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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgrade_Synagogue
BELGRADE SYNAGOGUE
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Serbia
History of Jews in Serbia
:dance: :dance: :dance:
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Thank you for sharing these with us!! Very interesting! :)
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http://www.beograd.rs/cms/view.php?id=201408
City of Belgrade-Jewish Community
:dance: :dance: :dance:
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When you catch propaganda on Wikipedia, it is always good to look at sources.
Link number 2, look at footnote number 6.
I won't say too much, just point the author - MARKO ATTILA HOARRE!
M. A. H. imagines being "British professor", while he's neither British... nor, by the common sense, a "professor". He is HALF-HUNGARIAN, HALF-CROAT Anti-Serb propagandist, a supporter of Communist autocracy, just to show Serbian Royalists as NAZIS. He is also a defender of Croatian and Muslim WAR CRIMINALS. Just look up his website. He is the second biggest idiot on the Internet, after Suleiman Schwarz, who pretends to be some so-called "historian" or "writer", whatever, while one High-School child is able to know way more about HISTORY than they do, but in fact are just a bunch of conspiracy theorists to whom discovering the truth and debugging their little so-called "conspiracies" is inconvenient.
The explanation why I say conspiracy theorist - pay attention when he says how it is SURPRISING THAT USA HAD AWARDED A NAZI and that (by "coincidence", LOL) that "Nazi" was nothing else but a SERB.
In order to do something like that, they, firstly, need to be STRONGLY brainwashed, there must be very strong LOBY and political influence, at best, even some good money would be welcomed. The agenda MUST be EXTREMELY strong, especially after Communist regime and WE ALL KNOW what they were preaching.
It's not a little thing. WWII WASN'T A LITTLE THING SO ANYONE CAN MAKE TINY MISTAKES OR CONFUSES SIDES JUST AFTER FEW WORDS OR SO.
That our so-called "professor" (of ARTS, arts of lying) can't explain next:
1. How, after well-known-to-everybody Communist agenda that had to show to the rest of the World the negative picture of EVERYONE who wasn't a Communist in Yugoslavia, is it possible that USA somehow makes a "mistake" that could only be made by the agenda such was the opposite (Communist) and not Chetnik side had?
Simpler, how could the voice of the silent be heard stronger than the voice of the loud one?
Logic question
2. How are the Serbs, and that AFTER NATO BOMBING, able to spread PROPAGANDA in no other place but UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (where you have CNN, FOX, VOA etc)?
3. What economic/politic/strategic power do the Serbs have in USA or the West to be able to afford such influence?
4. How could USA officials who gave that award be so easily fooled? Isn't it like when you give an award to someone, you know why you are giving it? You know what that one did? You know te whole background?
Is he trying to make them look stupid?
----------
It seems to me that he actually thinks the readers are stupid.
He probably thinks someone can, just like that buy his little "essay" firstly about awarding and than followed by so-called "historical lesson". And what about the ones who made the ceremony, what about their saying?
Maybe he is trying to convince the readers that they have NO IDEA about that "Nazi-collaboration" thing?
He thinks they've never mentioned it.
WELL, THEY DID, just see that video about US airmen saved by Serbs on YouTube. There, they also talk about the award and mention how they want justice and bringing THE TRUTH INTO THE LIGHT, well this is where Attila-the-wannabe-Hun's problem begins. Such monster-creatures melt and fade on light of truth, so, they prefer to stay within their darkness of their lies and deception where they can live safely and happily, because they know they've covered everything with it.
I'm sorry if this was somehow incomprehensible, I'm a bit tired, I needed much time for this, comparing to its size, but I hope you, guys, will understand.
If any questions, just ask.
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Interesting...
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Very interesting..
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Albahari
David Albahari
[/color]
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When you catch propaganda on Wikipedia, it is always good to look at sources.
Link number 2, look at footnote number 6.
I won't say too much, just point the author - MARKO ATTILA HOARRE!
M. A. H. imagines being "British professor", while he's neither British... nor, by the common sense, a "professor". He is HALF-HUNGARIAN, HALF-CROAT Anti-Serb propagandist, a supporter of Communist autocracy, just to show Serbian Royalists as NAZIS. He is also a defender of Croatian and Muslim WAR CRIMINALS. Just look up his website. He is the second biggest idiot on the Internet, after Suleiman Schwarz, who pretends to be some so-called "historian" or "writer", whatever, while one High-School child is able to know way more about HISTORY than they do, but in fact are just a bunch of conspiracy theorists to whom discovering the truth and debugging their little so-
The explanation why I say conspiracy theorist - pay attention when he says how it is SURPRISING THAT USA HAD AWARDED A NAZI and that (by "coincidence", LOL) that "Nazi" was nothing else but a SERB.
In order to do something like that, they, firstly, need to be STRONGLY brainwashed, there must be very strong LOBY and political influence, at best, even some good money would be welcomed. The agenda MUST be EXTREMELY strong, especially after Communist regime and WE ALL KNOW what they were preaching.
It's not a little thing. WWII WASN'T A LITTLE THING SO ANYONE CAN MAKE TINY MISTAKES OR CONFUSES SIDES JUST AFTER FEW WORDS OR SO.
That our so-called "professor" (of ARTS, arts of lying) can't explain next:
1. How, after well-known-to-everybody Communist agenda that had to show to the rest of the World the negative picture of EVERYONE who wasn't a Communist in Yugoslavia, is it possible that USA somehow makes a "mistake" that could only be made by the agenda such was the opposite (Communist) and not Chetnik side had?
Simpler, how could the voice of the silent be heard stronger than the voice of the loud one?
Logic question
2. How are the Serbs, and that AFTER NATO BOMBING, able to spread PROPAGANDA in no other place but UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (where you have CNN, FOX, VOA etc)?
3. What economic/politic/strategic power do the Serbs have in USA or the West to be able to afford such influence?
4. How could USA officials who gave that award be so easily fooled? Isn't it like when you give an award to someone, you know why you are giving it? You know what that one did? You know te whole background?
Is he trying to make them look stupid?
----------
It seems to me that he actually thinks the readers are stupid.
He probably thinks someone can, just like that buy his little "essay" firstly about awarding and than followed by so-called "historical lesson". And what about the ones who made the ceremony, what about their saying?
Maybe he is trying to convince the readers that they have NO IDEA about that "Nazi-collaboration" thing?
He thinks they've never mentioned it.
WELL, THEY DID, just see that video about US airmen saved by Serbs on YouTube. There, they also talk about the award and mention how they want justice and bringing THE TRUTH INTO THE LIGHT, well this is where Attila-the-wannabe-Hun's problem begins. Such monster-creatures melt and fade on light of truth, so, they prefer to stay within their darkness of their lies and deception where they can live safely and happily, because they know they've covered everything with it.
I'm sorry if this was somehow incomprehensible, I'm a bit tired, I needed much time for this, comparing to its size, but I hope you, guys, will understand.
If any questions, just ask.
It is incomprehensible,I do not get it.
-
When you catch propaganda on Wikipedia, it is always good to look at sources.
Link number 2, look at footnote number 6.
I won't say too much, just point the author - MARKO ATTILA HOARRE!
M. A. H. imagines being "British professor", while he's neither British... nor, by the common sense, a "professor". He is HALF-HUNGARIAN, HALF-CROAT Anti-Serb propagandist, a supporter of Communist autocracy, just to show Serbian Royalists as NAZIS. He is also a defender of Croatian and Muslim WAR CRIMINALS. Just look up his website. He is the second biggest idiot on the Internet, after Suleiman Schwarz, who pretends to be some so-called "historian" or "writer", whatever, while one High-School child is able to know way more about HISTORY than they do, but in fact are just a bunch of conspiracy theorists to whom discovering the truth and debugging their little so-
The explanation why I say conspiracy theorist - pay attention when he says how it is SURPRISING THAT USA HAD AWARDED A NAZI and that (by "coincidence", LOL) that "Nazi" was nothing else but a SERB.
In order to do something like that, they, firstly, need to be STRONGLY brainwashed, there must be very strong LOBY and political influence, at best, even some good money would be welcomed. The agenda MUST be EXTREMELY strong, especially after Communist regime and WE ALL KNOW what they were preaching.
It's not a little thing. WWII WASN'T A LITTLE THING SO ANYONE CAN MAKE TINY MISTAKES OR CONFUSES SIDES JUST AFTER FEW WORDS OR SO.
That our so-called "professor" (of ARTS, arts of lying) can't explain next:
1. How, after well-known-to-everybody Communist agenda that had to show to the rest of the World the negative picture of EVERYONE who wasn't a Communist in Yugoslavia, is it possible that USA somehow makes a "mistake" that could only be made by the agenda such was the opposite (Communist) and not Chetnik side had?
Simpler, how could the voice of the silent be heard stronger than the voice of the loud one?
Logic question
2. How are the Serbs, and that AFTER NATO BOMBING, able to spread PROPAGANDA in no other place but UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (where you have CNN, FOX, VOA etc)?
3. What economic/politic/strategic power do the Serbs have in USA or the West to be able to afford such influence?
4. How could USA officials who gave that award be so easily fooled? Isn't it like when you give an award to someone, you know why you are giving it? You know what that one did? You know te whole background?
Is he trying to make them look stupid?
----------
It seems to me that he actually thinks the readers are stupid.
He probably thinks someone can, just like that buy his little "essay" firstly about awarding and than followed by so-called "historical lesson". And what about the ones who made the ceremony, what about their saying?
Maybe he is trying to convince the readers that they have NO IDEA about that "Nazi-collaboration" thing?
He thinks they've never mentioned it.
WELL, THEY DID, just see that video about US airmen saved by Serbs on YouTube. There, they also talk about the award and mention how they want justice and bringing THE TRUTH INTO THE LIGHT, well this is where Attila-the-wannabe-Hun's problem begins. Such monster-creatures melt and fade on light of truth, so, they prefer to stay within their darkness of their lies and deception where they can live safely and happily, because they know they've covered everything with it.
I'm sorry if this was somehow incomprehensible, I'm a bit tired, I needed much time for this, comparing to its size, but I hope you, guys, will understand.
If any questions, just ask.
It is incomprehensible,I do not get it.
Just look at the footnote #6 and follow the link. It says something like "USA awarded a Nazi collaborator", it is about the medal posthumously given to Mihajlović for helping in saving of 513 WWII US airmen.
It is propaganda written by an idiot called Marko Attila Hoare who tends to brainwash the Jews against Serbs.
I tried to explain why it is not possible by any way that USA officials who did that have "accidentally" chosen the wrong guy who was actually "not their ally but Nazi collaborator". I tried to explain why it wasn't possible that they weren't able to distinguish between a Nazi and Anti-Nazi.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Vinaver
Stanislav Vinaver
http://213.244.238.3/20070616/img/knjiga2_1.jpg
Stanislav-his photo
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Thanks for the share, thank you Boyana. Hope you like the JTF, now we have 4 beautiful Serbian ladies, who I know: Jasmina, Sonja, Boyana, Freekaradzic. :P
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Thanks for the share, thank you Boyana. Hope you like the JTF, now we have 4 beautiful Serbian ladies, who I know: Jasmina, Sonja, Boyana, Freekaradzic. :P
I wish I could be more ivolved,but I have twin boys (born in OCt 2008)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danilo_Ki%C5%A1
Danilo Kis
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Jews and Serbs -Lectures Foreign Minister Vuk Drashkovich
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=sr&u=http://www.mfa.gov.yu/Srpski/spopol/Ministar/Govori/061106_s.html&ei=gOEDSsGmEovWMPTg_KID&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=10&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3Djevreji%2Bu%2Bsrpskoj%2Bvojsci%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG
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http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=sr&u=http://sr.wikipedia.org/sr-el/%25D0%259E%25D1%2581%25D0%25BA%25D0%25B0%25D1%2580_%25D0%2594%25D0%25B0%25D0%25B2%25D0%25B8%25D1%2587%25D0%25BE&ei=5eIDSsD2LZDcMZOZzaID&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3Doskar%2Bdavico%26hl%3Den
OSKAR DAVIC
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Thanks for the share, thank you Boyana. Hope you like the JTF, now we have 4 beautiful Serbian ladies, who I know: Jasmina, Sonja, Boyana, Freekaradzic. :P
;D Thanks, Peter.
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Thanks for the share, thank you Boyana. Hope you like the JTF, now we have 4 beautiful Serbian ladies, who I know: Jasmina, Sonja, Boyana, Freekaradzic. :P
;D Thanks, Peter.
You are welcome. I almost forget, add me my new msn address please. You can find it at my profile. ;)
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Thanks for the share, thank you Boyana. Hope you like the JTF, now we have 4 beautiful Serbian ladies, who I know: Jasmina, Sonja, Boyana, Freekaradzic. :P
;D Thanks, Peter.
You are welcome. I almost forget, add me my new msn address please. You can find it at my profile. ;)
LOL, I can't, it's not there.
Sorry, guys, for this being off-topic.
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http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=sr&u=http://www.makabijada.com/dopis/slang.htm&ei=OcgHSobqA6SUtgOttNTXAQ&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=4&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3Djevreji%2Bu%2Bsrbiji%26hl%3Den%26sa%3D
Story of the Belgrade Jews
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http://www.jimbeograd.org/eng/index.html
Jewish historical museum in Belgrade
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http://www.abrahamsvision.org/visionprogramweblogsummer2008/images/weblog41.jpg
Jewish synagogue in Belgrade
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Very nice presentation. :)
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http://www.davidalbahari.com/da_texts_eng.htm
visit this-David Albahari home page
[/color]
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[
List of Jews murdered in Zasavica near Sabac (Serbia)
Introduction by Zvi Bernhardt, Yad Vashem
· General Information About the Lists
· What is in the database
· Acknowledgements
· Searching the Database
General Information About the Lists
This introduction is based on the book Dead-End Journey: The Tragic Story of the Kladovo-Sabac Group, by Dalia Ofer and Hannah Weiner. This book is the 14th volume of "Studies in the Shoah" published by the University Press of America, Lanham, MD. This book is a translation of the original, which appeared in Hebrew. The section on the Jews of Sabac is from Pinkas HaKehillot. This list combines Holocaust victims from very different backgrounds: Austrian and German Jews and the Sephardic community of Sabac, Serbia. Both groups suffered the same fate.
The leaders of the Hechalutz Zionist youth organization in Austria decided to organize the last of their people in the training camps to go to Palestine on an "illegal" emigration in November 1939. A group was organized which included youth from the movement in Austria, Germany and Danzig. Many other refugees, with no connection to Hechalutz, were added to the group. The group traveled to Bratislava on 24-25 November, 1939. In the beginning of December, the group boarded the ship "Uranus". Their plan was to sail down the Danube River to the Rumanian port of Sulina, near the river’s mouth on the Black Sea, and from there take a ship to Palestine. From this time on, the group suffered many trials and setbacks. There were bureaucratic problems that the Mossad l’aliya Bet (organization for illegal immigration) had in procuring a ship to take them from the Black Sea to Palestine, and additional problems caused by the restrictions on aliya made by the British Mandatory regime in Palestine. Through the whole period, many different Jewish organizations tried to help them continue to Palestine, but to no avail.
The following is a chronology of the Hechalutz group:
* Early December, 1939 -- Boarded the ship Uranus. Sailed to Gyor, then back to Bratislava.
* December 12 -- Continued on the Uranus to Bezdan.
* December 14-15 -- Transferred, mid-river, to the three Yugoslav boats Kraljica Marija, Car Dusan and Car Nikola at the Yugoslav-Rumanian-Bulgarian border and then back to Pahovo.
* December 31 -- Boats dock at their winter mooring in Kladovo. The refugees live on the ships.
* January 1940 -- A barge is added to the three ships to give extra living space.
* May -- The boats sail. Most of the refugees are moved to towns, where they are put up in farmers’ houses. Some live on the "Penelope" barge.
* September 19 -- The refugees are moved by barge and boat to Sabac, apparently because the Yugoslav authorities feared clashes between them and ethnic Germans ("Volksdeutsche") who were traveling through the area.
* The refugees were housed in two large buildings - a former flour mill and wheat storehouse.
* All through this period, the needs of the refugees were taken care of by the "Federation of Jewish Communities in Yugoslavia," mostly from money received from the JDC. The refugees organized cultural activities, lessons for the children and other activities. Many of the testimonies also mention that the local Serbian population was very friendly toward the group. The refugees were continuously promised that the continuation of the trip toward Palestine was coming soon.
* March 1941 -- Some of the group, mostly children and youth, succeed in getting legal permits to enter Palestine and leave Sabac.
* July 1941 -- As a result of the German occupation of Serbia, the refugee group was moved to an old fortress on the Sava River near Sabac, which was transformed into a concentration camp.
* August 1941 -- The local Jews of Sabac are sent to the Sava camp.
* September 26 -- Male residents of Sabac, along with the male prisoners of the Sava camp, are taken to the town of Klenak. They are forced to run 23 kilometers to Jarak in Croatia. Those who lagged behind were shot. The Jews return to the camp on September 30.
* October 11 -- The Jewish men (together with Gypsies and some Serbs) are taken to the Seniak Camp.
* October 12-13 -- The men are taken to Zasavica, where they were shot in front of a pit that became a mass grave.
* January 26, 1942 -- The woman and children are moved to Sajmiste. Some died en route on a forced march from Ruma.
* March-May 1942 -- The women are murdered in a gas van and are buried in Jajinci.
* 1943-1944 -- A group of Yugoslav prisoners are forced to burn the remains of those buried in Jajinci.
* June 12 1945 -- The mass grave at Zasavica is opened. The Jews are removed and buried in the Jewish cemetery in Sabac.
* 1959 -- The remains are moved to the Sepharadi cemetary in Belgrade.
Other Information About the Community of Sabac:
Sephardic Jews came to Sabac in the first half of the 19thcentury, where they engaged in trade. In 1865 two Jews in the town were murdered, a case which brought international Jewish attention and the intervention of foreign consulates. A synagogue was built in 1895. In 1940, there were 83 Jews in Sabac.
What is in the Database
There are 1,055 records in the database. The database has been created from three different lists. The lists are referred to in the "List References" column by the following initials:
* CS – Community of Sabac
* CV – Community of Vienna
* YJC – Jugoslav Jewish Community
The fields in the database are:
* Number
* Surname
* Given Name
* Occupation
* Birth Date
* Age
* Comments
* List References
Entries in the "Comments" column include the following information where available:
* Birth Place: " in …"
* Residence: "aus …"
* Maiden Name: "geb. …"
* Child: "Kind"
* Widow: "Witwe"
The following are English translations of the German occupations listed in the file:
German
English
Beamter
Civil Servant
Dr.
Doctor
Dr. Bez. Arzt
Country doctor
Dr. Zahnartzt
Dentist, dental surgeon
Drogerist
Druggist, pharmacist
Handelsgehilfe
Merchant's (clerk's) assistant
Industr.
Industrialist
Ingenier
Engineer
Kaufmann
Merchant, dealer
Pensionär
Pensioner,retired
Private
Private business entepreneur
Professor
Professor
Rabbiner
Rabbi
Rentier
Rentner means renter.
Schneider
Tailor
Schuhm.
Shoemaker
Schüler
Pupil
Spengler
Tinsmith
Student
Student
Tischlergehelfe
Joiner's assistant
Zahntechn.
Dental technician, orthodontist
Acknowledgements
The information contained in this database was indexed as part of the data sharing agreement between Yad Vashem and JewishGen’s Research Division. The data was provided from the files of Yad Vashem (file O 10/12). This information is accessible to you today thanks to the transcription efforts of Joco Sami Monastirli. Nolan Altman did the final proofreading of the files.
And finally, thanks to JewishGen Inc. for providing the website and database expertise to make this database accessible. Special thanks to Susan King, Warren Blatt and Michael Tobias for their continued contributions to Jewish genealogy.
Zvi Bernhardt
January, 2004
Searching the Database
This database is searchable via JewishGen's Holocaust Database.
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http://www.jewishreview.org/node/12014 Indepedance comes attime of uncetainty for Kosovo Jews
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I know this. Have seen it a long time ago.
There are barely 50 Jews remaining there, in a couple of years, there will be not one Jew left on Kosovo...
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http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=sr&u=http://www.elmundosefarad.eu/wiki/wiki/index.php%3Ftitle%3DJEVREJI_ZA_SLOBODU_SRBIJE_1912-1918&ei=P7dKSp_-G4LblAfx0tAS&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=7&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3DJevreji%2Bna%2Bpustaju%2Bkosovo%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX
JEWS FOR THE FREDOM OF SERBIA[/glow]
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http://www.serbworldusa.com/REBECCA%20WEST.html
Rebecca West and Stanislav Vinaver :-*
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http://www.jewisheritage.org/jh/agenda_detail.php?lang=1&e=2005&id=22
Jewish festivals in Serbia 2005
:israel: :serbia: :guitar: :celebrate:
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http://www.avotaynu.com/books/Belgrade.htm
UNTIL THE FINAL SOLUTION
THE JEWS IN BELGRADE 1521-1942
by Jennie Lebel
:israel: :serbia: :israel: :serbia: :israel: :serbia: :israel: :serbia: :israel: :serbia:
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Have you read the book?
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http://digital.cjh.org/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=329115&local_base=GEN01
Ben David Erika
:israel: :serbia:
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Jewish Women's Archive Honors Unsung Local Heroes During Women's History Month
Yugoslavia
BibliographyDiscuss
by Harriet Freidenreich
Little has been written about the history of women in former Yugoslavia and even less is as yet known about the history of Jewish women in the Balkans. Before 1918 the South Slav lands of the Western Balkans did not share a common history, having been divided for centuries between Ottoman and Habsburg spheres of influence. The creation of Yugoslavia after World War I brought together in one political unit Eastern Orthodox Serbs, Macedonians, and Montenegrins; Roman Catholic Croats and Slovenes; and Muslim Bosnians, as well as many non-Slavic minorities, including Germans, Hungarians, Albanians, and two distinct groups of Jews, the Sephardim of the former Ottoman territories, and the Ashkenazim of the erstwhile Habsburg lands. The Ashkenazim, who formed roughly two-thirds of the 68,405 Jews recorded in the 1931 Yugoslav census, were concentrated mostly in the somewhat more developed northern and western parts of the country, including Croatia and the Vojvodina, whereas the Sephardim, comprising the remaining third, were situated mainly in the poorer areas of Serbia, Bosnia and Macedonia to the east and south. The Kingdom of Yugoslavia lasted from 1918 until its dismemberment after the German invasion in 1941; its Communist successor, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, was in existence from 1944 to 1991. Fewer than 15,000 Jews, scattered around the country, remained alive after the Holocaust; roughly half of these survivors made aliyah to Israel after 1948. Thus, Jews, who had never made up more than half of one percent of the population of Yugoslavia, had become only a tiny minority within a multi-national socialist state.
Historical Setting
Jewish settlements in Macedonia and Dalmatia date back as far as Greek and Roman days, and small communities existed in Slovenia and Serbia in medieval times, but the first major wave of Jewish immigration to the South Slav lands came as a result of the expulsion of the Jews from Christian Spain in 1492. By the mid-sixteenth century, Sephardim began to establish communities in the Balkan hinterlands of the Ottoman Empire, including Belgrade in Serbia, Sarajevo in Bosnia, and Skopje and Bitola (Monastir) in Macedonia, as well as in Dubrovnik and Split on the Dalmatian coast. By contrast, the Ashkenazi communities in the Habsburg Empire were of more recent origin. Until the end of the eighteenth century, Jews had been banned from residence in Slovenia, Croatia, and the Vojvodina (formerly Military Frontier), except for Zemun. During the nineteenth century, a significant number of Jewish families from various parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire migrated to the South Slav regions under Hungarian control. Substantial Jewish communities developed in Zagreb and Osijek in Croatia-Slavonia and Novi Sad and Subotica in the Vojvodina; there were also many smaller towns with significant Jewish populations. During the interwar years, there were 114 organized Jewish communities in Yugoslavia; 38 were Sephardi; 70, Ashkenazi-Neologue; and 6, Ashkenazi-Orthodox.
Unlike the overwhelmingly peasant South Slav population, of whom more than three-quarters lived in villages in the twentieth century, the Jewish population was heavily urban and middle class, residing mainly in the larger cities and towns. By and large, Ashkenazim engaged in commerce, white-collar occupations and the professions, whereas Sephardim tended to be merchants and artisans, though some, especially in Sarajevo and Bitola, were working class.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Jewish families tended to be fairly large. Families with six or more children were not uncommon, especially among the Sephardim. However, during the twentieth century, family size decreased considerably, with one or two children becoming the norm and more than three, the exception. Among both Ashkenazim and Sephardim, girls generally married in their late teens or early twenties; most married women were homemakers although, by the mid-twentieth century, increasing numbers of women, especially single women, had also begun to work outside the home. As the century progressed, increasing numbers of women never married or remained childless.
On the whole, Sephardi women’s lives most closely resembled the pattern set by their Jewish sisters elsewhere in the former Ottoman Empire, but they were also influenced somewhat by the customs of their Serbian Orthodox or Muslim neighbors. Until the late nineteenth century, Sephardi society in the Balkans displayed an extremely traditional and patriarchal character, based on extended family circles, with several generations and often families sharing the same household. Sephardi women in major towns such as Belgrade, Sarajevo or Bitola lived within a very tight-knit Jewish society, having limited contact with the outside world and keeping their social and cultural activities confined largely within the Jewish quarter. They generally lived in one-storied houses built around large courtyards and furnished in Turkish fashion. Often groups of neighbors would gather informally of an evening, gossiping, telling stories, singing, and playing games, but young girls would remain separate and associate with one another only during the daytime. At family celebrations, especially weddings and holidays, the older women would sing romansas, epic songs from medieval Spain that formed part of their Sephardi folklore heritage. Most Sephardim in the South Slav lands continued to speak Ladino, or Judeo-Spanish, as their mother tongue until the early twentieth century. Religious piety formed an integral part of their lives and traditional Jewish customs were strictly observed. Mothers, even if illiterate, passed on to their children a love and reverence for their faith, their home and their tradition.
Sephardi women thus lived a very sheltered existence in the South Slav lands before the twentieth century. In Bosnia and Macedonia, Jewish girls, like their Eastern Orthodox and Muslim counterparts, received little or no formal education. Remaining in the home to do housework and embroider, they married early, at sixteen to eighteen years of age. Daughters were often considered a burden and not highly valued as individuals, but married women were treated with greater respect, especially if they were mothers. They were freer to move around and looked after household matters themselves. Divorced women found themselves in a difficult position and were not fully accepted.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, however, gradual changes started to take place. By the 1860s, Jewish girls in Belgrade began to meet young men at dances and some of the older women abandoned their old-fashioned dress and customs. Like their Serbian neighbors, Jewish girls started attending elementary schools, where they learned Serbian and other subjects; those from wealthy families sometimes went to private schools, where they acquired knowledge of music, foreign languages, and handicrafts. In 1864, a public elementary school for Jewish girls, alongside a separate school for boys, opened in Jalija, the Belgrade Jewish quarter, with instruction mainly in Serbian. At first, many Jewish parents were reluctant to send their daughters to this school because they did not consider education necessary for girls. Regina Jeliševa (born ca. 1860) became the first Jewish girl in the Serbian capital to attend a public higher school for girls; after her graduation in 1879, she returned to teach in the Jewish girls’ school in Jalija. Soon, other Jewish girls followed in her footsteps in acquiring secondary education, although most did not go beyond the elementary level. Poorer girls, who in the past had generally been compelled to seek employment in the households of the rich, were increasingly being taught sewing and other useful trades. In Bosnia, advanced education for girls occurred only after the turn of the century. Regina Atijas (1901–1982), the daughter of the rabbi in Bihać, was one of the first Sephardi girls in Bosnia-Herzegovina to attend a classical gymnasium; she then went on to earn a medical degree in Zagreb during the interwar years.
Ashkenazi women who lived in Croatia-Slavonia or the Vojvodina in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were generally more westernized and more highly educated than their Sephardi sisters, but were less acculturated to their South Slav environment, since most of their families were relatively recent arrivals to the area. Their lives generally resembled those of middle-class Central European Jewish women residing in small cities and towns in Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, or Germany. They were generally multi-lingual; they often spoke German or Hungarian at home, but learned Croatian or Serbian at school. By 1864, the Zagreb Jewish community had established a co-educational elementary school where most subjects were taught in Croatian; Jewish schools also existed in Osijek and Varaždin, Novi Sad and Subotica. Over two-thirds of Zagreb Jewish children of both sexes attended the local Jewish school, where they received instruction in both secular and religious subjects. Elsewhere in Croatia and in the Vojvodina, Jewish girls attended both public primary schools and private schools for girls, some of which were under Catholic auspices. In 1872, the first higher girls’ school open up in Zagreb; twenty years later the first girls’ gymnasium was established; in 1901, the philosophy faculty of the University of Zagreb admitted women for the first time. Many Ashkenazi girls in Croatia and other South Slav lands continued their education in public or private middle schools and higher girls’ schools, while others chose to study in a gymnasium to prepare for more advanced education. Some of these young women went on to study at music or art academies; others attended university.
In the early twentieth century, a small group of Jewish women from South Slav lands received advanced degrees abroad, in Switzerland, Austria or Germany. During the interwar years, however, most Jewish students attended either the University of Zagreb or the University of Belgrade. By 1933, one hundred and seventy-five Jewish women comprised a quarter of the Jewish student population in Yugoslavia. Most of these women students were enrolled in either the faculty of philosophy (or liberal arts) or the faculty of medicine, while others studied law and engineering. Although increasing numbers of Ashkenazi women, and some Sephardim as well, were earning medical and other university degrees, higher education for women in Yugoslavia was still very much the exception rather than the rule.
As was the case elsewhere in Europe on the eve of World War II, only a minority of Jewish women had careers outside the home. Among those women with paid employment, many of whom were unmarried, some were teachers in either elementary or secondary schools; several taught in Jewish communal schools; others were physicians, especially pediatricians, or in other health professions. Jewish women worked as secretaries, clerks, modistes, shopkeepers, salespersons, and market vendors; others held jobs as seamstresses, textile operators, domestic servants, cosmeticians, or other types of workers. For most middle-class married Jewish women, however, their primary role was as wives and mothers, although they sometimes “helped out” in a family business. Before the mid-twentieth century, Jewish women thus generally appeared in communal and government records as either housewives or as widows. Many of these women became involved in Jewish women’s organizations and volunteered their time on behalf of the Jewish community.
Jewish Women’s Organizations
Jewish women’s clubs began to spring up in Sephardi and Ashkenazi communities in Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, and the Vojvodina in the late nineteenth century, around the same time that Jewish and Christian women were creating similar organizations elsewhere in Europe. Although Jewish women were not treated as equal members of the Jewish community and were excluded from voting and participating in communal governance, women’s philanthropic organizations came to play an important role within Jewish communal life because they not only helped large numbers of needy Jews, especially women, children and the elderly, but also enhanced the communal spirit of solidarity and cooperation by holding numerous social activities and entertainments to benefit charitable causes and promote both Jewish and secular culture.
In 1874 a handful of Sephardi women formed the first women’s club in Serbia, the Jewish Women’s Society. In the beginning this organization, which aimed at helping young mothers and poor widows, had no executive board and no statutes and held no formal meetings. It recruited young wives as members; they collected money from their friends and distributed it to needy women. By the end of the century, this association had begun to keep accounts in Ladino; in 1905 Jelena Alkalaj Demajo (1876–1942), who had been a teacher in the Jewish girls’ school in Jalija until her marriage that year, became the society’s first secretary and started to take minutes of meetings in Serbian.
During the Balkan Wars and World War I, several foreign-born Jewish women physicians, including Eva Halječka, Hanna Hirszfeld, Eva Mitnick (d.1914), and Selma Eliasberg (d.1915), worked as volunteers in the Serbian Army medical corps, combating typhus and other epidemics. Members of the Jewish Women’s Society also contributed to the Serbian war effort, demonstrating their patriotism by helping the Red Cross prepare bandages and working as nurses in field hospitals. One of their leading members, Natalija (Neti) Munk (1864–1924), who had also been a volunteer nurse during the Serbian-Bulgarian War of 1885, received several royal decorations for her many years of service as a nurse at the front. The Women’s Society took upon itself the responsibility of looking after war widows and orphans, as well as helping refugees and families in distress with food and shelter.
After World War I the Jewish Women’s Society underwent extensive reorganization and, with Jelena Demajo as its president and Sofija Almuli as its vice-president, greatly expanded its membership and programs. When this society celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 1924, 470 Sephardi women were counted among its ranks. One of its major projects was the creation of the School for Working Girls, which operated from 1919 to 1929, training young Jewish women as seamstresses. In 1923 a Vacation Committee began arranging for poor and sickly children to spend their holidays on the Adriatic coast. In the same year, the society inaugurated a series of popular lectures on medical subjects for women delivered by several of the local Jewish doctors. In 1937 the society erected its own building, which soon housed a day-care center that fed and cared for eighty children from seven o’clock in the morning until six in the evening. In addition, the Jewish Women’s Society continued to cooperate with various other Jewish and non-Jewish institutions in Belgrade in their programs and campaigns and to offer regular and emergency aid to needy families and individuals.
In 1924 twenty-four Jewish women’s clubs from various parts of Yugoslavia held a congress in Belgrade to form an Association of Jewish Women’s Societies for the entire kingdom; ten years later this body, which coordinated many of the charitable, educational, and cultural activities of Jewish women, had grown to forty member-clubs. At the forefront of this association was Jelena Demajo; Eliza Feldman, president of the Belgrade Ashkenazi women’s society, Dobrotvor, and Ilka Böhm, president of Sarajevo’s La Humanidad, served as its vice-presidents. Dobrotvor, founded in 1895, had as its principal aim helping the poor, especially the sick and disabled, widows and their families, and impoverished girls preparing for marriage. It offered monthly as well as emergency aid; twice a year, before Passover and before Rosh Ha-Shanah, it distributed food; around Hanukkah it provided winter supplies in the form of fuel and warm clothing. Dobrotvor, like similar associations in other communities, derived its revenues from membership dues, teas, entertainments, and gifts donated in the synagogue, as well as special contributions from benefactors. In Sarajevo during the interwar period, the Sephardi women’s society La Humanidad, which had been established in 1894, operated a day-care center as well as a holiday camp for poor children, in addition to the usual welfare contributions to new mothers, poor brides, orphans, invalids, and girls learning trades; the Sociedad de vizitar dolientes specialized in looking after the elderly and the sick. Until World War II, Sephardi and Ashkenazi women generally maintained separate organizations in Belgrade, Sarajevo and elsewhere.
Although, some Jewish women became actively involved in Croatian and Serbian women’s clubs in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, most preferred to join Jewish groups, since nearly all women’s associations in the South Slav lands were denominational. Several Jewish women’s groups developed in the Vojvodina, including the Novi Sad Israelite Charitable Society in 1876. The first Jewish women’s club in Croatia-Slavonia was founded in Vukovar in 1861; the Israelite Women’s Society Jelena Prister began its work in Zagreb in 1887; by 1908, nine more such organizations had come into existence in Croatia. The most ambitious undertaking by Zagreb Jewish women was the Israelite Vacation Colony. Between 1906 and World War I, this group of women sponsored the visits of two hundred and fifty sickly children to the seaside and sixty-three to the mountains; between 1915 and 1922, it helped an additional three hundred enjoy similar vacations. In 1923, thanks to a generous endowment from Mathilda Deutsch-Mačeljski (d.1946), a wealthy philanthropist who served as its president, the Israelite Vacation Colony was able to purchase Villa Antonia, a large home in Crkvenica on the Dalmatian coast. From 1923 to 1939 some two thousand five hundred poor or ailing children, mainly from Zagreb, took advantage of the Israelite Vacation Colony’s sponsorship and spent one month or more on the sunny Adriatic. In 1940 a new mountain home at Ravna Gora in northern Croatia temporarily opened its doors to these children. This organization not only provided services in the summer months; during the school year it supplied bread and milk to needy children attending the Jewish school and occasional help to their parents as well.
In addition to local Jewish women’s clubs in various communities around the country, the European Zionist women’s federation, WIZO (Women’s International Zionist Organization), established its first branch in Zagreb in 1927. By 1940, this organization, headed by Julia König of Zagreb and Reza Steindler of Belgrade, had sixty-seven local chapters in nearly every major Jewish center, with approximately five thousand members. Mirjam Weiller, a WIZO activist, Jewish educator, and writer of children’s stories, organized Zionist girls’ clubs and directed the Jewish kindergarten in Zagreb from 1923 to 1941. Other WIZO members also worked hard to improve the status of women and girls in both Yugoslavia and Palestine. In 1933 WIZO created the Central Jewish Bureau for Productive Aid, which provided Jewish girls and boys with scholarships; ran campaigns to help needy Jewish children in Bitola; and supplied aid to Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany and Austria. WIZO affiliates participated in all Zionist activities in the country, organizing hakhsharah stations to prepare prospective pioneers for life in Palestine; working to send two hundred and fifty Jewish children on Youth Aliya; and spreading Jewish nationalist culture and information about a future Jewish state. Although most of its members were Ashkenazim, WIZO differed from most other Jewish women’s groups in Yugoslavia by including many Sephardi women within its ranks.
Jewish women do not appear to have played a prominent role within Yugoslav feminist organizations, such as the Alliance of the Women’s Movement, which lobbied for women’s suffrage during the interwar years. However, Paulina Lebl Albala (1891–1967), a translator, literary critic, and professor of literature in Belgrade, helped found the Yugoslav Association of University-Educated Women in 1927 and served as its president for many years. In addition to her efforts to promote the social and professional goals of educated women, Albala, who had grown up in the Belgrade Ashkenazi community and was married to a Zionist leader who was president of the Belgrade Sephardi community, was active in Zionist youth work. Before World War II, the main sphere of involvement for adult Jewish women in Yugoslavia tended to be within the Jewish community rather than
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Document 4
ANONYMOUS
Source: Letter written by a Jewish physician, professor in the Department of Medicine in the University of Belgrade, to a friend in London on his escape from Yugoslavia in 1942. As the writer is a Jew, for the sake of relatives who remain in Yugoslavia his name cannot be used:
"In Yugoslavia there were 85,000 Jews, including Jewish emigrees from Germany, Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia. Thanks to the Serbs, the Yugoslav Jews had succeeded in saving and rescuing many of their compatriots from Germany and German-occupied countries. Service rendered and assistance given to Jews by Yugoslav consular officials in Austria and Czechoslovakia has specially to be recognized. Of the total number of Jews in Yugoslavia about 7,500 were refugees.
"The Jews in Yugoslavia were divided into Sephards, and Eskenasis [Ashkenazis]. The Sephards lived principally in Belgrade and Serbia, also in south Serbia, Bosnia, and Herzegovina. The Eskenasis principaly settled in Croatia, Slavonia, and the Voivodina. After the partition of Yugoslavia the Jews came under the rule of various regimes, including Pavelich's `Independent Croatian State'.
The `solution' of the Jeiwish question in the Independent Croatia devolved upon the Croatian Ustashis. In Serbia, however, the Jewish problem was not dealt with by the Serbs themselves. This the Cermans reserved for themselves. There are special reasons f or this. When they occupied Serbia, the Germans did not find any anti-Semitic feeling in the country. They could not persude either the local population or the local autorities to take any anti-Semitic measures.
"The fact that Nedich twice demanded from the German commanding officer in Serbia and the Banat that he and his government should be given the right to settle the Jewish problem, against whom no drastic measures should and could be taken in Serbia, shows the feeling of the Serbian people toward the Jews. The following reasons were given by Nedich to the Germans for this demand. If the Germans wanted the Serbs to calm down, it would be of first importance to stop the terrible persecution of the Serbian Jews. The Serbian people could not and would not accept such treatement `of their compatriots of the Jewish religion.' The Serbs consider Jews as their brothers, only of a different religion. The answer which Nedich reccieved from the Germans reg arding this demand was 'that the Serbs have not attained a culture to the degree necessary to enable them to deal with the Jews. We ourselves shall settle the Jewish question in Serbia.'
"With regard to anti-Semitism, Yugoslavia can be divided into two parts, i.e., districts where this feeling was latent, and Serbia, where, it can be said without any exaggeration, anti-Semitic feeling has never had any root.
"During Yugoslavia's twenty-three years of existence, Serbia has always professed the free democratic tradition existing in the former Kingdom of Serbia. There in the nineteenth century, and later in the twelfth, the Jews always had full civic rights and complete equality with their Serbian compatriots. This equality was not only granted in various constitutions of the Kingdom of Serbia and later of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, but it was also a true expression of the relationship between the Orthodox Serbs and the Jews in their everyday contact. This friendly and amicable relationship also existed in the economic, financial, and political life in Serbia. The small group of Jews living in Serbia gave their contribution towards the cultural and political life in Serbia's struggle for the formation of a state of South Slavs. The Jews had in Serbia members of Parliament. In Serbia's struggle for liberation, the Jews gave their contribution. Several were awarded the Karadgeorge Star for bravery in the battlefield - equivalent to the British V.C.
"About a year before Yugoslavia was attacked by Germany, by pressure from the Reich and in their attempt to suit their policy to the dictators, the Tsvetkovich-Machek Government passed the first anti-Semitic measure in Yuoslavia. The Government vas not unanonimous on this point. Dr. Koroshets, leader of the Slovenes, upheld the measure as Minister of Education. Serbian cabinet ministers, how- ever, induding the Minister of War, refused to apply the act. The application of it was confined to the Ministry of Education, under the Slovene Dr. Koroshets, and the Ministry of Trade and Industry, under the Croat Dr. Andres.
"In all the schools and universities, numerous restrictions were ap- plied by circular, but in Serbia Serb teachers and professors succeeded in avoiding or sabotaging the regulations.
"In this regard Serbia completely differed from Croatia under Dr. Machek and the district governor or ban, Shubashich. In Croatia anti- Semitism was inherited from Austria-Hungary. Anti-semitic centers had always existed. Dr. Shubashitch's Croatia had even prepared elaborate laws and regulations just before the war broke out in Yugoslavia in 1941. A large part of the industries in Jewish hands in Croatia was to be confiscated and nationalized. Anti-Semitism was particularly stressed in Croatia by the right wing of Dr. Machek's Croatian Peasant Party.
"This report could be divided into two parts - the first beginning with the entry of German troops into Belgrade in April 1941 to the beginning of August 1941; the second from the middle of August 1941 until the closing down of the office of the 'Jewish section' late in 1942. The section was closed because there were no longer any Jews in occupied Serbia. During the first stage the Jews were tortured, persecuted, maltreated, taken for forced labor. Well-known Jews and Serbs were talien to German concentration camps. Women of the intelligentsia class were forced to clean latrines in the German bar- racks, to clean floors and sweep streets under the supervision of the S.S. troops. They were made to clean the windows of high houses from the outside, and severall of them lost their lives through failling down. Jewish girls were violated and taken to `Militar-Medi'. Already during the first stage the Jews were deprived of all their property and most of them were evicted from their homes.
"In the second period male Jews were sent to concentration camps. But quite a number of men and young Jews succeeded in escaping to the villages, where they lived with Serbian peasant families. A number later joined the guerrillas. A considerable number of youths from the Jewish Zionist organization, which co-operated with the Serbian organizations for the preparation of resistance, actively helped the guerrilla fighters. Many collected hospital materiall for the guerrillas or posted anti-German posters in Belgrade streets. The name of Almozlmo, a schoolboy of ten, the son of a well-known Belgrade dispensing chemist in ing. Peter Street, should be mentioned. He threw bombs at two armored German cars and a tank in Grobljanska Street in Belgrade and blew them up. His elder brother, a medical student, is still fighting in Bosnia, in spite of the order that the mayor and mem- bers of the rural councils would be shot if such cases were discovered in their villages.
"Some forty of my relatives were shot in Belgrade by the Germans. I am, however, very proud to say that today two small relatives of mine, one of five and one of seven years of age, whose parents were shot by the Gestapo, are being hidden by two Serbian mothers.
No German measures in Belgrade were able to upset the friendly relations between the Serbs and Jews. During the forced-labor period Serbs talked to their Jewish friends in the streets even in front of the German soldiers and police. During the period well over 300,000 Serbs were massacred by the Croat Ustashi in Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Lika and some 60,000 shot by the Germans in Serbia, during the period when Serbian students and peasants were hung in the main square in Belgrade, the Serbs of the capital had sufficient courage to protest publicly their indignation at the treatment of the Jews.
"When Jewish women were transported in lorries to the concentration camps, Serb shopkeepers in the streets through which these processions passed closed their shops and their houses, thus expressing not only their protest, but also emphasizing the fact that the entire population of Serbia, yesterday and today, does not and cannot participate in the extermination of their Jewish neighbors.
"The example of the Serbian people with regard to the Jews is unique in Europe, particularly in the southern part of the continent. In spite of intensive German propaganda in writing and through the wireless, the Serbs remained unaffected. When we consider what happened to the Jews in neighboring countries, in the 'Independent State of Croatia,' Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria, the Serbian example shines out.
"Today there are no more Jews left in Serbia, except some children hidden by the Serbs and those fighting along with the Serbs in the forests. I saved my own life thanks to my Serbian friends. I was saved from certain death. Serbian peasants and my other friends also saved from death my only son, who was on several occasions sought by the Gestapo in Belgrade.
"It is my desire as a Jew and as a Serb that in free democratic countries where Jews are still enjoying full freedom and equality they should show gratitude to the Serbian people, pointing out their noble acts, their humane feelings, and their high civic consciousness and culture....
"I cannot conclude this report without mentioning how the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Patriarch Gavrilo, and his clergy tried to save Serbian Jews and Gypsies. Up to the present day the Germans have massacred I70,000 Gypsies, men, women, and children, in Serbia and the Banat. Serbian Orthodox priests and the Serbian peasantry risked their lives not only to save ordinary Jews and their children but also to save those Gypsies and their children. Today the chief rabbi of Yugoslav Jews lives in America. He was saved from the Gestapo, being smuggled out from Serbia from monastery to monastery by the Serbian clergy. He was handed over by one Serbian church to another, by one Serbian priest to another until he was passed on to Bulgarian territory. There, with the assistance oif the Orthodox Bulgarian clergy, some of whom were his personal friends, he arrived at the Turkish frontier."
Used with permission
The Reagan Information Interchange
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"learned serbian or croatian languages..."
yes,croatian language,if thats the case,i know,montenegrian,bosnian,croatian,south serbian,central serbian,serbo-croatian,srbo-bosnian-croatian aswell, etc etc...
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You are a Serbian Jew, correct, Boyana?
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http://srbskipatriotskifront.webs.com/apps/videos/channels/show/609502-jasenovac
JASENOVAC CAMP :'( :'( :'(
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The poet of Sarajevo, by Resad Gogolija
In the splendid, for a wonder, preserved hall of the museum of litrature and theatrical Art, in the still besiedged town of Sarajevo, those september daus was excetionally festive scene. Organized by the Jewish cultural and humanitarian society " La Benevolitia " the exibition : Isak SAMOKOLLIJA -POET OF SARJEVO, opened on the occasion of 40 years of his death, of our eminent citizien, doctor of medecine, a man loved by us, a great writer. An introductory word was held by Mr.Jakob Finci, president of of la " Benvelotia " and Mrs Miriam Samokovlija ", the poet's daughter, while the exibition was opened by Dr.Razija Lagumdzija, writer, who spoke in a most inspired way about the poet's life and work.
The exibition contains many of Samokovlija's manuscripts, documents, correspondance, photographs, posters, periodical in wich Samokoclija published his essays and papers, reviews, a selection of litterature and writings on Samokovlija, items and art pieces. A cosy nook, which pleased us particulary, a place dedicated to Jewish extraction, where among different items was to be found a prayer book in German and Hebrew, a messum for his home ; Samokoxlija was a Jew from Bosnia, his literary work is primiraly Jew, because he wrote about the life of the Jewish-Sephardim, actually Jews from Sarajevo, but from the lowest scales of life.
Isak Samokovlija according the register in the town of Gorazde, Bosnia-Herzegovina, was born the 3rd September, 1889, son of Mosha and Rifka Samokovlija of Jewish religion. His parents who settled won at Gorazde, after the progroms in the Bulgarian town of Samokovo, give birth to four other sons : Haim, Baruch, Jakov, Leon.
As an eight years old boy Samokovlija left for Sarajevo to stay with his grandfather from the maternal side to complete meldar. His grandfather lived in the part of Bjelave being the first approach with the town and people, who will be in his work.
In the year 1902 he was enrolled for the Great Gymnasium in Sarajevo, he will finish all eight grades with full marks. Also he did a class of the Israeli Sephardim Community in Sarajevo. He has writing poems and published them in the periodical Zora (Dawn), almanacs of the Jewish schoolchildren society " Jehuda Makabi ", his prose and poetic texts in calligraphy letters were most distinguished.
He was given the scholarship of " La Benevolentia ", 1910, to study at the medical Faculty in Vienna. He was graduated in the year 1917, he started sonn to work at the Military Hospital, Department of Infectious Diseases in Sarajevo. He married a young woman of Vienna, Hedda Brunner, in the course of three years were born his children, son Mosha, duaghters Miriam and Rikica. He published poems and his literary career was about to come.
An anonymous writer spoke of Samokovlija as a honourable person, because he is the only poet in our country whose poems " ...express a strong lyrical temperament, a sonorous cadance, very important for the Jews of Bosnia, such a rich and harmonious language... " The first reviewer of Samokovlija's work believed that Samokovlija will join " the round dance of the Serbo-Croat poets of our days ".
He was editor of the cultural column in the periodical JEVREJSKI ZIVOT (Jewishlife), in wich he used to publish his literary and theatrical reviews, prosa texts, yexts related to Jews (From talmud, Hanuka). He translated the works of Jewish writers Shalom Asha, Tereca and Elejham.
The journal Srpski knjizevni glasnik (Serbian Literary Herrald), the issue of 1st July 1927 published Samakovlija's first story RAFINA AVLIJA (Rafo's Courtyard) inspired by the events of the same name.
He wrote stories : DRINA, JEVREJIN KOJI SE SUBOTOM NE MOLI BOGU (A Jew who on saturdays doesn't pray), KADISH, PLAVA JEVREJKA (A blond Jewish Girl) and HANKA.
His first collection of stories : OD PROLJECA DO PROJLECA (From Spring to Spring appeared in April 1929, edited by a group of Sarajevo writers. He wanted the book to have the best oufit, his friends helped him and " La Benevolentia " and he supported the publishing himself. The essay on the end of the book " The Jewish Soul of Isak Samomokovlija " was written by Boro Jeftic, a writer, illustrated by painter Roman Petrovic. The critics addressed warmly his first collection of stories, while the write Jovan Krsic pointed out that " Samokvlija is the first Yugoslav writer who puts down an art sonde to the unexamined depth of the Jewish soul ".
Ivo Andric, the only Yugoslav Nobel Prize Winner for literature, wrote in Madrid : " I read everything what is being written by the young writer, so I see, you, among them have an excellent part as a bosnian and Jewish Tchekov, a fine and strong story teller ".
His stories were put on stage : Hanka, A blonde Woman, performed at the People's Theatre in Sarajevo on the 26th March 1932. In some issues of the newspaper Jewerjski Glas (The Jewish Voice) was a bitter discussion among the Jewish intellectual people about the reliability of the " Jewish Milleau " of the story. Dr. Vita Kajon published a pamphlet " The Jewish Ideals and people in Samokov's drama " Samokovlija published DJECA ULICE (Street Children), ZGAZENO DUGME ( A button Stepped On), GAVRIEL GAON I VODJA (Gavriel Gaon and the Leader). A premiere of his comedy in three acts ONA JE LUDA (She is foolish) was performed in the theatre of sarajevo directed by Lidija Mansjetova. The second collection of his histories came to existance, the criticism was good " ... Samokovlija succeded to develop spiritually and artistic to become a very sure and extraordinary fine, emotion full observer of life... " " What is being so good with Mr Samokovlija is his beautifull expression of a feeling for it... "
On the eve of the World War 2 he published his famous story Nosac Samuel (Porter Samuel) wich will be, after the war, incluted into the collection of stories under the same name. The story was dedicated to his mother Rifka, he said :" This collection is dedicated by the author to memory of his mother Rifka. She died in the year 1939 - two years prior to the horrible and cruel fascist devastation in our home country ". Her memory makes in him a joy because she died before the events ".
Samokovlija was dismissed from his duty in the year 1941, later mobilized by the croatian army. The family is in exile, everywhere, he was in the provinces of Bosnia. He came back to Sarajevo in the year 1942 and worked in the hospital to wipe out the thyphus fever also in the camp for refugees of Eastern Bosnia. His daughters for a time were in the same camp. His daughter Rikica said : " daddy worked hard, there were so many diseased, daddy was the only doctor in the place. And, the typhus fever pillaged... ".
In seldom free time he curved wood figures successfully and noted the prescriptions of the popular medecine.
After the World War 2 he lived with his family in their house in Sarajevo. He suffered on nephritis, a consequence a chronic disease.
He wrote stories o, Jews who where killed in the past war, feeling to be his own debt, it dare not be forgotten. The editors of periodicals all over the country asked for his cooperation. The great lady writer Isidora Sekulic asked him for a paper fo the Letopis Matice Srpske (Chronical of the Serbian Cultural Society), she said in her letter : " What a strenght, what a vocation you have ! You can't make errors ! You, personally, today, have a strenght to write. If there were so much joy as the stones on earth are. Therefore, you should write, only the cry to be heard, we are so much indebted to consciouness and responsabilities ".
PRAZNICNO VECE (An Evening of the Fetival) is a storu dealing with the snd World War, published separately.
He was selected to the president of the Union of Writers of Bosnia-Herzegovina and editor-in-chief of the journal Brazda (Furrow), where he published his stories, critics and reviews.
In the year 1948, he was awarded, the prize for litterature by the committee of Culture and Art, Governement of Jougoslavia.
At the congresss of writers of Yougoslavia he was elected to the Managing Board of the Union of writers.
In Beograd he published new collections of stories SOLOMONOVO SLOVO (Solomon's letters) and IZABRANE PRIPOVJETKE (Selected Stories), while in Sarajevo PRIPOVJETKE (Stories), in Zagreb a collection PRICA O RADOSTIMA (A story on Joy). He was author of the screen play Anka, buth the film was performed after his death.
In April, 1953, he travelled officially to Israël.
From the daily newspapers was khnow that Samokovlija had been preparing a novel on the life of the Bosnian Jews-Sephardim. He said about his novel : "The war put the last link to the long chain of my impressions and knowledge. The war raised off the small place of my childhood, heroes of my remembrance... I decided not to be forgotten, to write a novel of reminiscence, wich in a way will be the work of my life... "
Some of this stories were translated int german, hebrew, Hungarian, Slowakian, Slovene, Czeck, French, English and greek.
In the year 1954 he intended to visit France officially, but he his very sick, suffered on uremia.
Isak Samokovlija died on 15th January 1955, 66 years old in the Clinical Hospital of the Medical Faculty in Sarajevo. He was burried on 17th January in the old Sephardic cemetery in Sarajevo.
At the time I was ten years old, I felt so sorry unable to comprehend that death is a truth of life. I could then hardly read and write. I was full of sorrows because my dear neighbour died, Keridu Isak, a great writer and a good man. On the day of his burrial it was raining in Sarajevo, but the funeral procession was endless. With my parents and many Sarajevans we said farewell last to our most beloved writer and a dear man going tho his eternal home.
When I say DEAR MAN, so I think and khnow that those who new him personnally and we, who were told about him, all of us have a memory of him as a person of high ethnical principales, expressed in all his deeds. The stories are alive, retold frequently in this town where he had spent his life, left traces never to fade out. Now, while walking in the exibition hall dedicated to the forty years of his death, I feel that in those items is a silent story of this man's life ans work.
About his literary work a great deal was written, the criticism was interesting in his work. It was written by some meritorious people here and abroad, but the last word hasn't yet been said, because his literary work will always be a topic of new researches. The readers troughout the world will remember his heroes : Rafo, Simha, Raphael, Samuel, Sarchi, Jachiel, Rifka and so many others, whom the writer Samakovlija knew as well, their soul, wrote about their innocent fate ordered by destiny. The silent word of the Jewish poor people, khnowing then so well, who never have a great joy, if it appears is uncertain in little annoucements of a sheer luck, often destroyed by will and power of others. Those rich people of wich they were depending. In there expections is always an illsionary peace. They dare not to go along the slippery path, often dangerous of the contrary. Often they were deceived, had comforts " The God's wish, the order of the world for...after all this is the life...
Their life was shaded by their peace, above all there were some false ideas. They become transformed into a tragic living with destiny, only to live.
Besides of Samokovlija's most common topics where described the life of the Jewish poor people, he found topics in his lyric reminiscences related to some ohter places, being another thematic circle of literay work. None the less Samokovlija is known by his Jewish stories. He is the first writer to introduce it to our literarure.
To Samokovlija and his excellent stories on Sarajevo Jews the exibition is dedicated.
Warm and cosy are those towns which keep the homes of their known artists.
Therefore, I think, one day in Sarajevo when the war attrocities come to an end, when all of us, the Serbs, Croats, Moslem and Jews stay to live together, the homes and museum of those lived and worked here, will have a nisham (top of a grave stone) of our cultural life. I hope it will be a museum of Isak Samokovlija. This exibition being a reason, a possible indicator to do something to remember or beloved man.
Retour au sommaire
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- Copyright © 1997 Moïse Rahmani <[email protected]> -
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http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/media_ph.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10006802&MediaId=4650
Tower of Sephardic faces: The Jewish community of Monastir, Macedonia
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"learned serbian or croatian languages..."
yes,croatian language,if thats the case,i know,montenegrian,bosnian,croatian,south serbian,central serbian,serbo-croatian,srbo-bosnian-croatian aswell, etc etc...
Nik_Srb is trying to say that there is no croatian or bosnian language it's Serbs language and it's insulting to say something like that.They took our country,our language and they still hate us : )
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We have diferent dialect not diferent language.
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http://srbskipatriotskifront.webs.com/apps/videos/channels/show/609502-jasenovac
JASENOVAC CAMP :'( :'( :'(
This site is organized by VLADISLAV B. Sotirovic.He hates Jews and he is anti-Semitic, and even blaspheme the God Almighty!
I gave him a lesson on the site novinar.de!
http://www.novinar.de/2010/06/03/izraelski-evergrin-ili-tuzna-prica-o-medunarodnom-nepravu.html#more-15301
Who understand the Serbian language can make sure, check the comments!
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Crni trn,
are you accusing me that I am anti semitic?
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Crni trn,
are you accusing me that I am anti semitic?
No no that is impossible , I just said that to be carefull! He is the chauvinists and is not reliable source, especially for Jews!
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Crni Trn
I was not aware of many facts which you have mentioned here. Thanks for sharing!
:serbia: :israel:
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You're welcome. But it does mean that information is not correct. I just said to be carefull!
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he is only puppet for some ppl ...
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Yea, but sick puppet!
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http://greatersurbiton.wordpress.com/tag/dimitrije-ljotic/
Jasa Almuli and Holocaust revisionism: The making of a Serbian anti-Wiesenthal
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Almuli is absolutely correct:
The allegation that the regime of Milan Nedic, installed by the Germans in Serbia in August 1941., enthusiastically participated in the Holocaust, is the second incorrect statement in Mr. Hoare’s letter. No anti – Jewish legislation was passed by this regime, no death camp for Jews was established or run by it and virtually no killing perpetrated. All that was done by the German Army, police and SS which had almost entirely destroyed the Serbian Jewish population by May 1942., although several hundred Jews were still hiding with Serbian friends. The German police were hunting them and many were caught with the help of police loyal to Nedic’s regime, attracted by the financial reward the Germans were paying. This is all that can be found about Nedic in the published research of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Yugoslavia. The Germans themselves dealt with the Jews in Serbia; the duty of Nedic‘s regime was to carry out internal administration.
The half – truth in Mr. Hoare’s letter refers to the concentration camp Banjica in Belgrade. It was indeed a death camp and staffed by Serbian policemen, but it was not destined for Jews. This camp was established by German order and the Serbian personnel were subject to the control of the Gestapo. The camp was intended for Serbs who opposed the German occupation, for Partisans, Communists and liberal patriots. Out of 23,697 persons who were imprisoned in this camp only 455 were Jews.
Marko Attila Hoare is a half-Croat (or quarter-Croat quarter-Hungarian), half-English pseudohistorian. His middle name Attila may refer to a Hungarian grandfather. His mother is called Branka Magas.
He never properly deals with Croatian Ustasa genocide. He belongs to the Croatian school of "the Serbs did it too, so we Croats are clean." The problem is:
1.) Serbia was never anywhere nearly as antisemitic as Croatia. It was one of the least antisemitic countries in Europe, alongside Bulgaria. The major antisemitic party in Serbia, ZBOR, got only 0.86% of the vote prior to WWII.
2.) Regardless of what happened in Serbia, how would that absolve Croatia?
3.) Serbia was a German-occupied and operated territory, not a Nazi ally, like Croatia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania. This map says it all:
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/WW2-Holocaust-Europe.png)
4.) In every major camp in Serbia - Sajmiste, Banjica, and Crveni Krst - Serbs formed the overwhelming majority of victims. Thus, even if Serbs hypothetically ran these camps (and they didn't, excepting an administrator in Banjica), the majority of their victims were members of their own nation who vehemently opposed Nazism. Can the Croats say the same for Jasenovac and their camps (which they, not the Germans, set up)? I don't think so.
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http://greatersurbiton.wordpress.com/tag/dimitrije-ljotic/
Jasa Almuli and Holocaust revisionism: The making of a Serbian anti-Wiesenthal
Helsinki Committee they are working for NVO and they are anti-serb and anti-jew. If you remember what i was said just a few days ago,that some organisation trying to set on fire on our two nation, here it is one of them!
This propaganda is not new, it is been used many times by Ustasa, Nazis , Albanians ....
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I doesnt really like Serbs.They helped to holocaust us!They holocausted many of us!!!!
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I doesnt really like Serbs.They helped to holocaust us!They holocausted many of us!!!!
Are you drunk or just "naturally talented"? :::D
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I doesnt really like Serbs.They helped to holocaust us!They holocausted many of us!!!!
What ?? You are so naive!! You have serbian name on this forum!!
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http://www.rts.rs/page/stories/sr/story/10/Svet/801430/Sva%C4%91a+zbog+Zida+pla%C4%8Da?message=ok
Slicnu stvar nama radi vatikan vekovima uz pomoc hrvata, albanaca, bosanaca, pa i bugara madjara, makedonaca....
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S58ivjU9PeE
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Članovi Fonda za humanitarno pravo o odnosima Jevreja i Srba
Istina protiv lažne uzbune
Dva naroda imaju mnogo sličnosti i mnogo poštovanja i saosećanja
Ako antisemitizam podrazumeva negativan odnos prema nekom narodu, Srbi nikada nisu bili antisemiti. Od oko 110 miliona pripadnika semitskog naroda, Jevreji čine samo pet odsto Semita, a kao što se zna, Srbi nisu ni protiv arapskog naroda koji je semitskog porekla i koji čini većinu.
Srbi, ni kao narod ni kao pojedinci, nikada nisu odlučivali o sudbini jevrejskog naroda. Međutim, da li se to može reći za: ...Džefrija Saksa, Vorena Zimermana, Đerda Šoroša, Džejmsa Bejkera, Lorensa Iglbergera, Robera Badentera, Roja Gatmana, Ričarda Goldstouna, Mortona Abramovica, Henrija Kisindžera, Zbignjeva Bžežinskog, Pitera Galbrajta, Žaka Klajna, Vorena Kristofera, Semjuela Bergera, Andreja Kozireva, Entonija Lejka, Vilijama Koena, Medlin Olbrajt, Džejmsa Rubina, Ričarda Holbruka, Kristofera Hila, Veslija Klarka, Bernara Kušnera, Dejvida Hantera, Karlu del Ponte....? Da li nabrojana i druga izostavljena lica imaju jevrejsko poreklo nije nam poznato, ali to nikako ne može biti razlog da se za naše satanizovanje optužuju Jevreji kao narod.
Da bi se razjasnio odnos Srba i Jevreja, možda bi trebalo da se prisetimo izjava uticajnih predstavnika jevrejskog naroda:
"Slušajte, to je činjenica da su Srbi i Srbija bili satanizovani, da su ih mediji na Zapadu prikazivali kao čudovišta. Međutim, ja mislim da nije tako, da lažu", kaže vrhovni rabin Jevrejske zajednice SRJ gospodin Cadik Danon (N. TELEGRAF, 7.5.1997).
"Srbi su puno puta spasili Jevreje, Hrvati nisu, ja to znam. Mi smo uvek imali simpatije prema Srbima", kaze Eli Vizel (POLITIKA, 22. 5. 1997).
U svetskom izveštaju o antisemitizmu za 1993. Institut za jevrejska pitanja u Londonu, navodi: "Uništenje srpskih Jevreja organizovali su i izvršili isključivo Nemci." Ovo ponavlja i predsednik Saveza jevrejskih opština Jugoslavije David Albahari: "Obavezni smo da izjavimo da svi raspoloživi istorijski dokumenti dokazuju da su stvarni organizatori svih mera protiv Jevreja u Srbiji bile nemačke okupacione vlasti." (NOVOSTI, 20.5.1994)
Na području sadašnje Srbije živelo je 33.580 Jevreja, a završetak rata u Srbiji dočekalo ih oko 4.792. Govoreći o stradanju Jevreja, gospodin Aca Singer, predsednik Saveza jevrejskih opština Jugoslavije, navodi da su stradali od "nemačkih nacista, uključujući Vermaht, zatim hrvatskih ustaša i mađarskih honveda i njilaša". Pomenimo samo da su, u vreme stradanja Jevreja, stradali i Srbi. U to vreme Srbija je bila okupirana, a vlast u Zemunu, posebno na Starom sajmištu, gde su vršena streljanja, držala je od 10. aprila 1941. NDH Ante Pavelića.
"U Izraelu postoji toplo i prijateljsko osećanje prema Srbima, koji su jedan od retkih evropskih naroda prema kojima se takva osećanja gaje u jevrejskoj državi", rekao je ambasador Izraela u SRJ David Sason (POLITIKA, 4.4.1997).
Rabin Cadik Danon, koji je u Jugoslaviji nekoliko decenija službovao kao vrhovni rabin, tokom bombardovanja Srba, 3. aprila 1999. uputio je apel: "Apelujem na sve jevrejske organizacije i Jevreje širom sveta da svako, koliko je u njegovoj moći, doprinese da prestane teška grmljavina razornih NATO bombi i medijskih laži koja se obrušila na Srbe. Danas, kad se treći put u ovom veku Srbi nalaze na udaru svetskih moćnika, nemam pravo da ostanem nem pred nesrećom koja je zadesila nedužne Srbe i sve građane Jugoslavije samo zato što su nepokolebljivi u svom ubeđenju da niko nema pravo da gospodari onim što je njihovo, a pogotovo da im oduzme vekovnu svetinju - Kosovo, za koje sam više puta isticao da predstavlja njihov Jerusalim." (POLITIKA, NOVOSTI, POLITIKA EKSPRES 4. 4. 1999)
Prilikom posete delegacije Svetskog jevrejskog kongresa Beogradu (3. 9. 1998) generalni sekretar dr Izrael Zinger istakao je da Jevreji na Srbe gledaju kao na najbližeg prijatelja. Predstavnici Svetskog jevrejskog kongresa došli su u Beograd, kako je to istakao Aris Livne "da odužimo izvestan dug prema srpskom narodu koji volimo i cenimo" (POLITIKA, 4. 9.1998).
"Srbi su danas novi izgnani žrtveni Izrailj... Naša je sveta dužnost pred Bogom Svevišnjim i pred Srbima da budemo uz njih, da ne učestvujemo u pogromaškoj hajci, koja lažima neviđenog medijsko-informativnog zavođenja satanizuje ovaj najbratoljubiviji, najzagrljajniji narod kakav, nažalost, u zapadnom hrišćanstvu više ne postoji.
Ustajući u lažnom svedočenju protiv Srba, i to predvodnički, zapadna jevrejska dijaspora skrnavi naše svete žrtve genocida kroz vekove. Zaustavite Jevreje zapadne dijaspore! Prekinite saučesništvo u pogromu protiv Srba, jer time učestvujete u pogromu protiv nas samih i pripremate nove pogrome protiv nas", navodi, u pismu francuskom rabinu dopisni član SANU, kompozitor Enriko Josif (ARGUMENT, 26. 4.1994).
To je deo razloga zbog kojih smo ubeđeni da je srbomržnja i osuda pravoslavnih Srba za antisemitizam, posebno u proteklih deset godina, neosnovana i može imati štetne i pogubne posledice po viševekovne tolerantne odnose Srba i Jevreja u Srbiji. Ostajemo u iskrenom uverenju da će duh tolerancije i razumevanja nadvisiti planirane lažne uzbune.
FOND ZA RAZVOJ DEMOKRATIJE, BEOGRAD
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http://www.nspm.rs/prenosimo/nas-svet-troje-jevrejske-dece.html
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"Srbi su danas novi izgnani žrtveni Izrailj... Naša je sveta dužnost pred Bogom Svevišnjim i pred Srbima da budemo uz njih, da ne učestvujemo u pogromaškoj hajci, koja lažima neviđenog medijsko-informativnog zavođenja satanizuje ovaj najbratoljubiviji, najzagrljajniji narod kakav, nažalost, u zapadnom hrišćanstvu više ne postoji.
Ustajući u lažnom svedočenju protiv Srba, i to predvodnički, zapadna jevrejska dijaspora skrnavi naše svete žrtve genocida kroz vekove. Zaustavite Jevreje zapadne dijaspore! Prekinite saučesništvo u pogromu protiv Srba, jer time učestvujete u pogromu protiv nas samih i pripremate nove pogrome protiv nas", navodi, u pismu francuskom rabinu dopisni član SANU, kompozitor Enriko Josif (ARGUMENT, 26. 4.1994).
In the Jewish cemetery at Belgrade, the headstone is inscribed
"NN, Serb of the Faith of Moses - SRBIN MOISIJEVE VERE",
jpm
Petar Makara wrote:
Please forward: Dear friends, With great sadness I have to inform you that
Academic Enrico Josif died this Saturday, March 15, 2003. Mr. Josif was a Jew
and great friend of the Serbian people. He dared send this message to the
American Jews: "A media Auschwitz, was perpetrated on the Serbian people! The
Serbs were dehumanized and portrayed as monsters exactly as the Jews were
portrayed through centuries. Do not participate in persecution of the Serbs.
They are our brothers. They are people who share the same destiny with us, the
Jewish people." The above quote is from his interview given to Mr. Jasa Almuli
in May 1997. Mr. Almuli is 85 years journalist living in Great Britain.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/republikasrpska/message/1264
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Hey! My family is originally from Kosovo. but I was born in Beograd.
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In the Jewish cemetery at Belgrade, the headstone is inscribed
"NN, Serb of the Faith of Moses - SRBIN MOISIJEVE VERE",
jpm
Petar Makara wrote:
Please forward: Dear friends, With great sadness I have to inform you that
Academic Enrico Josif died this Saturday, March 15, 2003. Mr. Josif was a Jew
and great friend of the Serbian people. He dared send this message to the
American Jews: "A media Auschwitz, was perpetrated on the Serbian people! The
Serbs were dehumanized and portrayed as monsters exactly as the Jews were
portrayed through centuries. Do not participate in persecution of the Serbs.
They are our brothers. They are people who share the same destiny with us, the
Jewish people." The above quote is from his interview given to Mr. Jasa Almuli
in May 1997. Mr. Almuli is 85 years journalist living in Great Britain.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/republikasrpska/message/1264
Excerpt from Mr. Jasa Almuli's interview with Mr. Enriko Josif, a Yugoslav Jew and survivor of WWII holocaust.
The interview was conducted by Mr. Jasa Almuli a journalist, himself Jewish survivor from Belgrade. Mr. Almuli took camera and interviewed top intellectuals among Yugoslav Jews. He then published the collection of 22 such interviews in some 400 pages long book entitled "The Living and the Dead – Talks with Jews." The book was published in Belgrade in 2002 by "Independent Editions Slobodan Masic."
Interview with
Professor Enriko Josif
Similar Destiny
Translation: Petar Makara
Editors:
- Jasa Almuli
- Professor Wanda Schindley
In the conversation we had on May 4, 1997 our renowned composer and Academician Enriko Josif explained how his family and himself were saved from Germans, thanks to help Italians provided to Jewish refugees. Delving deep into The Tanach, he explained just how and why he concludes that Jews and Serbs are peoples close in destiny.
He then sent an emotional message to the leaders of American Jews not to participate in "the American media Auschwitz against the Serbs."
We also talked about his music compositions as well as his work as an educator at the Music Academy in Belgrade. Until his retirement, he was Professor of Composition at that institution.
Excerpts from the interview
I was born on May 1, 1924, in Belgrade. With exception of the time during the war years, I have never left the city. At that time, guided only by destiny, my mother, brother and I left the city, unaware that by doing so we avoided possible death. I came back to the city, with my mother and brother right after the war.
What may explain my statements to the reader is my relationship, my shared living with the Serbian people; the people I regard as truly exceptional. I want to say that just after Jews, the Serbs belong to the most eschatological (1) people in this 20th century.
I will try to prove it using some arguments from the Bible.
Before that war, I spent my childhood and my early youth -- I can tell it for sure -- as if in a paradise. In this country, in Serbia, I never felt what it means to be a Jew in its bad meaning. Quite the contrary. Literally, I felt as it is said in the Bible: "Love the one who is with you -- a stranger -- as you love thouself." I was shielded in that fashion, and I had great relationships. Later on, I learned what a great thing it was and that there was no other such place. Nowhere was it so good. Deep down in my heart, I am grateful to G-d that I was born in this extraordinary country that was so benevolent toward the Jews. Of course, there are always individual exceptions but taken as a whole Serbia always looked at the Jews in this special way. This must be because of our similar destiny. This is especially true in this -- 20th -- century when our common destiny was that we will be pointed to as culprits. This was done to such a scale that, during Hitler's time, the fingers would point to us, and we would be called monsters -- guilty for everything!
Interviewer: Could you tell more about your family?
My father's name was Mosha Josif. He was a merchant representative of the Italian company "Snia Viskosa." That is how I got the name Enriko. He was also representing the well known German car industry of BMW.
That horrible war came, but my father died before it. He was one of the rare Jews, though, who used to say "Let us all go to Australia. The arrival of Hitler means the end of Europe. It is our end, too." Of course, our people did not belive him.
Then, only days before the Germans' attack on Yugoslavia, my mother's instinct was telling her that we should leave Belgrade. I did not want to hear of it. She then took her little pistol and said, "If you do not decide to leave, I will kill myself right here." This is how we left toward Dubrovnik and the Adriatic coast. We spent some time there and then -- miracle: The Italians (it was them who took over Dubrovnik first) tell us, "Run out of Dubrovnik. Germans and Ustashas [Croat Nazis] will take over the city in few days."
They even gave us some passes.So we left toward Split, which is also on the Adriatic coast but under their [Italians'] control.
To make this part of my testimony shorter -- we were first transported to the [Adriatic] island of Korchula and then to "free confinement" in Italy itself. At the end of 1943 when the Italian government capitulated and the Germans took over the entire Northern Italy, we succeeded in crossing the border into Switzerland.
I was 19 years old then. In Switzerland we lived with my grandfather. There, in Switzerland, I experienced the turmoil in my soul. There, for the first time, through Bible which I did not know of before, I grasped the tragedy that befell my people: the Jews. It was a tremendous inner change. Suddenly, somehow as if through the genes or through denka as they call it today I understood why our destiny is the way it is and why I am.
I read the entire Old and New Testament. I also wrote poems in all three languages of Switzerland -- French, German and Italian -- and also in Serbian.
I have no prejudice about the difference between the Old and New Testament. I see them as a magnificent, indivisible bridge. Of course, later, theologists split this bridge, substituting it with unbridgeable horror that ended in the holocaust.
The message to American Jews
I have to tell you now why I agreed to participate in this interview. Usually, I try to avoid public appearances, but I accepted this conversation so I can address my people -- the American Jews. I want to tell them something from my long experiences. It is up to them to understand it as they want.
At one place in Prophet Isaiah (2) in chapter 55, paragraph 5 as well as paragraph 3 to 5, there is a puzzling quote. In literal translation it says: "As I did with David, I will make an alliance of mercy with you, too. As I choose David to be the king and the guidance to peoples, so there will be a people you did not know but will call upon. The people that did not know you will flock to you for the glory of G-d." Depending on the way one translates the verb, it could be said "will gather round you" instead.
I say this because this quote, with exception of some modern Bibles, was not translated as it says in the original, but I saw it in Buber's (3) version, written in the Hebrew language.
Before I go on, I should mention that the renowned Jewish philosopher and theologian Maimonides (4), who was known for his so called "rational" teachings, said something interesting when he discussed the destiny of the Jewish people with his Arab contemporaries. Among other things he said, "We will get a state and we will get back to the Promised Land."
"Look Maimonides", said the Arabs "You are very wise man, but how can you as such, as someone who is so logical and who teaches rationality in religion, say something like that? You know that you will never come back and that you will never have a country of your own." Then Maimonides said something irrational: "I am claiming that because G-d said that to the Prophets." You see, for Maimonides it was something unquestionable. It was an axiom. No discussion needed. You see, Maimonides said that 800 years before formation of the state of Israel. Not only did the Jews come back, but they also got a state of their own.
Why am I telling you that? I am telling you that because in this world, at this very moment, all those prophecies are becoming an astonishing truth. They are not part of some mysticism but a call of reality stronger than any mysticism.
What Prophet Zacharias said about the destiny of Jerusalem is quite up to date -- exactly as now. He said, "All peoples of the world stood against you -- because of Jerusalem". And that is what is happening today. Literally. Out of 180 member nations of the United Nations, 160 criticize Israel for building suburbs in Jerusalem. This is what literally happens today but what was uttered more than 2,500 years ago! So, it is not something one can joke about. This is not something one can only accept as mere symbolism or something which is aside from history. This symbolism, this historical statements above, were uttered in an eschatological manner -- some 2,000 years ago, and they are becoming historical reality.
In light of all of this, let us get back to Isaiah and his prophesy which dates from even before 2,500 years ago. In his prophesies we find a very important analogy. He said, "As I chose David to be the King and leader of peoples -- so that people that you did not know you will know and that people that did not know you will flock to you".
Please -- the thing is terribly clear. We are soul-mates of the Serbs as two eschatological (1) peoples and as two peoples of terribly similar destinies. Something eschatologically miraculous is happening with the Serbian people as it was happening yesterday above Israel. This is why it is a holy duty of every Jew to understand that. Jasenovac for the Serbs is exactly the same as Dachau was for us. It is even kept as a secret from you -- but you have to get to know it. If you did, then you, the American Jews, would get to understand the events in our country [of Yugoslavia] in quite a different, more truthful way.
I beg you then -- do not participate in persecution, in verbal attack, on the Serbian people because the Serbs are our brothers in soul, our eschatological brothers.
Second, to live in one Serbia and not to feel a burden of being a Jew is something that happened in no other place in pre-Hitler Europe. But it was so natural here. The Serbs are simply unbelievable people. I call them hugging people. These are the kind of people who would hug a stranger more than their own. They have a feeling for strangers and are extremely honest and brother-like to them. This is the reason why Serbia is so divided, butchered, today. The Serbs never though of themselves as anything special. They always had full respect for everyone who lived with them and, of course, wished Serbia no harm. This is an exceptional people, and it is horrible what was done to them. All of what was premeditated.
I will repeat: a true media genocide, a media Auschwitz, was perpetrated on the Serbian people! The Serbs were dehumanized and portrayed as monsters exactly as the Jews were portrayed through centuries, and in particular with Goebbels and his propaganda.
I watched this cartoonish show of horror. I saw the Serbs labelled the same way Hitler labelled the Jews -- as cripples, devils and Satans. That is mind-boggling! It is horrible. How can anyone fathom it? I understand that someone could profit from it and that profit is a strong incentive, but this is truly un-Godly profit. This un-Godly benefit, and invented strategic reasons are absurdities that can not stand in front of a living G-d. I tremble thinking of the destiny of the perpetrators of this horrifying genocide, the media crime perpetrated against the Serbs. I am afraid to talk about it or to guess what would happen to those who did it. This is not my concern any more. G-d will decide. As the saying goes -- G-d will exact revenge -- not us, the humans.
Please understand: The way you were informed was one-sided. It is inexcusable, and please do not participate in persecution of the Serbs by signing demands that they should be bombed or like activities. You are unaware that you are participating in murder of a brother. Brother in soul. By signing it, you are simply endorsing Auschwitz, and you are giving full justification to what was done only yesterday by German National Socialists.
Please, I beg you. I wrote to the head Rabbi of France to address the believers, at least the believers, not to participate in this maddening lynch mob. What we have here is true medieval exorcistic mob hunting the Serbian people. The Serbs are exceptional people -- exceptional in their embrace and love of other peoples. We are not talking here just about people who were your allies in the First and Second World War but well before the two wars. These are the people who were devoted to the ideas of great America, the ideas of once democratic but now failed Europe.
So, this is the only reason why I agreed to talk about this. But let me tell you the exegete meaning of what Isaiah said. He said, "A people you did not know but will call upon." Is that not a clear proof? You know who the Serbs are but are so horrifyingly against them in following the current trends. When Isaiah says "that people will flock to you" that simply marks our destiny of people who were haunted, persecuted only yesterday. They came to us. They now have our destiny. That is the exegete meaning of it. That is the Truth, and it would be wonderful if you get an ear for it, if you could relate to it. So, do not listen to those who keep repeating that this poor people are guilty for everything, that they are nothing but a people of murderers. Of course the Serbs have murderers -- every nation has them, but Serbs are the people -- the soul of the world. They are hugging, all embracing, wonderful, rare to find on this otherwise horrible, crippled Earth.
Here. That was my all encompassing wish to tell -- to say it without putting blame on anyone. But be aware that you are not informed. Unfortunately, you are not.
If you do not want to trust me, you could trust Mr. [Abraham] Rosenthal, renowned American journalist. He is well informed and feels that something is wrong. He was here. I know him personally. He is an exceptional human being, a brave man. Here I see that in The New York Times he managed to publish his views about the Serbian people.
I keep repeating: The Serbs are our soul brothers. Nowhere else were you allowed to feel this much a Jew other than in this wonderful Serbia. But here is where the prophecy becomes true: People you did not know -- you will get to know. Today, through some exceptional Jews we got to know this "people that did not know you but will flock to you." This also means "This people did not know your destiny but now got to live your destiny". Let us embrace them. Let us not participate when some of our people, in ignorance, raise their voices against this wonderful people.
Biblical Punishment
I returned from Switzerland as a believer. I felt a huge change in my soul. There are many Jews for whom the Holocaust made them leave G-d. They would say: "If that horror happened and one whole people got massacred, then there is no G-d".
Even Moses told us what will happen. That's the thing. He says, but actually G-d himself says: "Israel, I will spill you across the globe. I will mix you with other peoples. You will go insane from what will happen to you. And because you abandoned me."
Our forefathers from Israel abandoned G-d and wanted to be like other people, but the punishment was foretold.
This is what kept faith alive in me.
Already in the fifth book of Moses it is all foretold, and it says: "Across burning furnace" -- and that is the Holocaust -- "I will return you to the Promised Land." That is exactly how it happened. After burning furnaces, we illegally moved back to the lands that was once Israel.
For the love of Truth, I have to stop here and stand in amazement and admiration.
Then it says, "Only tenth out of tenth of you will remain, but out of those a new people will form." In Isaiah it says, "Where did you hear that in a single day I will declare you a nation"? In a single day the United Nations declared us a nation-state. That never happened before. There existed nations that suffered under colonial empires and then their rights would be recognized. But we had no holy site left standing, and we had no land, but still we were declared a nation in a day.
So, for me, these are crystal clear truths. If you love Truth, then there is no metaphysical escape in saying that this is only a symbolism or a random event. No escape. Clearly no escape.
Interviewer, Mr. Almuli: "So while the Holocaust repelled some people from G-d, you found His confirmation in it?"
Mr. Josif: Exactly. You said it so nicely. In the Bible, according to what was said in it, I got to understand why it happened. You see, our Rabbis kept saying, "Because of our sins, we are abandoned." But our sin is nothing in comparison with other peoples'. And our people wanted to be just like all other peoples. Our people assimilated all customs of the peoples we were with. For those peoples, it was no sin. But if G-d truly said that other peoples would accept Him through us, then our not being true to ourselves was a grave sin. And you see that G-d was accepted through Christianity, through Islam, and all of it has its roots in Judaism. Those are important and undeniable truths that had their source in the privileged people to whom those deep secrets of the centuries were given by G-d. If then those same people abandon G-d, then it is a grave sin toward our benevolent Maker.
Then the Maker says, "Even when I spill you among other nations I would still bless you there if you are with me". It is actually about the Orthodox Jew who we frequently ridicule but who are blessed by Him. They had great things even without mentioning Spain. Spain was accepted by the Jews as their new home land. How wonderful it was. Christians, Muslims and Jews all lived in an unusual and rich union. So that was the greatest glory of the Golden age of Spain.
Recently, with horror, I read something in a great book, an excerpt from Zohar (6). An Orthodox Jew from the U.S. writes in the introduction of the book that enlightened Jews who were Aristotelians used to ridicule Rabbis for their beliefs. I did not know that. At that moment, I realized that even our forefathers from Spain committed a terrible sin. They should not have ridiculed despite being Aristotelian.
I am beginning to understand: If there had been no terrible exodus from Spain, Judaism would not have been saved. Exactly with that exodus, all those spiritual forces gathered. For hundred years there was darkness that then gave birth to Kabbala (7), the Kabbala of the elitist aristocrats, only to became part of common Jewish plebs. Soon the famous Hasidic movement ( 8 ) took roots and actually maintained, saved Judaism. You can find that in the works of Martin Buber. He had ingenious ways to convey that to Europe. The Europeans suddenly got to look with different eyes at Jewish mysticism.
Interviewer, Mr. Almuli: "Before the war you were a member of Zionist youth?"
Mr. Josif: Before the war I was in Hashomer Hatzair, a leftist Zionist movement. I attended their meetings and campings and then there was that great change in my soul -- the resurrection of my own self.
Footnotes
(1) Eschatology - From Greek "ta eschata" (the last things). Millennial Studies, resurrection, End Times Theology and Biblical studies of the books of Daniel and Revelation. See also http://www.eschatology.org/ The term is tightly coupled with ethics as well as immortality of a person or a people. It is tied to the notion of Divine justice and of moral retribution.
(2) Isaiah - Jewish Prophet, 8th century BC, represented in Bible (the prophecy in Isaiah)
(3) Buber - Jewish philosopher and theologian.
(4) Rabbi Moyses ben Maimon (1135-1204), commonly called Maimonides, Jewish philosopher, born at Cordova, Spain. To escape Catholic persecution of the Jews he fled to Egypt, where he wrote his celebrated "Guide of the Perplexed" in which he tried to explain to secular Jews that Judaism is rational and could be understood properly through application of teachings of Aristotle. His work was considered controversial at the time and opponents among his contemporaries thought that rational philosophy is heretic and causes one to abandon religion.
(5) Zacharias: Jewish Prophet 6th century BC. The prophecy of Zacharias is one of the books admitted by both Jews and Christians into their canon of Sacred Writings.
(6) Zohar means "light, splendour" in Hebrew. The word is derived from the words of Genesis 1:3 ("Let there be light"); the second expository work of the Kabbala, is also called the "Bible" of the Kabbalists, 13th century. Its core is a mystic discussion about the Torah.
(7) Kabbala means "tradition" in Hebrew; esoteric theosophy system that reached its peak of creativity in 13th century Spain. It had great influence on Hasidic Jews in Northern Africa and Yemen.
8 Hasidic means "G-d-believing" in Hebrew; a movement of coming back to the Jewish religious roots. It originated in 18th century Poland but has its deeper roots in 13th century Germany.
http://srpska-mreza.com/library/facts/Enriko-Josif.html
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פסח שמח
:)
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http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15021891,00.html?maca=ser-Blic%20Online-2569-xml-mrss
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http://www.jewish-heritage-europe.eu/country/serbia/serbia1.htm
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http://www.jewish-heritage-europe.eu/index.htm
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http://www.tanjug.rs/vest.asp?id=12947
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A country where no pogrom was ever carried out
A friend of mine from Canada wrote me a short message asking if there was ever anti-Semitism in Serbia in the past or present. This is what I responded:
"Serbian people as a whole view Jews with great sympathies and compassion. Those more educated are aware of the influence of Jewish faith in the Orthodox liturgy and customs. Serbian people are painfully aware of the fact that two nations were singled out to annihilated by Vatican (may its name be blotted out!), Serbian and Jewish nations on the Balkans.
There are individuals who are anti-Semitic because they are ill-informed. However, the Serbian nation as a whole has never been nor can it be anti-Semitic. If you check the data on pogroms of Jews in Europe throughout its entire history, nowhere do you find a single Serbian name among the perpetrators, let alone that Serbian nation was oriented to pogroms. In fact, you never find that a single pogrom was planned, let alone executed in Serbia. You will find almost any other European nation with only one exception - Serbia.
In fact, I am very sad over the fact that many Jews are not much informed about the Jewish-like sufferings and affinity that Serbs in general have about the Jews. It is also tragic that many Jews today have never heard that the only land that guaranteed the full freedom to Jews in Europe was Serbia, even before America was discovered. Ever since Serbia gained independence from the Ottoman occupation, the Jews, who helped Serbs in the liberation strife, were granted citizen rights in the Kingdom of Serbia.
One more fact that most Jews are not aware is this: the first (and the only) European king who granted the Jews the very rights that his own people had and made them totally equal to all the citizens of the country following the World War I, was the Serbian King (blessed be his name) Peter I Karadjordjevic. In March 1931, the Garden of Petar I Karadjordjevic was opened in Jerusalem in honor of that king for his wonderful deed. How many Jews today know that?
A German sources during World War I recorded that Jews in Europe were no willing to die for any country, so they were generally considered as cowards. However, that German general noted that in the case of occupied Serbia (in World War I) this was not the case. The Jews heroically laid their lives for Serbia, he wrote and concluded that the Jews therefore are not cowards, but that they were willing to die for the country they loved as their own country. For Serbia was the only country that granted them all the rights and freedoms. Jews were never second-class citizens in Serbia.
Let me tell you of one touching detail about the Great Raid (Razzia) 1942 in Novi Sad. Hungarian Horthymen herded Novi Sad Serbs and Jews and stranded in the lines on the bank of Danube in order to toss into the frozen Danube. As they realized that this was the end of their lives, many lines of stranded Serbs and Jews spontaneously rushed to the hole in the ice in Danube and cried out "Long live King Petar!" That was their last cry before they died. They referred to Serbian King Peter I Karadjordjevic, the first and only European king who granted Jews all the rights that his own people had.
Jews at large are not informed about these facts, nor do they know about Razzia 1942. They are very uninformed about their history in Serbia. And many of them have never been taught that in the whole of Europe there was one country where never a pogrom was carried out. That country is Serbia.
Aleksandar Veljic
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http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/detail.dot?id=c208c7f7-c9db-4651-a384-49b00fb98299&dotcache=no#comments
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Thats funny, i thought Milan Nedic killed most of the Jews in Serbia with Belgrade being declared Judenfrie. Oh no wonder theres only like 500 jews in Serbia. Hell theres even more Jews in Nazi Croatia capital Zagreb.
Milan Nedic together with Hitler must had killed most of them! :'( :'( :'( :'(
I hope Milan Nedic is burning in hell where he belongs! ;D
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Thats funny, i thought Milan Nedic killed most of the Jews in Serbia with Belgrade being declared Judenfrie. Oh no wonder theres only like 500 jews in Serbia. Hell theres even more Jews in Nazi Croatia capital Zagreb.
Milan Nedic together with Hitler must had killed most of them! :'( :'( :'( :'(
I hope Milan Nedic is burning in hell where he belongs! ;D
Again, i can't stand this anymore ! Milan Nedic did not kill a single Jew !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! All jews in serbia are killed by nazi Germany!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Провокатор, терај га у пичку материну.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iVpImrV-fo&feature=related
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Serbs and Jews are brothers :dance:
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Serbs and Jews are brothers :dance:
And always will be.
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Serbs and Jews are brothers :dance:
Would you happen to know the Jewish population in Serbia?, I believe it's only 1400 but I might be wrong.
Thank you.
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Would you happen to know the Jewish population in Serbia?, I believe it's only 1400 but I might be wrong.
Thank you.
I think more, somewhere around several thousand. Many Jews went to Israel due to Serbia's poor economy right now.
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http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn513558