Jakob Finci, longtime leader of the Bosnian Jewish community, took a swallow of local draft beer and gestured at the mellow crowd enjoying dinner in an upscale new restaurant not far from the city’s synagogue. The tables were full, and, said Finci, there were probably Serbs and Croats among the diners as well as Bosnian… More ▸
Life boiled down to one egg for Sarah Pechanac. Shortly after war erupted in Sarajevo in the early 1990s, her family’s home was wrecked in a bombing that forced them into communal quarters underground. Hope came in the form of a single egg — a piece of charity dispensed from Jewish communities to the general… More ▸
Jewish leaders have joined other religious leaders in calling for peace and dialogue in two Balkan states — Macedonia and Bosnia. Religious leaders from Macedonia issued a statement late last week expressing their “commitment to the One God for peace for our common country” and urging international support for peace initiatives. Izhak Asiel, the chief… More ▸
The leader of the Jewish community here is spearheading an effort to help the nation recover from its devastating civil war. “The war in Bosnia was finished with the Dayton Peace Accord,” Jakob Finci said, referring to the December 1995 agreement that effectively partitioned Bosnia along Serb, Muslim and Croat ethnic lines. “The war was… More ▸
Somewhere on a ship in the Persian Gulf. That’s where Rabbi Joel Newman will lead a seder this Passover. He’ll also lead seders, throughout the Passover week, in Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, bringing the holiday to Jewish personnel in the U.S. military. The seder provides servicemen and women the opportunity to “vote with their… More ▸
It was December 1992 when Jewish activists gathered across from the site of the future Holocaust museum for the first of many calls for U.S. intervention in Bosnia. Eyewitnesses were coming forward with stories of war crimes, mass murders and systematic rapes in the war-torn former Yugoslavia. This week, a coalition of groups, including 19… More ▸
It is a bitterly cold day, but the Jewish Community Center of Sarajevo exudes a warm glow. Little more than a year after the U.S.-brokered Dayton agreement led to a cease-fire between Serbs and Muslims in this war-ravaged country, the community center and the people who run it still play a vital role in the… More ▸
Within a few weeks, the last Bosnian Jewish refugees in Croatia will be resettled in permanent housing, according to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. “The relatively speaking `massive displacement’ of Jews from Bosnia and Herzegovina to Croatia is now a chapter of the past,” said Yechiel Bar Chaim, the JDC country director for Croatia…. More ▸
Donors around the world should move away from rescue efforts and toward the rebuilding of Bosnia, the hosts of a recent Paris gathering stressed. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, in conjunction with the Sarajevo Jewish community’s humanitarian aid society La Benevolencija, sponsored the one-day conference here last week. Both La Benevolencija and the JDC… More ▸
Bosnian Serb authorities have expelled a famed French Nazi hunter from their self-proclaimed capital of Pale after he traveled there in an effort to persuade their leaders to surrender to an international war crimes tribunal. “They obviously got my message, which was too strong for them,” said French lawyer Serge Klarsfeld, who had gone to… More ▸
