkenazi community also built their own temples, often adopting theMoorish Revival architectural style, as in the case of Sarajevo'sAshkenazi Synagogue. Most of them were destroyed during World War Two, including Sarajevo'sIl Kal Grande.[38]Four synagogues remain in Sarajevo:
TheJewish Municipality of Sarajevo, also the Jewish community of Sarajevo, is a religious organization of citizens ofBosnia and Herzegovina ofJewish origin with a seat inSarajevo.
The history of Jewish immigration to Bosnia and Herzegovina and Sarajevo began in 1492 after the Spanish Catholic state under Ferdinand and Isabella managed to break the power of the Muslim rulers in Spain. For the remaining citizens of the Muslim and Jewish faiths, a time of discrimination and pressure to accept Christianity or leave has begun. At that moment, the Ottoman government allowed Jewish exiles from Spain to settle in their territory. Around 1551, the first Jewish families moved to Sarajevo, and as early as 1565, a Jewish (Sephardic) municipality was founded in Sarajevo. At the request of Sarajevo's Muslim leaders,Kanijeli Siyavuş Pasha, when he arrived in Sarajevo in 1581, had a large inn built as apartments for Jews, in order to live as a special people in the city. However, the Ottoman government did not impose on the Jews the ghetto provisions first established by the Christian rulers. Siyavuş Pasha managed to get permission from the sultan for the Jews of Sarajevo to build their ownsynagogue.[39]
In the rest of the country some synagogue buildings have been preserved and renovated (such as inDoboj) but they do not host services.
Sephardi Jews were first mentioned inBanja Luka in the 16th century. Till theAustro-Hungarian time, the Jewish population ofBanja Luka was exclusively of Sephardi Jews, originating from Spain and Portugal. They were into crafts and trade; crafts are practiced by the poorer Jews while those somewhat better off were into trade. Since 1878, Jews have given great impetus expansion of the capitalist economy and the spread of Western European ideas inBanja Luka. According to data from 1815 to 1878, holders of import-export trade wereSerbs,Jews, andMuslims are oriented towards the internal trade and handicrafts.[40] Ashkenazi also settled in town in the 19th century. BeforeWorld War II,Banja Luka's Jewish Community consisted of a few hundred families. They were nearly all wiped out during the Holocaust in Yugoslavia. Today the number of Jewish families in Banja Luka is in the order of tens. TheJewish cultural center Arie Livne was opened inBanja Luka in 2015.
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