Bosnia-Herzegovina: Survey of Jewish Sites Released

Sarajevo, Bosnia. Gate to Old Sephardi Cemetery before restoration. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber / US Commission for Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad (2000)

Sarajevo, Bosnia. Pre-burial house at Old Sephardi Cemetery during restoration. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber / US Commission for Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad

Bosnia-Herzegovina: Survey of Jewish Sites Released
By Samuel D. Gruber

I am pleased to report the release by the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad of a report on the survey of Jewish Heritage Sites of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The survey of over 60 sites was organized and sponsored by the Commission, and carried out by researcher Ivan Ceresnjes, a former leader of the Bosnian Jewish community who is now with the Center for Jewish Art in Jerusalem. I edited the report and contributed to some of the sections when serving as Research Director of the Commission. Ruth Ellen Gruber also provided important information.

Most of the data and photos in the report were collected from the early to mid-2000s. Some additions and corrections were made as late 2008. For the most part the situation for Bosnian Jewish sites has gotten worse except in the major centers of Sarajevo and Mostar.

Mostar, Bosnia. Memorial at Jewish Cemetery.
Photo: Samuel D. Gruber / US Commission for Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad

Donja Gradina, Bosnia. Execution site and memorial. Photo: Ivan Ceresnjes / US Commission for Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad

The report includes information on synagogues, Jewish cemeteries and Holocaust sites in about three dozen towns. Most of this materials has never been published.The survey focused on cemeteries and Holocaust-related sites. Synagogues and former synagogues are listed and briefly described, but photos of synagogues are no not included.

Tuzla, Bosnia. Boot-shaped"gravestones at Jewish cemetery.
Photo: Ivan Ceresnjes / US Commission for Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad

I first got involved in Jewish heritage sites in Bosnia when the Commission helped raise funds and organize the restoration of the prayer and pre-burial house at the venerable Sephardi cemetery in Sarajevo. The cemetery had suffered greatly during the Siege of Sarajevo and the building had been heavily damaged by fire. A picture of the restored structure is on the cover of the report. Many other sites have not fared so well. Many sites are still in ruins, and cemeteries are overgrown. Some cemeteries may still have landmines from the civil war.

The Commission has also recently posted edited versions of my reports on the surveys of Jewish sites in Romania and Moldova. In all, the Commission organized close to 20 countrywide surveys of Jewish and other religious and ethnic minority sites during the years I was involved as Research Director. We did this work on shoestring budgets, always collaborating with local experts and enthusiasts and making our findings available to local Jewish communities and government cultural authorities. You can read more here about the Commission's work and consult some of the surveys.

Bosnia: Some Thoughts of Jewish Sarajevo and People of the Book

A picture for Shavuot: Moses Receiving the Law as represented in the Sarajevo Haggadah

Your blogger surveying Sarajevo Jewish cemetery when last in Bosnia

Some Thoughts of Jewish Sarajevo and People of the Book
by Samuel D. Gruber

Ruth Ellen Gruber and Bob Cohen have posted interesting accounts of Jewish Sarajevo that every reader of People of the Book will want to visit. you can read more, too, by Ruth and me about Jewish sites in Bosnia at the Jewish-Heritage-Europe website.

I mention People of the Book, the best selling account of the Sarajevo Haggadah, because author Geraldine Brooks will be speaking in (my home of) Syracuse this fall as part of the prestigious Gifford Lecture Series and I have been asked by the Sisterhood of Temple Concord to give a pre-lecture on the art and history of the story. So this week I've enjoyed reading the book. Though utterly fictional, it does provide a lot more food for thought than a Dan Brown novel, and its actually inspired me to look at a number of historical episodes in a new light.

For me the book resonates since it hits at least four of my major interest areas: medieval Spain (where I am now engaged in evaluating aspects of the recent Jewish finds in Lorca); the Venice Ghetto (the origins of which I have been researching for the past few years); Fin-de-Siecle Vienna and the origins of modern "Jewish Art;" and post-siege Sarajevo (where I spent time on the restoration of the burnt-out pre-burial house/synagogue on the Jewish cemetery site).

Pre-burial chapel / synagogue in Sarajevo Jewish Cemetery during restoration.

Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2000

Since most of what Brooks provides are emotionally challenging and cathartic (and sometimes fatal) stories about people, she really has little to say about the places where her stories unfold. Its mostly atmosphere, but I did like her account of drunken young Venetians in the Ghetto at night, and also her ability to conjure up some sense of a Juderia in oppressive 15th century Spain. Most of all, from an art historical view, she gets kudos for her descriptions and evocations of the incredible long, hard, and often painful work that was required to produce the illuminated manuscripts we cherish. Of course, much the same could be written about any pre-modern craft - and it should be. Maybe the time has come for a novel about building and decorating a synagogue...or perhaps just a Discovery Channel episode of "How Things are Made."

Ruth and Bob both write about the Old Sephardi Synagogue in Sarajevo - one of the least known but most important synagogues in Europe. I have previously described the building, first built in in 1581, : " --> The narrow, three-bay long main space of the central prayer hall has thick walls which support a series of interior domes, echoing the arrangement of many Byzantine churches and Ottoman mosques, but contrasting with both: more emphatically axial than a mosque, but without the crossing that would be normal in a church. The main space is surrounded on three sides by galleries on two levels. At one end there is an apsidal space for an Aron Kodesh."

I have not been back to Sarajevo since it has been restored and rededicated as a synagogue (it is also a museum), but will be looking for an opportunity to do so. I recently met Mario Kabiljo, the educator at the Jewish Museum in Sarajevo, and its sounds like there are some exciting plans for the museum in the works. When I have a report I'll let you know.


-->

The Destruction of the Memory of Jewish Presence in Eastern Europe; A Case Study: Former Yugoslavia

The Destruction of the Memory of Jewish Presence in Eastern Europe; A Case Study: Former Yugoslavia
Interview with Ivan Ceresnjes

The Institute of Global Jewish Affairs has published a lengthy interview with my friend and colleague Ivan Ceresnjes about the Destruction of Jewish Memory in the Former Yugoslavia. No one knows more than Ivan about the fate of Jewish synagogues, cemeteries and Holocaust sites in the region.

Ivan Ceresnjes was the head of the Jewish community of Bosnia-Herzegovina and a vice-chairman of the Yugoslav Federation of Jewish Communities until his emigration to Israel in 1996. During the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina he organized rescue efforts to evacuate Jews and non-Jews and also organized nonsectarian humanitarian relief for citizens of the besieged city and other parts of the country. An architect by profession, he is presently employed by the Center for Jewish Art of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has been a leader in the documentation of Jewish historic, religious and cultural sites in the former Yugoslavia for the Center and for the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad. A summary of his Bosnia documentation can be found at www.jewish-heritage-europe.eu

Read interview here.

Bosnia: Former Synagogue in Travnik (1860) Demolished

Bosnia: Former Synagogue in Travnik (1860) Demolished
by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) Ruth Ellen Gruber has reported on her blog the destruction of the building that formerly housed the synagogue of Travnik, Bosnia. Reports are that a shopping center will be built on the site. Built in 1860, the synagogue has been used as a metal workshop since after World War II. No recognizable signs of its earlier use as a synagogue were visible, The building had not served Jewish use since 1941, and there was no obvious indication of its original function. Neither the local government nor the Jewish Community of Bosnia has a use for the building. A Photograph shows the 1860 synagogue.

According to Ruth Gruber, calls were made to halt the demolition. A citizens' group called "Front" asked Bosnian authorities to step in. A brief report by Bosnia's FENA news agency quotes a member of the Sarajevo Jewish community, Eli Tauber, as saying that the Community can do nothing to stop the process as the building had been sold off after World War II.

Ivan Ceresnjes of the Center for Jewish Art in Jerusalem, provided the following background report about the history and fate of the synagogue building and other aspects of the material culture of the Jewish community of Travnik:

"A Jewish community has existed in Travnik, Muslim Croat Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, since 1768, and the first synagogue was built in 1769. During the period of the Ottoman Empire, Travnik was the seat of the Pasha, making Travnik the most important city in the Ottoman province of Bosnia and its Jewish community the second in importance, after Sarajevo. The number of Jews increased constantly, and reached a peak in 1940 of 375 Jews. After WWII only a few Jewish families resettled in Travnik and the recent war delivered the final deathblow to the Jewish community.

I was not able to enter the [surviving] synagogue, built in 1860 on the foundations of the previous synagogue and therefore the building is only partially documented. The communal chronicles say that the synagogue was built entirely by voluntary work of members of the community between Pesach and Rosh Hashana.

Travnik is in a way strange City when Jews are in question: during the WW II Jews were killed, synagogue was damaged (but not destroyed) and all ritual objects were taken by the local Croatian and Moslem Nazi-collaborators to the nearby Jesuit monastery. After the war only a handful of survivors returned, and since the synagogue was not suitable for prayers Jesuits returned everything to the Jewish community in Sarajevo.

In the spring of 1941, local fascists partially burned and looted the building, took the ritual objects (Torah scrolls, silver items from synagogue, books, tefillim, tallitot) from the synagogue and gave them to the local Jesuits. After the war, the Jesuits returned the Torah and ritual objects to the Jewish community in Sarajevo which in turn donated part of the collection to the Jewish museum in Belgrade.

The synagogue was stripped of everything that would indicate its former use. The hall has been divided horizontally on the level of the former women's gallery, whose entrance was from the outside. Behind the synagogue is a building which housed a Jewish school and the Rabbi's apartment.

So, truth is that the building has been sold by the Federation in early '50, (there were good reasons for that and I can elaborate on that), used for some time as a kind of metal workshop and was abandoned before the last war so the Jewish Community had no legal rights on the building but the truth is also that Municipality of Travnik and local City Museum asked more than once if Jews are interested to find together with them some solution for the survival of the only Jewish prayer-house in the city for any kind of cultural use.

In the City Museum are four recently discovered silver artifacts, thought to be from the house of one of the oldest Jewish families of Travnik. Researchers documented two silver Esther Scroll cases, a silver book cover belonging to the family of Yaacov Yeruham Konforti, and a silver belt. The cache was found while digging the foundations of a new house in 1989. It was presumably hidden and buried at the site of Konforti's house.

One of the Esther Scrolls is engraved with Konforti's name and the date 5650 (1890). There is also an engraved floral decoration and a hallmark indicating that this was made by the same artisan who made the prayer book cover.

The second Esther Scroll is silver, machine stamped and chased. A cartouche decorating the scroll has a decorative monogram with the letters JK, probably Jacob or Jeruham Konforti.

The silver book cover is engraved with an open work interlaced foliage motif. On the front cover there is an oval medallion inscribed with the family name and the date 5650. The back cover is identical to the front including the oval, but without the inscription. Both the engraving and the cutting for the open work are done by machine.

The fourth item that was found in the cache is a silver belt made with a floral motif.
The Jewish cemetery in Travnik, founded in 1762, is outside of the town on the slope of one of the surrounding hills, bordering the Catholic cemetery. It is large, quite overgrown with vegetation, but in decent condition. In the center of the plot is a monument to those who perished in WWII. It is a concrete pedestal on which are positioned three tombstones, possibly among the oldest ones from the cemetery."

Webwatch: Extensive information on Jewish sites in Bosnia-Herzegovina

The website www.Jewish-Heritage-Europe.eu has added extensive information about Jewish heritage sites in: Bosnia-Herzegovina. Jewish-Heritage-Europe.eu has been gradually adding substantive information on hundreds of little-known Jewish sites in more than forty European countries. The Bosnia report, which has information about more than 50 sites in 27 localities relies heavily on information in two reports supported by the United States Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad based on research by Ruth Ellen Gruber and Ivan Čerešnješ. Čerešnješ, a researcher at the Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University is former president of the Jewish Community of Sarajevo. The United States Commission was active in Bosnia as a major funder of the restoration of the ceremonial hall/synagogue at the Jewish cemetery in Sarajevo.