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Centropa in Serbia

This short text describes our work in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Macedonia

There was no country called Yugoslavia before 1918, and this “Union of South Slavs” brought together lands that had spent centuries under Austrian, Italian, Hungarian and Ottoman rule. Some 87,000 Jews lived in this new land and they ranged from Sephardic Jews in Bosnia, Serbia and along the Adriatic to Ashkenazi Jews in most of Croatia and in the Hungarian-speaking parts of Serbia (Vojvodina).

Much to the chagrin of the other republics in Yugoslavia, Serbia dominated this interwar state, and when the Germans invaded in 1941, more than a few Slovenes and Croats saw them as liberators. Jews, of course, did not.

During the Second World War, citizens of Yugoslavia fought the invading Germans, Bulgarians, Hungarians and Italians and also fought each other. Although the Allies originally backed Serbian partisans, they switched their allegiance to Tito’s Communist partisans, who were clearly winning.

At war’s end, ten percent of the country’s population had died but over seventy percent of its Jews had been murdered. Yugoslavia then became a one party state under Tito, who, after breaking with Stalin in 1948, ruled the country until his death in 1980. His country would last just over another decade without him.

Before the break-up in 1991, some 6,500 Jews were living in the country and when Yugoslavia began its decade of wars they began fleeing the country for Israel, England and North America.

Even as of this writing, in 2019, it can be said with the economy continuing to languish (except for Slovenia), a great many of ex-Yugoslavia’s Jews have continued to leave. Very few remain today, although Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Macedonia all maintain lively, spirited communities, despite their miniscule size.

As for Centropa’s interviews: we have been lucky to work with Rachel Chanin in Serbia - an American who speaks excellent Serbian and who is married to Yitzhak Asiel, Serbia's chief rabbi. Aside from Rachel's extensive social welfare and cultural activities, she conducted interviews for us in Serbia and in Macedonia. Over the years, we have also managed to pick up a handful of interviews in Croatia and Bosnia.

In Croatia, Silvia Heim and Lea Siljak conducted two excellent interviews for us in Zagreb. We would also like to call your attention to a book published in 2013 called 1941: The Year That Keeps Returning, by Slavko Goldstein. Professor Goldstein, who died in 2017, was a publisher, Jewish community activist and writer. His memoirs are considered by many to be one of the finest personal stories published on the Holocaust in the past ten years.

For more information about the Holocaust in Croatia, read this article by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance

Here’s a brilliant set of pages about what happened in Serbia during the Holocaust

Regarding the Second World War in Bosnia, we highly recommend Emily Greble’s study, Sarajevo 1941.

Regarding Macedonia: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-holocaust-in-macedonia-deportation-of-monastir-jewry

Centropa in Serbia

This short text describes our work in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Macedonia

Before the break-up in 1991, some 6,500 Jews were living in the country and when Yugoslavia began its decade of wars they began fleeing the country for Israel, England and North America.

For more information about the Holocaust in Croatia, read this article by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance

Here’s a brilliant set of pages about what happened in Serbia during the Holocaust

Regarding the Second World War in Bosnia, we highly recommend Emily Greble’s study, Sarajevo 1941.

Regarding Macedonia: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-holocaust-in-macedonia-deportation-of-monastir-jewry

Centropa in Ukraine

Our largest and most comprehensive project. In total, we interviewed 264 elderly Jews and digitized 2,944 of their family pictures and personal documents.

Centropa’s interviews in Ukraine were carried out between 2001 and 2006 under the guidance of Professor Leonid Finberg, director of the Institute of Jewish Studies in Kiev. Marina Karelstein worked as our coordinator, and Ella Levitskaya, Ella Orlikova and Zhanna Litinskaya were among our most productive interviewers.

Ukraine is an enormous country and the pre-Holocaust Jewish experience quite varied: from Jews born in interbellum Romania (Czernovitz) to interbellum Poland (Lvov), as well as Jews who had been born in shtetls and small towns in the east of the country and in the Black Sea port of Odessa, where most of our interviews were conducted by Natalia Fomina.

Centropa’s interviews in Ukraine were underwritten by The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, The Jack Buncher Family Foundation, The Rich Foundation for Education and Welfare, The Austrian Federal Ministry of Culture, Art, and Education.

Centropa in Ukraine

Our largest and most comprehensive project. In total, we interviewed 264 elderly Jews and digitized 2,944 of their family pictures and personal documents.

Centropa in Ukraine

Our largest and most comprehensive project. In total, we interviewed 264 elderly Jews and digitized 2,944 of their family pictures and personal documents.

Centropa in Ukraine

Our largest and most comprehensive project. In total, we interviewed 264 elderly Jews and digitized 2,944 of their family pictures and personal documents.

Centropa in Latvia

95,000 Jews lived in pre-Holocaust Latvia and the majority was murdered by the Nazis and their local accomplices. From 1944 until 1991, Latvia was subsumed into the Soviet Union, and over the following decades, the Jewish community did not exist.

After Latvia's liberation, the community re-formed itself, and if there are around 12,000 Jews in the country today, the majority are Jews who had been born in the Soviet Union and emigrated to Latvia during the Communist decades.

Except in a very few cases, Centropa made it a point to interview only those Jews who had been born in the Latvia in the years preceding the Holocaust.

In Latvia, nearly all our interviews have been carried out by our Kiev-based team at the Institute of Jewish Studies, headed by Marina Karelstein, coordinator, and Ella Levitskaya and Zhanna Litinskaya, interviewers.

Centropa in Lithuania

When Lithuania became an independent state in the wake of the First World War, 154,000 Jews lived within its borders.

During the interwar period, Vilnius /Vilna had been given to Poland and the capital of Lithuania was Kaunas (Kovna in Yiddish). Long one of the liveliest Jewish communities in the world, more than 91% of this community was destroyed during the Shoah. Afterwards, the Soviets ended all religious activity and tolerated only a "cultural" Jewish community.

After 1990, when Lithuania achieved its independence from the Soviet Union, Lithuania's Jews re-established their communal structures and opened a school, a kindergarten and youth clubs.

As in Estonia and Latvia, most Jews living in Lithuania today are Russian and Ukrainian Jews who settled in the country during the Soviet decades. Our interest, however, is in Lithuanian-born Jews and we secured 30 interviews with those who can recall the prewar decades in Kaunas/Kovna and Vilnius/Vilna.

Centropa in Lithuania

When Lithuania became an independent state in the wake of the First World War, 154,000 Jews lived within its borders.

After 1990, when Lithuania achieved its independence from the Soviet Union, Lithuania's Jews re-established their communal structures and opened a school, a kindergarten and youth clubs.

Centropa in Lithuania

When Lithuania became an independent state in the wake of the First World War, 154,000 Jews lived within its borders.

After 1990, when Lithuania achieved its independence from the Soviet Union, Lithuania's Jews re-established their communal structures and opened a school, a kindergarten and youth clubs.