Behind the Headlines Tito Opposed Israel and Zionism in Last Years but Helped Jewry

The long and extraordinary career of Yugoslavia’s President Josip Broz Tito who died yesterday at the age of 87 in Liubliana, is paralleled by his checkered relationship Zionism and Israel but he was never known to some anti-Semitism in a country where anti-Semitism at times was the most venomous in history. On the contrary, his record over 40 years reflects support for Jewry and hostility toward anti-Semitism.

Jews are known to have lived in what is now Yugoslavia for some 2000 years — ruins of synagogues attest to that — but they did not reach the zenith in the country’s governmental, military and professional life or in popular acclaim until Marshal Tito’s partisans took power with the close of World War 11.

Three political forces warred for control of Yugoslavia when the war broke out — Tito’s Communist-led partisans, the Monarchists headed by Gen. Mikhailovich and the fascist Ustashis allied with the invading Nazis. Yugoslavia’s anti-Semites, numerous and never dormant, spewed increasing venom with the rise of Hitlerism especially in Croatia, which had a large Jewish community in Zagreb, and in Slovenia which had few, if any Jews, but intense anti-Semitism.

Yugoslavia’s Jewish population totaled about 85,000 on the eve of World War 11. Almost the whole community was destroyed by 1941 in the Nazi invasion. The Ustashis wantonly killed thousands of them. Hunted by the Ustashis and Nazis and scorned by the Monarchists, Jews naturally were inclined toward the partisans. Many joined the partisan forces and became among the most daring of the fighters against Tito’s enemies.

LARGE EMIGRATION TO ISRAEL

When the war ended, about 12,000 Jews survived in the concentration camps, the Prisoner of War centers, as members of Tito’s forces, and in hiding places. More than half of them left for Israel in 1948. The present population is estimated at about 6000 — the same as it has been for 35 years. They are dispersed in about 30 communities in Yugoslavia’s general population of about 22 million. About 1300 live in Belgrade, 1000 in Zagreb, 900 in Sarajevo, and fewer than 500 in Subotica.

Along with Jews in other areas of the Balkans, Jewish inhabitants in Serbia, one of six of Yugoslavia’s republics, gained legal emancipation in the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century that enabled them to rise somewhat from the lowly regard characteristic towards them in Eastern Europe for generations.

Historically, the earliest traces of Jewry in what is now Yugoslavia are seen in the remains of a First Century synagogue in the pre-Christian Greek town of Stobi near Skopje, the capital of the Republic of Macedonia, and ruins of a Third Century synagogue at Salana off the Adriatic coast in Dalmatia.

Jewish colonies existed in medieval ages in Serbia, Slovenia and Croatia. Jews from Spain and Portugal in the Inquisition period migrated to Dalmatia, in the Fourteenth Century, and passed through Dubrovnik into the hinterland and on to Bulgaria and Greece. Eastern European Jews began arriving in the Eighteenth Century, including Hungarians who went to the Republic of Bosnia-Herzagovina.

ATTITUDE TOWARD JEWS, ISRAEL

Under Tito, Yugoslavia established equal rights and religious freedom for Jews. The government helped restore synagogues and communal buildings and extolled Jewish supporters of the partisan cause. No opposition was generated against Jewish emigration to Israel except that Tito asked his foremost governmental, military, scientific and journalistic personnel to remain with him to help in rebuilding and reorganizing the country from the ravages of war.

Tito recognized Israel and the two countries enjoyed good relations until about 1956 when, having forged a deep friendship and alliance with Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, he began forming the “unaligned” Third World. Yugoslav relations with Israel deteriorated. In 1967, with Nasser humiliated by the Six-Day War, Tito broke relations with Israel and virtually all communications. Only slight commercial exchanges have taken place since.

In international forums, Yugoslavia’s representatives have consistently berated Israel and Zionism and joined in condemning them. Yugoslavia voted for the infamous United Nations resolution equating Zionism with racism. This is in contrast to Rumania, which did not break off diplomatic relations but on the contrary raised the status of Israel’s legation in Bucharest to an embassy, which Israel reciprocated in Tel Aviv. In the voting on the UN anti-Zionist resolution, Rumania officially is recorded as “absent.”

Tito’s government is not known to have mode any serious attempt to restore relations with Israel or adapt a neutral stand between the Soviet Union and Israel or the Arab states and Israel. Tito, it is understood, did not have the close relations with Anwar Sadat that he had with Nasser.

JEWISH COMMUNAL LIFE SUPPORTED

Within, Yugoslavia, however, harshness towards Israel was rarely pronounced and Jewish communal life was supported. The guided Yugoslav media has not been stridently anti-Israel nor strongly, pro-Arab despite Tito’s ties with the Arab world and Yugoslavia’s large Moslem population, about 11 percent. In a general population of about 22 million, the 6000 remaining Jews form a miniscule minority but they serve greatly out of proportion to their numbers in government and the professions.

Tito encouraged support for Jewish requirements. It is the only Communist country in which the American Joint Distribution Committee has served without interruption since World War 11 ended in 1945.

Yugoslavia has been without a rabbi since 1968. Jewish life is largely secular but it is preserved under the country’s Federation of Jewish Communities. Kindergartens and Jewish choirs are maintained in Belgrade and Zagreb. The Ashkenazi synagogue in Belgrade, used as a brothel under Nazi occupation, has been restored by the government and the JDC. Tito and other Yugoslav leaders contributed funds for its restorations. The Serbian Orthodox, Church donated pews. The Sephardi synagogue had been blown up by the Nazis.

In Belgrade’s old Jewish Quarter near the Danube is “Baruch Brothers Street” and the Baruch Cultural Center named for Isa, Bora and Jozi Baruch and their sisters Shela and Bela. All five, children of a poor tailor, were fighters in the resistance against Nazi occupation. Isa, an engineer, led an underground militia and has been proclaimed a national hero. Bora was a lawyer and Josi was a painter and teacher. Another Yugoslav here is General Veija Todorovic born Shmuel Lehrer, who fought with the partisans.

HIGH HONORS FOR A SEPHARDIC JEW

Highest national honors have been bestowed on Moshe Pijade, a Sephardic Jew and a pointer and author, who became the first president of the Yugoslav National Assembly under Tito. His tomb is in the ancient Kalmegdan Fortress at the confluence of the Danube and Sava Rivers in Belgrade. He is one of the few Yugoslavs buried in the shrine reserved for national heroes.

Pijade was one of Tito’s closest associates. For his Communist activities, he was imprisoned 14 years during the reigns of King Alexander and Prince Paul. In World War 11, he was hailed as among the most courageous of the partisan fighters. After the war he represented Yugoslavia at the peace conference and helped draft Yugoslavia’s constitution. One of Belgrade’s principal streets is named for him.

In Belgrade, also, are a Jewish museum and the Jewish federation’s office. In Jew Street, within the walled city of Dubrovnik, is the third oldest synagogue in Europe, established in 1352, and cared for by the survivors of the Talentine family whose forebears came from Spain to the city during the Inquisition.

In Sarajevo are a Sephardi synagogue and an old cemetery. Its Jewish Museum contains an 800-year-old menorah brought from Cordoba in Spain. In Sarajevo’s National Museum is the famous illuminated Haggadah that was carried to the city in the Thirteenth Century by Italian Jews. Before the museum was established, the Haggadah, which Yugoslavs had secreted from the Nazis, was safeguarded in a volt barred by three locked doors.