The Historical Museum of Bosnia
and Herzegovina boasts several detailed exhibits depicting important moments
and movements throughout the Western Balkan region, with each exhibition
presenting a unique snapshot that shaped modern-day BiH. As should be expected,
the recent conflicts take precedence, with the particularly moving Siege of Sarajevo showcase demonstrating
the day-to-day lives of people trapped for 1,335 days without access to water, electricity
or heating. Being able to see the creativity with which ordinary people
overcame these difficulties, all whilst under the constant threat of shelling
and sniper fire, is a testament to the resilience of the local population.
Similarly, Jim Marshall’s 15 Years retrospective,
in which he took photos around Sarajevo in 1996 and then recreated them 15
years later in 2011, shows where the city has recovered and developed, and
where the scars of conflict remain.
Whilst these stunning images
expertly shed light on what it was like for ordinary people in a time of great
uncertainty and danger, it was another exhibit focused on a far more obscure
moment in Bosnian history that caught my attention. The Lost Sephardic World of the Western Balkans takes a look at the
history of the Sephardic Jews in the Western Balkans since their arrival on the
Iberian Peninsula in the 5th century. Expelled from Spain in 1492 following
the Alhambra Declaration – a decree issued by the Catholic Monarchs of the
Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon in an attempt to reduce their influence on the
large converso population (Jewish
people who had converted to Christianity) in the region – the Sephardic Jews
made their way to the Balkans, where they would remain for the next 500 years.
The Ottoman Empire was a safe
haven for the Jewish community in the Western Balkans. Under the rule of the
Ottomans there were no pogroms against them; they were free from the
persecution that had faced in Western Europe. Throughout this time the Jewish
community flourished, bringing the skills they had practiced in Spain and
working as doctors, pharmacists, tinsmiths and merchants. Their influence on
the culture of the Western Balkans was great. However, as the Ottoman Empire
began to crumble in the 19th century, Jewish communities became
increasingly impoverished. Many German-speaking Ashkenazi Jews arrived in 1878
at the time of the Austria-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but
fared less well than the established Sephardic communities in the area.
Throughout this period the Jewish
population took an even greater role in society. Many served the
Austria-Hungarian Empire in the First World War, but only a few years later
following the formation of the pan-Slavic Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes
(colloquially, and later officially, Yugoslavia) a large number of Jews
volunteered for the Royal Yugoslav Army. In the 1930s, some 8,500 Jews lived in
Sarajevo alone, and played a central role in society, cementing their place as
an important minority group that contributed much to the growth of the young
Yugoslavia. However, 449 years after their expulsion from Spain, a new European
power arrived in Yugoslavia and once again the Jews of the Western Balkans
became a target. Following the arrival of the Nazis in April 1941,
approximately 67,000 Jews, or 81% of the population, would be murdered. In “Independent
Croatia” (which included much of Bosnia), Ustase death camps would become the
final resting place for hundreds of innocent men, women, and children. In
German-occupied Serbia, death by firing squad or transferral to concentration
camps was almost unavoidable. The Jews that survived the initial wave of
killings had a choice, to hide or to fight. Many chose to fight back. And of
those that fought, many found their strength in an emerging resistance movement
led by a then-little known communist agitator by the name of Josep Broz, better
known colloquially as Tito.
Tito’s Partisans were a somewhat legendary
group of fighters in the Second World War. Widely considered to be the most
effective anti-Axis revolutionary movement in Europe, they developed their
fighting prowess against Nazi Germany, Italy, Croatia’s Ustase, the Bulgarians,
the Hungarians and even the Chetniks, a fellow resistance movement that the Partisans
claimed were in fact suggestible to Nazi influence (a fact later borne out by
German communications captured by the British). With fears that Yugoslavia
could serve as a rallying point for a counter attack following the Allied
invasion of Italy, Britain began to take an interest in Tito’s activities in
the region, and in 1943 parachuted a small group of special forces operators
into Yugoslavia in order to meet with the Partisans in Jajce, a small town
about 150 km from Sarajevo.
In his excellent book Eastern Approaches the commanding
officer of that operation, Brigadier General Fitzroy Maclean, details the logic
behind the mission to make contact with a figure that at the time the Allies knew
very little about. According to Maclean, his first order of business when
arriving in Yugoslavia (and an order direct from Winston Churchill himself) was
to establish if Tito was in fact a man, a woman, or simply a title given to the
leader of the Partisan forces. Rumours of his communist ideology made Maclean
wary, but Churchill was to tell him that his mission was “to find out who was
killing the most Germans and suggest means by which we could help them kill
more”(p281). Armed with these instructions, Maclean made contact with Tito and
described his time with a man that, whilst socially very shy, was also very
sure of himself and of the decisions that he made. Despite their vast political
differences, a mutual respect grew between the men.
Tito, himself an ethnic Croat,
led a multi-ethnic band of men and women. Mosha Pijade, Tito’s deputy, was Jewish;
one of the approximately 1,500 Jews that joined the Partisan’s at the outbreak
of war. Many of his leading commanders were Muslim and Croat, and at the
outbreak of war many Serbs served in the ranks of the Partisans as well. Tito’s
pan-ethnic policy was a part of his plan for the establishment of a
multi-ethnic Communist state in Yugoslavia, but due to continuing ethnic
tension amongst the groups many of the Muslim and Croat commanders had to
change their names in order to protect them from their Serb colleagues. The
rival Chetnik militia were fighting for the retention of the Yugoslav monarchy
as a way of protecting the ethnically-Serb populations, and this was the
foundation for much of the conflict between the two groups, who saw their goals
as incompatible. The Chetnik vision of a ‘Greater Serbia’, advocated for by
high-ranking Chetnik intellectual Stevan Moljevic, was indeed incompatible with
the multi-ethnic ideals put forth by Tito.
Fierce fighting from Partisan men
and women, supported by Allied aid following Maclean’s mission, led to Tito’s
victory over the Chetniks and the establishment of the Socialist Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia following the end of the Second World War. Tito would
rule Yugoslavia with an iron fist until his death in 1980. In many ways, he
succeeded in building a multi-ethnic state, but the extent to which this uneasy
ethnic peace was maintained by the power of his rule, and the threat of what
would happen to someone who did conform to his ideals, is up for debate.
Certainly, it was Tito’s death that would signal the resurgence of
ethno-nationalist rhetoric in Yugoslavia, and it was this same ideology that
would tear the country apart throughout the 1990s. The image of a ‘Greater
Serbia’ re-emerged in the rhetoric of Milosevic and Karadzic and an increasing
certainty among all parties that they simply would not be able to continue to
live together under the same government contributed to the collapse of the
nation.
The ability to wield ethnicity as
a weapon has determined the history of this region in a way that cannot be
overstated. Tito’s leadership has been bookended by devastating violence on an
unimaginable scale, with both conflicts defined by their ethnic components. The
ability to manipulate ethnicity into a force that can unite or divide is one
that is often misused. It does not have to be. The Western Balkans is just one
example of a region that has suffered because of a perceived incompatibility
along ethnic lines. But it has also prospered greatly from its
multiculturalism. One person cannot change the world, but an idea can. With a
history so steeped in cultural heritage that has been blackened by moments of
ethnic division, one must not lose sight of what unites us.
The region was viewed as a haven
for the Sephardic Jews during its time under Ottoman Rule because ethnicity was
not seen as a characteristic that should divide. A multi-ethnic Partisan militia
resisted the Nazis, the proliferators of potentially the most toxic and
divisive ethnic ideology the world has seen, at a time when even the American
Allied forces did not allow black and white soldiers to fight in the same
regiment. Today, there is much to celebrate in the multi-ethnic,
multi-religious culture of the Western Balkans. But the ethnic tension remains,
and it is important that it is kept in check. The spread of increasingly
anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim rhetoric that is advancing across the West has not
gone unnoticed in the region. We must not allow ethno-nationalism to be used as
a force to draw us apart. We must be aware of the dangers of accepting
political dialogue without questioning, and of not being conscious of the
historical implications that such thinking has had. This is a lesson for all of
us.
