Remembering the Past in Sarajevo: The Jewish Museum

The Jewish Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina is located in a beautiful cobbled courtyard not far from the attention-grabbing Gazi Huzrev-beg Mosque in Sarajevo’s Old Town. Small in size and modestly sign-posted as it is, it nevertheless manages to squeeze several fascinating exhibitions into the old synagogue in which it resides. The history of the Jewish population in BiH is as varied, and at times tortured, as the country itself, and the museum provides an insight into the story of a unique people as they carved out their place in Balkan history.

Although there is evidence of some small and often transient Jewish settlements in the Balkans during the Greek and Roman times, the modern Jewish population largely came to the region following the expulsion of the Sephardim from Spain in 1492 (resulting in another unique quirk in Bosnian history, with these early Jewish settlers being Spanish-speakers). After this first influx, Sephardim and Ashkenazi Jews then began to settle in the Balkans. Although under Ottoman rule they had no political rights and were forced to pay higher rates of taxes than the Muslim population (as all non-Muslim groups were), inter-group relations were generally good and the Jewish community began to thrive (as briefly discussed in my last Sarajevo blog, Rise of a Titan). By 1840 Sultan Abdul-Medzid would grant the Jewish population with the rights to open their own schools and enable free use of synagogues, in addition to appointing a hahambasha, or chief priest, for all of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The museum paints a colourful picture of the Jewish community and their mutually beneficial relationships with other peoples in the region. Unfortunately, as history demonstrates, this was not to last forever. Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, took place over the 9^th and 10^th of November 1938 across Germany and Austria and left 91 Jews dead, 7,500 businesses destroyed, and 267 synagogues burned. It was only the start of what was to come as the Nazis began their campaign of annihilation and began to transport their hatred across Europe. The Nazis would succeed in occupying Yugoslavia on 17^th April 1941, and removal of the Jewish people would begin in earnest.

As has been the case with so many of my experiences in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the stories that remain with me from this exhibition are the ones of the people that stood up for what was right in times of such unimaginable desperation. The Righteous Among the Nations are a selection of individuals honoured by Yad Vashem, a Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem, who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. In the Jewish Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina 54 of these heroic individuals are remembered. Their stories are inspirational and should stand as an example of people’s capacity to do good to other people, even in the darkest of times.

Zora Sebek-Krajina, a woman in the Italian zone of Mostar who housed the German-Jewish refugee Fritz Cahn and then helped him to make contact with Tito’s Partisans to fight back against the Nazi occupiers, and who also helped other Jews to escape by providing them with Muslim clothes and identification so that they could leave Yugoslavia untroubled.

Vid and Mato Milosevic, carpenters in Sarajevo who hired their main competitor, Leon Altaraz, after he was compelled to close his shop by the Nazis, and then began to hide even more Jews in their shop when the Nazi police became death squads. They would eventually be found out and sent to Jasenovac concentration camp in 1941.

Ratko Jankovic, a railway authority employee who smuggled a family out of Sarajevo by getting them to pose as a doctor and sick patient, and guarding their carriage by informing the officers that the disease was extremely contagious and they should not enter. He also provided Muslim clothing and identity papers to Hagara Kajon, who was smuggled out of Sarajevo and would later join the Partisans.

These are just some of the names that should be remembered for outstanding acts of bravery when their own lives were not on the line. The Kristallnacht exhibition ends with a photo of the smashed windows of a Jewish store and the quote: “’Never Again?’ Hardly. The world has stood by and done nothing countless times since 1938, and will doubtless do so again.” Bosnia-Herzegovina knows all-too-well that this seemingly cynical message in fact holds true – the 11-07-95 Srebrenica exhibition just down the road can attest to that – but the Righteous Among the Nations exhibition that closes out the Jewish Museum demonstrates that there are many people out there who do not stand by and do nothing. Unfortunately, these people are often lost in the violence that they stand up against and their actions are forgotten in the face of the evil they rejected.

I have come back to Sarajevo to attend the WARM Festival 2018, which aims to answer the question “Why remember?” after conflict. It seems that we often tend to remember the worst in humanity. But even in those worst of times there are ordinary people doing extraordinary good.  Perhaps it is time to focus on them, and remember those that risked everything for basic humanity.