My father's family, the Montiljos. From left to right in the front row are: my grandmother Hana, one of her sons, Nisim (small child next to her), my grandfather Mose (with the fez on his head) and another one of their children, Jakov (on his lap). In the second row is Jozef, another one of their children, someone I don't know, then Rena, my uncle David Montiljo's wife. I don't know who the other people are but I guess they are also members of the Montiljo family. This family was known as Montiljo Hahasid. This extension to their name was a way of distinguishing them from other Montiljos in Sarajevo and noting their commmitment to Jewish life. I do not who determined which families would be given this distinction nor do I know if the women were also known by this name.
My grandfather was born in the 1870s, worked as a textile merchant in Sarajevo and died in 1941 before the outbreak of war. His wife, my Nona Hana, lived a much longer life. During the war she hid with her son, Jozef, in Sarajevo. After the war she decided to live the rest of her days in Israel, and once she left, she never returned to Yugoslavia. She imagined that this would not be a long time but she managed to live another twenty-three years, until 1970, when she died at the age of 96. She went to Israel with two of her three surviving children. Her sons, Jozef and Leon, my uncles, both survived and accompanied their mother to Israel. My father was the only one of the brothers to remain behind in Yugoslavia. Jozef was born in Sarajevo in 1896 and died in Israel in the 1970s. He married a woman named Safria and they had three children. She and the children were all was killed in the Jasenovac concentration camp in 1942 during the war. Afterwards Jozef remarried and had a son named Moric Montiljo. Rena was the wife of David Montiljo. She was born in 1895 and killed in Jasenovac in 1942. She had one son, named Moric Montiljo, who lives in Israel.
