Others Trying to Learn the `secret’ of Jdc’s Success in Sarajevo Rescue

EDITORS: The following could run as a sidebar to Michele Chabin’s story on the evacuation from Sarajevo, included in Monday’s JTA Daily Dispatch.

ZAGREB, Croatia, Nov. 16 (JTA) — The success of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s daring rescue of 350 Sarajevo residents on Saturday has left people here asking, “How did they do it?”

Having watched highlights of the operation on the evening news, the locals here are eager to learn “the secret.” Far from resentful that a Jewish organization succeeded where other relief organizations have failed, former residents of Sarajevo would like to emulate the JDC’s actions.

Despite the ethnic fighting that shakes Sarajevo on a daily basis, the JDC, in cooperation with the Sarajevo Jewish community, has successfully carried out eight separate evacuations. An airlift of the elderly is also under consideration.

This high rate of success can be attributed to several factors, said Jakov Bienenfeld, a local businessman who helped coordinate the evacuation efforts.

“The most important factor is the good relations the Jews of Sarajevo share with all other ethnic groups,” he said. “We have lived together for generations. Neither Moslems, nor Serbs, nor Croatians would intentionally harm a Jew.”

Another advantage is the JDC’s close ties with the Jewish community in Sarajevo. Unlike the Red Cross and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which often rely on information from refugees who have escaped Sarajevo, the JDC is in daily phone or radio contact with those still in the city.

“We know the situation minute-by-minute because we are in touch with the people inside,” Bienenfeld said.

He also pointed out that “all of the JDC’s efforts here are non-sectarian and funded by both Jews and non-Jews.”

In Sarajevo, he added, “you can’t help one without helping the other.”