About Jewishness

History of the Jews in Serbia
Jews first arrived in what is now the Republic of Serbia in Roman times. The Jewish communities of the Balkans remained small until the late fifteenth century, when Jews fleeing the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions found refuge in Ottoman-ruled areas, including Serbia. Jewish communities flourished in the Balkans until the turmoil of World War I. The surviving communities, including that of Serbia, were almost completely destroyed in the Holocaust during World War II.

Ancient communities
Jews first arrived in the region now known as Serbia in Roman times, although there is little documentation prior to the tenth century AD. For the next five hundred years, documentation on the Jews of the Balkans is sketchy.

Spanish refugees
The Jewish communities of the Balkans were boosted in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by the arrival of Jewish refugees fleeing the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions. Sultan Bayezid II of the Ottoman Empire welcomed the Jewish refugees into his Empire. Jews became involved in trade between the various provinces in the Ottoman Empire, becoming especially important in the salt trade.

Ottoman rule
With generally good relations between the Jews and Serbs, the Jewish communities prospered, and by the nineteenth century Jewish merchants were largely responsible for the trade routes between the Ottoman Empire's northern and southern territories.
Beginning in 1804, the Serbs began to fight the Ottoman Turks for independence. Many Jews were involved in the struggle by supplying arms to the local Serbs, and the Jewish communities faced brutal reprisal attacks from the Ottoman Turks. The independence struggle lasted until 1830, when Serbia gained its independence.
The new Serbian government was friendly toward the Jewish community. Under rule of Milos Obrenovic, the Belgrade Jewish community had its own money issue. The situation of the Jews briefly improved under the rule of Prince Mihailo Obrenovic (ruled 1839-1842). The Jews were a very respected minority in Serbia after the Obrenovic dynasty ended. The very first act of Serbian King Petar I was royal support for building a new synagogue in Belgrade.
With the reclamation of the Serbian throne by the Royal House of Obrenovic under Miloš Obrenovic in 1858, restrictions on Jewish merchants were again relaxed, but three years later, in 1861 Mihailo III inherited the throne and reinstated anti-Jewish restrictions.
In 1879, the Baruh Brothers Choir was founded in Belgrade as a part of the Serbian-Jewish friendship, the oldest Jewish choir in the world, that still exists to today.
The waxing and waning of the fortunes of the Jewish community according to the ruler continued to the end of the 19th Century, when the Serbian parliament lifted all anti-Jewish restrictions in 1889.
By 1912, the Jewish community of Serbia stood at 5,000. Serbian-Jewish relations reached a high degree of cooperation during World War I, when Jews and Serbs fought side by side against the Central Powers.
In the aftermath of World War I, Serbia merged with Montenegro, and then united with State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs to form the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which was soon renamed Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Serbia's relatively small Jewish community of 13,000 (including 500 in Kosovo), combined with the large Jewish communities of the other Yugoslav territories, numbering some 51,700. In the inter-war years (1919-1939), the Jewish communities of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia flourished.
Prior to World War II, 10,000 Jews lived in Belgrade, 80% being Ladino-speaking Sephardi Jews, and 20% being Yiddish-speaking.

Jewish labour camp in Yugoslavia

The Holocaust
The Kingdom of Yugoslavia attempted to maintain neutrality during the period preceding WWII. Milan Stojadinovic, for instance, tried to actively woo while maintaining the alliance with former Entente Powers, UK and France. Nonwithstanding overtures to Germany, Yugoslav policy was not anti-Semitic: for instance, Yugoslavia opened its borders to Austrian Jews following the Anschluss. Under increasing pressure to yield to German demands for safe passage of its troups to Greece, Yugoslavia signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy, like Bulgaria and Hungary. Unlike the other two, however, the signatory government of Macek and Cvetkovic was overthrown three days later in a British-supported coup of patriotic, anti-German generals. The new government immediately rescinded the Yugoslav signature on the Pact and called for strict neutrality. German response was swift and brutal: Belgrade was on 6 April 1941 and German, Italian, Hungarian and Bulgarian troops invaded Yugoslavia.
The Nazi genocide against Yugoslav Jews began in September 1941. Germany carved up Yugoslavia with most of it going to collaborationist Independent State of Croatia which proceeded to establish not only transit but also extermination camps in and Stara Gradiška. Serbian Jews from Syrmia were sent to Croatian camps, as were many Jews from other parts of Serbia. In rump Serbia Germans proceeded to round up Jews of and Belgrade, setting up a concentration camp across the river Sava, in the Syrmian part of Belgrade, then given to the Independant State of Croatia. The camp, Sajmište, was established to process and eliminate the captured Jews and Serbs. As a result, Emanuel Schäfer, Chief of the German police and Gestapo in Serbia, could boast as soon as 1942 that:
"Belgrade - the only larger European city which has been cleansed of Jews, has become judenfrei."
Similarly Harald Turner of the SS, stated in 1942 that:
"Serbia is a nation in which the problem of Jews and Gypsies has been solved."

World War II
At the beginning of World War II in Serbia in 1941, some Jews joined Yugoslav resistance forces, which consisted of two factions: the communist-led Yugoslav Partisans (or simply the "Partisans"), and the royalist Chetniks. The Chetniks were founded as a Royalist movement, but increasingly evolved into a Serb nationalist militia. The movement was reactivated under the form of the 'Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland' by Colonel Draža Mihailovic in the Serbia's Ravna Gora province after the invasion of Yugoslavia.
Jews were also members of the "Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland" (Jugoslovenska vojska u otadžbini, JVUO) Although an overwhelming majority of its members were Serbs, the movement also included a number of Jews, Croats, Slovenes, and Bosnian Muslims. Most of the non-Serbs were monarchists and/or anti-communists. In the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), Chetniks were under the command of Momcilo Dujic, in the Krajina region of modern-day Croatia, they organized themselves in response to Ustaša attacks on Serbian villages and Jews.
By the time Serbia and Yugoslavia were liberated in 1944, most of the Serbian Jewry had been murdered. Of the 82,500 Jews of Yugoslavia alive in 1941, only 14,000 (17%) survived the Holocaust. Only 4,000 Serbian Jews had survived the Holocaust.

Post-war community
The Federation of Jewish Communities in Yugoslavia was formed in the aftermath of World War II to coordinate the Jewish communities of post-war Yugoslavia and to lobby for the right of Jews to immigrate to Israel. The Federation was headquartered in , the capital of the post-war Yugoslavia.
More than half of survivors chose to immigrate to Israel after World War II.
The Jewish community of Serbia, and indeed of all constituent republics in Yugoslavia, was maintained by the unifying power of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Yugoslavia. However, this power ended with dissolution of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Yugoslav wars
The Jews of Serbia lived relatively peacefully in Yugoslavia between World War II and the 1990s. However, the end of the Cold War saw the breakup of Yugoslavia, and the ensuing civil wars.
While there was some anti-Semitism in Serbia during the wars, the Jewish community, as with all Serbians, suffered as a result of the wars. Many Jews chose to immigrate to Israel and the United States. During the Kosovo Conflict, the Federation of Jewish Communities in Yugoslavia relocated many of Belgrade's Jewish elderly, women and children to Budapest, Hungary for their safety; many of them emigrated permanently.

Today
Prior to the conflicts of the 1990s, approximately 2,500 Jews lived in Serbia, most in Belgrade.
According to the 2002 Serbian census, there were 1,185 Jews in Serbia. Almost all Jews (91%) in live in Belgrade. Forty-percent of Serbian Jews live in Vojvodina.
The only remaining functioning synagogue in Serbia is the Belgrade Synagogue. There are also small numbers of Jews in Zrenjanin and Sombor, with isolated families scattered throughout the rest of Serbia.
Manifestations of Anti-Semitism in Serbia are relatively rare and isolated. According to the Report on Human Rights practices in Serbia for 2006,
"Jewish leaders in Serbia reported continued incidents of anti-Semitism, including anti-Semitic graffiti, vandalism, small circulation anti-Semitic books, and Internet postings",
and that anti-Semitic incidents have been on the rise in Serbia. As nationalism replaced communism as the main ideology in Serbia, there was a resurgence of anti-semitic statements, as well as a simultaneous attempt on the part of the Serbian regime to instrumentalize the supposed influence of the Jewish community abroad.
The Serbian government recognizes Judaism as one of the seven "traditional" religious communities of Serbia.

Ancestry
Even today, the majority of Serbian Jews are Sephardim (descendants of refuges from the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions).

Vojvodina
While the rest of Serbia was still ruled by the Ottoman Empire, Vojvodina – an autonomous province within the Republic of Serbia – was ruled by the from the end of the 17th century. Vojvodina too had previously been ruled by the Ottoman Empire, and it was under Ottoman rule that the first Jews settled in the region.
In 1782, Emperor Joseph II issued the Edict of Tolerance, giving Jews some measure of religious freedom. The Edict attracted Jews to many parts of the Habsburg Monarchy, including Vojvodina. The Jewish communities of Vojvodina flourished, and by the end of the 19th Century the region had nearly 40 Jewish communities.
The 1931 census counted 21,000 Jews in the province. The Jewish communities of Vojvodina, as in the rest of Serbia, were largely destroyed in the Holocaust, particularly in Banat, which was under direct German occupation, and in Backa, which was under Hungarian occupation. In 1942 raid, the Hungarian troops killed many Jewish and Serb civilians in Backa. Synagogues in Zrenjanin and Kikinda were demolished during war, while the synagogue in Pancevo was demolished after war because there were only a few Jews remaining there.
Today, 329 Jews – almost half of Serbian Jewry – live in Vojvodina, most in Novi Sad, Subotica, Pancevo, Zrenjanin and Sombor.

History of the Jews in Croatia

The Jewish community of Croatia dates back to at least the third century AD, although little is known of the community until the tenth and fifteenth centuries. The community, over 20,000 strong on the eve of , was almost entirely destroyed in the Holocaust. After the WWII half of the survivors choose to settle in Israel while some 2,500 live today in Croatia. That number is an estimate and it is believed that the number of Croatian Jews is larger because more than 80 percent of the 1,500 members of Zagreb's Jewish community were either born in mixed marriages or are married to a non-Jew. Many grandchildren of Holocaust survivors have just one Jewish grandparent.

History of the community

Ancient community
Jews first arrived in what is now northern Croatia in the first centuries of the , when Roman law allowed free movement throughout the Roman Empire. The Jews arrived as traders and merchants. Archaeological excavations in Osijek show a synagogue dating from the 3rd century AD, and while there are occasional references to Jews, little is known of the Jewish communities of until the 13th century.

Late Middle Ages
The Jewish communities of flourished in the 13th and 14th centuries, with the communities enjoying prosperity and peaceful relations with their Croatian neighbors.
This ended in 1456, when Jews, along with most non-Catholic Croats, were forced out. There followed 200 years where there are no records of Jews in Croatia.

Arrival of the Spanish Refugees
The saw increasing persecution of Jews in areas of Spain retaken in the Reconquista. From 1492 onward, Jewish refugees fleeing the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions arrived in Ottoman territories, including the Balkan provinces of Macedonia and Bosnia. Some of these refugees found their way to Croatia, in particular to Split and Dubrovnik, on the Dalmatian coast.

Habsburg rule
In the 17th century, Jews were still not permitted to settle in northern Croatia. Jews traveled to Croatia as travelling merchants, mostly from neighboring Hungary. They were generally permitted to stay only a few days. In the early part of the century, the Sabor (parliament) confirmed its ban on permanent settlement when a Jewish family attempted to settle in Durdevac.
In 1753, although still officially banned, Jews were allowed to settle in Bjelovar, Koprivnica and Varazdin, by the military commander of the Varazdin region, General Beck. In order to streamline the treatment of Jews in Croatia, Count Franjo Patacic, by order of the Royal Office in Varazdin, wrote a comprehensive report advocating Jewish permanent residence in Croatia on the basis that "most of them are merchants, and trade makes towns flourish".
The prohibition against Jewish settlement in northern Croatia lasted until 1783, when effect was given to the 1782 Edict of Tolerance issued by the Habsburg Monarch Emperor Joseph II. Jews were allowed to settle in Croatia, but were not allowed to own land or engage in any trade protected by a guild, and were not allowed to work in agriculture. Despite these measures, Jews settled in Zagreb and Varazdin.
In 1840 the Sabor (parliament) voted to "gradually" allow full equality for the Jews, and over the next 33 years there was gradual progress.
In 1867 a new Great Synagogue was inaugurated in Zagreb and Rabbi Dr. Hosea Jacobi became Chief Rabbi of Zagreb. In 1873, Ivan Mažuranic signed the decree allowing for the full legal equality of Jews and, as with other faiths, state funds were made available for community institutions.
By 1880, there were 13,488 Jews in Croatia, rising to 20,032 in 1900. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were 21 Jewish communities in Croatia, the largest being in Zagreb (3,000 people) and Osijek (3,000 people). The Jewish community of Croatia became highly successful and integrated. By 1900, 54% of Jews and 35% of all Croatian Jews spoke Croatian as their mother tongue. Despite their small numbers, Jews were disproportionately represented in industrial and wholesale business in Croatia, and in the timber and food industries. Several Jewish families were amongst 's wealthiest families. Despite the apparent wealth, most Jews were middle class, and many second generation Croatian Jews were attracted to the fields of law and medicine.

World War I
World War I brought about the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and upheaval for the Jewish communities of the region. After the war, Croatia joined with Slovenia, Serbia (which included Vardar Macedonia and Montenegro), and Bosnia and Herzegovina to form the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
Prior to World War II, the Croatian, and especially the Zagreb Jewish community, was the pre-eminent community of . In 1940 there were about 11,000 Jews living in Zagreb: about 76% Ashkenaz, 5% Sephardi, 17% unaffiliated and the remainder being Religious.

The Holocaust
At the outbreak of World War II, 23,000 Jews lived in Croatia.
On March 25, 1941, Prince Paul, who was actually Serbian, signed 's alliance with the Axis Powers under the Tripartite Pact. The decision was unpopular among Serbian population, and massive demonstrations took place in the capital, Belgrade. Prince Paul was overthrown, and a new anti-German government under Peter II and Dušan Simovic took power. The new government withdrew its support for the Axis, but did not repudiate the Tripartite Pact. Nevertheless, Axis forces, led by Nazi Germans, invaded Yugoslavia in April .
The Nazi invasion was the doom of Croatian Jewry.
Under the Germans, Croatian ultra-nationalists, the Croatian Ustaše movement came to power. Croatian fascists established a state called the Independant State of Croatia. The Ustaše were notoriously, and wasted little time in instituting anti-Jewish legislation and persecuting the Jews under their control. Indeed, the then NDH Croatian Interior Minister Andrija Artukovic, a member of the Ustaše, said "The Government of NDH Croatia shall solve the Jewish question in the same way as the German Government did".
The Ustaše set up concentration camps at Kerestinac, Jadovno, Metajna and Slana. The most notorious, were heinous crimes and cruel torture perpetrated against and Serbian prisoners, were at Pag and Jasenovac. At Jasenovac alone, tens of thousands of people were murdered (mostly Serbs), including 20,000 Jews.
The first genocide against Croatian (and Yugoslav) Jews began in July 1941. The Ustaše and German Nazis murdered tens of thousands of Serbs, approximately 20,000 Roma (Gypsies) and 32,000 (including 20,000 of the 23,000-25,000 Croatian Jews) in the territories they controlled.
The Croatian Jewish community was all but destroyed in the Holocaust, with only 5,000 Croatian Jews surviving the war, most as either soldiers in Croat Tito's National Liberation Army (Yugoslav Partisans) or as exiles in the Italian-occupied zone. After Italy capitulated to the Axis Powers, the surviving Jews lived in free Partisan territory.
When Yugoslavia was liberated in 1945, Croatia became part of the new Yugoslav federation, which eventually became the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Post-War community
After 1945, atheism was the official policy of Yugoslavia and Croatia: there was no rabbi in Croatia until the mid-. Most Croatian Jews identified as Yugoslav, or as Serbs or Croats. After the founding of the State of Israel about a half of the survivors renounced their Yugoslav and Croatian citizenship as a prerequisite for leaving the country and acquiring the Israeli citizenship. Those who opted for Israel signed a document by which they left all property, land, and other unmovable property to Yugoslavia.
The post-war Jewish community of Croatia was highly assimilated, with 80% of Zagreb's 1,500 Jews either born into mixed marriages, or married to a non-Jew. In 1991 there were approximately 2,000 Jews in Croatia.

Today
The 2001 Croatian census listed only 495 Jews, with 323 in Zagreb. Approximately 20 Jews each live in Primorje-Gorski Kotar county, Osijek and Dubrovnik. The census is, however, unreliable, as most Jews do not disclose their identity.
The Jewish community in Croatia is organized into ten Jewish municipalities in the cities of Cakovec, Daruvar, Dubrovnik, Koprivnica, Osijek, Rijeka, Slavonski Brod, Split, Virovitica, Zagreb. Since 2005, Zagreb also has a separate Jewish organization named "Bet Israel", formed by a spliter group in the original organization led by Ivo Goldstein and others. A minor organization is also registered in Zagreb.

Regional communities

Dalmatia
The Jewish communities of the Croatian coast of Dalmatia date back to the 14th century AD. A letter from 1326 refers to a Jewish doctor in Dubrovnik. The community remained small throughout the years (100-330 members), although the community distinguished itself in trade and medicine. The community was augmented from 1421 by refugees fleeing increasing persecution in Spain, and then from 1492 as Jews fled the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions.
Anti-Semitism, based on the attitudes of the Catholic Church and on Venetian law (which applied at the time), was a constant issue for the community, which lived in ghettos in Dubrovnik and Split. When was occupied by Napoleonic forces, the Jews attained legal equality for the first time. In 1814, when the Austrian Empire annexed Dalmatia, legal equality was again withdrawn. Jews were granted legal equality under Croatian law in the mid 19th century.

History of the Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina

The Jewish community of Bosnia and Herzegovina has a rich and varied history, surviving and the Yugoslav Wars, after having been born as a result of the Spanish Inquisition, and having been almost destroyed by the Holocaust.
The Jewish Community of now numbers some 500 people, spread in Sarajevo, Banja Luka, Mostar, Tuzla, Doboj, and Zenica.

History of the community

Ottoman rule
The first Jews arrived in the regions of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1575.
As tens of thousands of Jews fled the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, Sultan Bayezid II of the Ottoman Empire welcomed Jews who were able to reach his territories. Jews fleeing Spain and Portugal were welcomed in – and found their way to – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Thrace and other areas of under Ottoman control. Jews began to arrive in Bosnia and Herzegovina in numbers in the 16th century, with Jews arriving from the Ottoman Empire, and settling mainly in Sarajevo. The first Ashkenazi Jews arrived from Hungary in 1686, when the Ottoman Turks were expelled from Hungary. Jewish community prospered in Bosnia, living side by side with their Bosnian Muslim neighbors, as one of the largest European centres for Sephardi Jewry outside of Spain.
Jews in the were generally well-treated and were recognized under the law as non-Muslims. Despite some restrictions, the Jewish communities of the Empire prospered. They were granted significant autonomy, with various rights including the right to buy real estate, to build synagogues and to conduct trade throughout the Ottoman Empire. Jews, along with the other non-Muslim subjects of the Empire, were granted full equality under Ottoman law by 1856.

Habsburg rule
The Austro-Hungarian Empire conquered Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878, and brought with them an injection of European capital, companies and methods. Many professional, educated Ashkenazi Jews arrived with the Austro-Hungarians. The Sephardi Jews continued to engage in their traditional areas, mainly foreign trade and crafts.
World War I saw the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and after the war Bosnia and Herzegovina was incorporated into the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. In the census of 1921, Judeo-Spanish was the mother language of 10,000 out of 70,000 inhabitants of Sarajevo. By 1926, there were 13,000 Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Holocaust
In 1940, there were approximately 14,000 Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with 10,000 in Sarajevo.
With the invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941 by the Nazis and their Allies, Bosnia and Herzegovina came under the control of the Independant State of Croatia, a Nazi puppet-state. The Independent State of Croatia was headed by the notoriously anti-Semitic Ustaše, and they wasted little time in persecuting non-Croats such as Serbs, Jews and Gypsies.

Deportation and murder
On July 22 , 1941, Mile Budak – a senior Minister in the Croatian government and one of the chief ideologists of the Ustaše movement – declared that the goal of the Ustaše was the extermination of "foreign elements" from the Independent State of Croatia. His message was simple: "The basis for the Ustasha movement is religion. For minorities such as Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies, we have three million bullets." In 1941, Ante Pavelic – leader of the Ustaše movement – declared that "the Jews will be liquidated in a very short time".
In September 1941 deportations of Jews began, with most Bosnian Jews being deported to Auschwitz or to concentration camps in Croatia. The Ustaše set up concentration camps at Kerestinac, Jadovna, Metajna and Slana. The most notorious, where cruelty of unimaginable proportions was perpetrated against Jewish and Serbian prisoners were at Pag and Jasenovac. At Jasenovac alone, thousands of people were murdered (mostly Serbs), including 20,000 Jews.
By War's end, the Ustaše had murdered 100,000 Serbs, approximately 40,000 Roma (Gypsies) and 32,000 Jews. Among Bosnian Jews, 10,000 of the pre- Jewish population of 14,000 had been murdered. Most of the 4,000 who had survived did so by fighting with the Yugoslav, Jewish or Partisans or by escaping to the Italian controlled zone (approximately 1,600 had escaped to the Italian controlled zone on the Dalmatian coast).
Jewish members of the Yugoslav Army became German prisoners of war and survived the war. They returned to Sarajevo after the war.

Sarajevo Haggadah
The Sarajevo Haggadah has survived many close calls with destruction. Historians believe that it was taken out of Spain by Spanish Jews who were expelled by the in 1492. Notes in the margins of the Haggadah indicate that it surfaced in Italy in the 1500s. It was sold to the national museum in Sarajevo in 1894 by a man named Joseph Kohen.
During World War II, the manuscript was hidden from the Nazis by Dr. Jozo Petrovic, the director of the city museum and by Derviš Korkut, the chief librarian, who smuggled the Haggadah out to a Muslim cleric in a mountain village near Treskavica — there it was hidden in the mosque among Korans and other Islamic texts. During the Bosnian War of 1992-1995, when Sarajevo was under constant siege by Bosnian Serb forces, the manuscript survived in an underground bank vault.
Afterwards, the manuscript was restored through a special campaign financed by the United Nations and the Bosnian Jewish community in 2001, and went on permanent display at the museum in December 2002.

Post-war community
The Jewish Community of was reconstituted after the Holocaust, but most survivors chose to emigrate to Israel. The community came under the auspices of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Yugoslavia, based in the capital, Belgrade.
In the early 1990s, before the Yugoslav Wars, the Jewish population of Bosnia and Herzegovina was over 2,000, and relations between Jews and their Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim neighbors were good.

Yugoslav wars
When the Yugoslav Wars broke out in 1991, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee evacuated most Bosnian Jews to Israel, and most chose to remain there after the wars.

Today
Today, there are some 500 Jews living in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They enjoy excellent relations with their non-Jewish neighbors and with the Bosnian government, as it was throughout the history. As a result of the ethnic balancing act involved in the UN-imposed Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Jews and other minorities are forbidden in the Constitution of Bosnia from running for the position of president. Jacob Finci, a prominent Bosnian Jew and Bosnia's ambassador to Switzerland, and Dervo Sejdic, a prominent Bosnian Roma and member of the member of Bosnia's Roma Council, have launched an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights on the basis that Bosnia's Constitution violates the European Convention on Human Rights.
December 22, 2009 – The ruling today by the European Court of Human Rights, that the exclusion of Jews and Roma from Bosnia's highest state offices is unlawful discrimination, is a major step toward ending racial and religious exclusion in Europe, the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and Human Rights Watch said today. Bosnia, along with the US and European states that continue to play a critical role in the country, should move swiftly to remove all discriminatory provisions from the country's constitution.
"The court's ruling is a major step forward in Europe's struggle against discrimination and ethnic conflict," said Sheri P. Rosenberg, co-counsel for the successful applicant Jakob Finci and a professor and director of the Human Rights Clinic at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. "This decision affirms that ethnic domination should have no role in a democracy."

History of the Jews in the Republic of Macedonia

The history of Jews in the territory of the present-day Republic of Macedonia began in Roman times, when Jews first arrived in the region in the fourth century BC. Today, 183 Jews reside in the Republic of Macedonia, almost all in the capital, Skopje.

History of the community

Ancient Roman times
The first Jews arrived in the area now known as Republic of Macedonia during Roman times, when Jews fled persecution in other Roman territories, with some settling in Macedonia. The first evidence of Jews in the region is an ancient synagogue dating from the 3rd or 4th century BC, in the ancient town of Stobi, in the southeast of the Republic of Macedonia.

Ottoman Rule and Sephardic migrations
The area's Jewish community remained small well into Ottoman times, with the next major influx of Jews to the area coming with the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions.
As tens of thousands of Jews fled persecution Spain and Portugal, Sultan Bayezid II of the Ottoman Empire welcomed Jews who were able to reach his territories. They were granted significant autonomy, with various rights including the right to buy real estate, to build synagogues and to conduct trade throughout the Ottoman Empire. Wealthy merchant cities in the present-day Republic of Macedonia such as Skopje, Bitola and Stip attracted many Jews. Jews in this area prospered in the fields of trade, banking, medicine, and law, with some even reaching positions of power.
Relations between the Jews and the local non-Jewish population were generally good. Confirmation of good conditions for Jews in Macedonia and Ottoman Europe in general comes from a fifteenth century letter from the Macedonian Jew, Isaac Jarfati, sent to German and Hungarian Jews advising them of the favorable conditions in the Ottoman Empire, and encouraging them to immigrate to the Balkans.
The Jewish community was almost entirely Sephardic, and most spoke Ladino at home as opposed to Hebrew.

Distribution
Prior to World War II, the Jewish community of Vardar Macedonia (the area roughly corresponding to the borders of the present-day republic) was centered on Bitola (approximately 8,000 Jews), Skopje (approximately 3,000 Jews) and (approximately 500 Jews).
Most of these Jews, and almost the entire Jewish community of Bitola, were Ladino-speaking Sephardim.

World War II and the Holocaust
Two and a half thousand years of Jewish history in Vardar Macedonia effectively came to an end with the Holocaust and World War II.
In April 1941, the army entered Vardar Macedonia, then part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Bulgaria had initially been neutral in World War II, but became an ally of Nazi Germany in 1941. Bulgaria saw an opportunity to recover the Serbian part of Macedonia, which it saw as a natural part of its own national homeland (Macedonians were considered ethnic Bulgarians up to the Balkan wars, and the Macedonian language was regarded as a Bulgarian dialect).
On October 4, 1941, the Bulgarian authorities enacted a law prohibited Jews from engaging in any form of commerce, and forcing them to sell their businesses to non-Jews. The Bulgarians then the Jews of Bitola, forcing them to move from the Jewish areas of the town, which were relatively affluent, to poorer areas of the town.
Over the course of 1942, the Bulgarian authorities enacted increasingly harsh measures against the Jews under their control in Vardar Macedonia, as well as in occupied northern Greece, culminating in 1943 with the deportation of Macedonian and Greek Jewry to the extermination camps set up by the Nazis in Poland.
The Bulgarians, monitored by SS, rounded up the entire Jewish population of Skopje, Bitola and Štip. Although Bulgaria defended Jews with Bulgarian citizenship from Nazi deportation orders, it nevertheless transported non-Bulgarian Jews to their deaths. The Jewish communities of Bulgarian-controlled Yugoslavia and Greece were almost completely wiped out. There was much harsh treatment before being transported in cattle-cars to Treblinka. A few dozen Bitola Jews managed to avoid deportation, and four escaped from the transit camp; none of the 3,276 Jews of Bitola deported to Treblinka survived . In 2003, one Jew remained in the city that had been home to a Sephardic community for more than 400 years. Štip's ancient Jewish community was also completely destroyed.
After Vardar Macedonia was liberated in 1944, the remnants of the Jewish community re-gathered in Belgrade, Serbia -- only about 140 had survived. Most had survived by going into hiding or fighting with the Yugoslav, Jewish or Soviet Partisans . Of those transported to the death camps, almost none survived. Most survivors chose to immigrate to Israel, with some returning to Macedonia, and others remaining in Serbia.

Today
Today, the Jewish community of the Republic of Macedonia numbers some 200 people. Almost all live in Skopje, with one family in Štip and a single Jew remaining in Bitola .
The community recently (2003) opened a synagogue, and has a community center in Skopje. The community also maintains ties with Jewish communities in Belgrade and Thessaloniki, while a travels to Skopje from Belgrade to aid in the conducting of services. The community also recently sent, for the first time, a representative to the annual bible quiz in Israel celebrated every year on Israel's independence day.