History of the Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina

The history of Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina spans from the arrival of the first Bosnian Jews as a result of the Spanish Inquisition to the survival of the Bosnian Jews through the Holocaust and the Yugoslav Wars. Judaism and the Jewish community in Bosnia and Herzegovina has one of the oldest and most diverse histories in the former Yugoslav states, and is more than 500 years old, in terms of permanent settlement. Then a self-governing province of the Ottoman Empire, Bosnia 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 in Sarajevo, comprising 20% of the city's population.

Today, there are 281 Jews living in Bosnia and Herzegovina, recognised as a national minority. They mostly have good relations with their non-Jewish neighbors.

History

Ottoman rule

The first Jews arrived to Bosnia and Herzegovina in period from 1492 to 1497 from Spain and Portugal.
As tens of thousands of Jews fled the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, Sultan Bayezid II of the Ottoman Empire welcomed Jews who were able to reach his territories. Sephardi Jews fleeing Spain and Portugal were welcomed inand found their way toBosnia 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 in Sarajevo. The first Ashkenazi Jews arrived from Hungary in 1686, when the Ottoman Turks were expelled from HungaryExcerpts from Jews in Yugoslavia – Part I
Among them was Tzvi Ashkenazi, who remained in Sarajevo for three years as rabbi.
The Jewish community prospered in Bosnia, living side by side with their Bosnian Muslim neighbors, as one of the largest European centres for Sephardi Jewry outside of Spain.

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. 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 rabbi Judah Alkalai played a prominent role as a precursor of modern Zionism by advocating in favor of the restoration of the Jews to the Land of Israel.

Habsburg rule

The Austro-Hungarian Empire occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878, and brought with them an injection of European capital, companies and methods. Many professional, educated Ashkenazi Jews arrived with the Austro-Hungarians. The Sephardi Jews continued to engage in their traditional areas, mainly foreign trade and crafts.

Sephardic Jews have certainly had a stronger role in BiH, given that only in Sarajevo, Banja Luka and Tuzla separate Ashkenazi communities were active, whereas Tuzla was the only city in which the Ashkenazi were numerous (there Hilde Zaloscer was born).
In this period Moshe ben Rafael Attias achieved prominence as scholar of the Islamic faith and of medieval Persian literature.

Kingdom of Yugoslavia

World War I saw the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and after the war Bosnia and Herzegovina was incorporated into the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
In the census of 1921, Ladino was the mother language of 10,000 out of 70,000 inhabitants of Sarajevo.''El español en el mundo. Anuario 2004. El español en Bosnia-Herzegovina
Situación de los estudios de español fuera de la Universidad de Sarajevo
', Sonia Torres Rubio.
By 1926, there were 13,000 Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Bosnian Jewish community remained prominent after the unification of Yugoslavia. In the 1920s and 1930s Kalmi Baruh was a pioneer of Sephardic studies and Hispanic 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.

World War II

In 1940, there were approximately 14,000 Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with 10,000 in Sarajevo.

With the invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941 by the Nazis and their Allies, Bosnia and Herzegovina came under the control of the Independent State of Croatia, a Nazi puppet-state. The Independent State of Croatia was headed by the notoriously anti-Semitic Ustaše, and they wasted little time in persecuting non-Croats such as Serbs, Jews and Romani people.

On 22 July 1941, Mile Budaka senior Minister in the Croatian government and one of the chief ideologists of the Ustaše movementdeclared that the goal of the Ustaše was the extermination of "''foreign elements''" from the Independent State of Croatia. His message was simple: "''The basis for the Ustasha movement is religion. For minorities such as Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies, we have three million bullets.''""''Jasenovac-Donja Gradina 1941–1945''"
In 1941, Ante Pavelićleader of the Ustaše movementdeclared that "''the Jews will be liquidated in a very short time''".

In September 1941 deportations of Jews began, with most Bosnian Jews being deported to Auschwitz (many first to Kruščica concentration camp) or to concentration camps in Croatia. The Ustaše set up concentration camps at Kerestinac, Jadovna, Metajna and Slana. The most notorious, where cruelty of unimaginable proportions was perpetrated against Jewish and Serbian prisoners were at Pag and Jasenovac. At Jasenovac alone, hundreds of thousands of people were murdered (mostly Serbs), including 20,000 Jews.

By War's end, 10,000 of the pre-War Bosnian Jewish population of 14,000 had been murdered. Most of the 4,000 who had survived did so by fighting with the Yugoslav, Jewish or Soviet Partisans or by escaping to the Italian controlled zone (approximately 1,600 had escaped to the Italian controlled zone on the Dalmatian coastAmerican Jewish Joint Distribution Committee – Bosnia-Herzegovina
- among them Flory Jagoda, ''née'' Papo).
Jewish members of the Yugoslav Army became German prisoners of war and survived the war. They returned to Sarajevo after the war.
Avraham Levi-Lazzaris, who emigrated to Brasil, became explorer of the first mines of diamonds in Rondônia, while Moses Levi-Lazzaris (1944–1990), mechanical engineer, became a Trotskyist militant.

File:Višegrad Synagogue 1.jpg, Višegrad Synagogue (1905-1941)
File:Narrow-Gauge-Railway Ostbahn Tunnel-No-6 Synagogue Visegrad.jpg, Višegrad Synagogue and train tunnel, 1910
File:Bijeljina Synagogue 1.jpg, Bijeljina Synagogue (1900-1941)
File:Banja Luka Synagogue 1.jpg, Banja Luka Synagogue (1884-1941)
File:Mostar Westliche Stadthaelfte Synagoge.jpg, Site of the proposed Mostar Synagogue

Righteous among the Nations from Bosnia and Herzegovina

The people of Sarajevo helped many Jews to abscond and exfiltrate - among many, the story of the Hardaga and Kabilio familieshttp://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/righteous/stories/hardaga.asp as well as of the Sober-Dragoje and Besrević familieshttp://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/righteous/stories/besrevic.asp became particularly noteworthy after the war.
The Righteous among the Nations from Bosnia and Herzegovina are those Bosnians who were honored by the Yad Vashem Memorial as Righteous Among the Nations, i.e. non-Jews who used their lives to save Jews from murder. Forty-two Bosnians have been awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations.

Socialist Yugoslavia

The Jewish Community of Bosnia and Herzegovina was reconstituted after the Holocaust, but most survivors chose to emigrate to Israel. 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 son Ranko will later be part of the Sarajevo rock band Indexi. Oskar Danon