Issues of the Holocaust, Srebrenica, and the war in Gaza in modern Bosnia

SARAJEVO – Sarajevo is a capital of memory. A memory of a civil war that 30 years ago sank the newly founded state of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in blood and destruction.

Sarajevo, the federal capital of BiH and today a tourist summer attraction for many Europeans and Middle Easterners, offers numerous museums, exhibitions, and monuments dedicated to that civil war, during which 100,000 people – mostly Bosnian Muslims but also Serbs and Croats – were killed.

Since at least 80% of Sarajevo’s population is Muslim, the war narrative the tourists are exposed to is concentrated on what the Muslim side considers the genocide perpetrated against them between 1992 and 1995.

In April 2021, the Sarajevo Canton Assembly (the local ruling body) decided to confront another dark episode of the local history by adopting a resolution to establish a Holocaust museum in the capital.

The knowledge about the destruction of the ancient Jewish community in modern BiH during World War II is quite limited. The Sarajevo Holocaust museum was initiated to fill the gaps on this subject.

However, in July 2022, the then-head of the Sarajevo Canton, Edin Forto – leader of the liberal-socialist NS (Our Home) Party and now communication and traffic minister within the federal government – stated that the “museum would not only be dedicated to the suffering of the Jews.”

“My idea was to transform one of the nonfunctioning synagogues of the city – the Il kal di la Bilava synagogue – into a Holocaust museum,” said Jewish Bosnian historian Dr. Elias Tauber, who initiated the project. “All sides agreed on the idea, and we started working on it. We received funding from the EU.

“However, there were many complications. Some people lived on the ground floor of the former synagogue, for example. We reached an agreement to move them somewhere else.

Everything is connected 

“Now, we all wait to see what will happen with the war in Gaza. Everything is connected. We have a great connection with the Muslims here; we don’t have problems with them. However, right now, there are too many deaths in Gaza. So we face the problem: how can we build a Holocaust museum here at such a moment? In talks with UNESCO and other organizations, we decided it would be best not to progress with the museum but to continue it when the situation calms down.

“Meanwhile, we founded the Jewish archive in Sarajevo,” stressed Dr. Tauber. “We started gathering here documents and photos from all over Bosnia as well as from archives and museums in Belgrade, Zagreb, Vienna, and Israel on the Jews of Bosnia and what happened to them during the Holocaust.

“There are still people who don’t know that the Holocaust happened here, too. The situation was different here than in Greece, since many Jews managed to leave Sarajevo to Mostar in the south, and from there they moved to the Adriatic coast area, which was under Italian occupation. 

Most of them lived on the island of Rab, and from there, they joined the partisans. They created a Jewish partisan battalion of about 400 people. In 1943, it was the first Jewish partisan battalion in the world.

“I wrote a book about the Holocaust in Bosnia, so we have a good basis of information for the museum. The Sarajevo Jewish Archive is divided into three sections: the period of Ottoman rule, the times of the Austrian Empire, and the period of World War II and the Holocaust.”

Tauber was born in 1950 in Communist Yugoslavia. Most of his family survived the Holocaust by fleeing Sarajevo for Mostar, and from there to the island of Hvar (in modern Croatia), from where they were taken to a concentration camp the Italians built on Rab. 

In his office at the Sarajevo Jewish Archive, two old photos show his family in its refuge of Hvar.

“My uncle was a partisan, and he was killed during the war. My grandparents from my Sephardi side were murdered in the extermination camp of Jasenovac,” Tauber explained. “Around 10% of Jews in Serbia survived the Holocaust, while in Bosnia around 30% survived. Around 10,000 of Bosnia’s Jews were murdered. Most of them were Sephardi Jews. Those murdered were sent to Jasenovac, Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, and Mauthausen.”

Once the Holocaust museum opens, will it deal with the delicate issue of how local communities, the Croats and the Muslims, cooperated with the Nazis? Will it show the famous photos of the mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, visiting the Waffen-SS Handschar division?

“I am not sure that there are parts of the local population who are not willing to speak about their part in the Holocaust,” stated Tauber cautiously. “All communities are working with us. They are willing to give us their historical material. We are trying to get all the material that exists in the archives. We haven’t started working on the issue of collaboration with the Nazis.

“The photos of the mufti of Jerusalem and the Bosnian SS soldiers have nothing to do with the Holocaust. Al-Husseini came here and recruited simple people from eastern Bosnia to the German Army. Some of them were killed during the war on the Eastern Front, fighting the Russians. One can say that they were not involved in the Holocaust. Maybe Muslim SS soldiers killed some Jews, but not out of antisemitism.

“In one of my books, I write about the Righteous Among the Nations of Bosnia. Right now, there are 54 (although only 49 are listed by Yad Vashem). But there are more Bosnian righteous. Many of them were killed during the war, and there are no witnesses that can testify who saved them.”

Stopping the Sarajevo Holocaust museum project due to the war in Gaza reveals a very troubling reality: Sarajevo and the Muslim sections of BiH have increasingly become a European bastion of support for Hamas and the Palestinians’ armed fight against Israel since October 7.

While the Croat chairwoman of the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Borjana Krišto, condemned Hamas’s attack, calling it “unjust and brutal,” and expressed support for Israel, Foreign Minister Elmedin Konakovic also condemned Hamas but added that “he never hid his support for the people and the government of Palestine in keeping and protecting the areas they live in, fighting for sovereignty and territorial integrity of their land, and protecting their religious sites that are of great importance for the Muslim believers from all around the world.”

On October 22, thousands participated in Sarajevo in a pro-Palestinian demonstration, during which comparisons were drawn between the horrors of the Bosnian civil war – mainly the Srebrenica massacre of 1995, in which around 8,000 Muslim males were murdered by Serbian militias – and the situation in Gaza. 

Two international courts defined the Srebrenica massacre as “genocide.” The demonstrators at October’s rally chanted “genocide, genocide.” A huge banner stated, “Yesterday Srebrenica, today Gaza.”

Similarities between the siege of Sarajevo and Gaza 

Sarajevo Mayor Benjamina Karic spoke about similarities between the siege of Sarajevo and the living conditions of Gazans. In a radio interview, she stated that it was hypocritical to condemn only the Hamas attack on Israel and not to condemn everything that happened before that.

References to the “genocide” in Gaza are made in the “Genocide Museum” in Sarajevo, dedicated to the years of the civil war, in graffiti all over Sarajevo, and at the soccer matches of FK Sarajevo.

In front of the Iranian Cultural Center at the heart of Sarajevo, a regular “Stop the genocide in Gaza” protest is held. Iran and Turkey fuel anti-Israeli sentiments among the Muslim population of BiH.

Creating comparisons between the “genocide” of Srebrenica and the situation in Gaza opened the way to connecting Srebrenica and Gaza to the Holocaust.

On January’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a joint Muslim-Jewish founding event of an “Initiative for Peace and Remembrance” took place in Srebrenica.

Behind this initiative was the grand mufti of BiH, Husein Kavazovic, and Jewish American lawyer and former associate executive vice president of the World Jewish Congress, Menachem Rosensaft.

Rosensaft, son of Holocaust survivors and born in 1948 in Bergen-Belsen, was very instrumental in mobilizing the WJC to recognize the massacre of Srebrenica as a genocide and condemning any attempt to deny the genocidal nature of this war crime.

The founding document of the initiative, signed by the mufti and Rosensaft, in the presence of some representatives of the BiH Jewish community, opens as follows:

“In a world where the echoes of the Holocaust and the Bosnian Srebrenica Genocide still resonate, we, the participants of the Srebrenica Muslim-Jewish Peace and Remembrance Initiative, come together to forge a path of reconciliation, mutual respect, and active peace-building.”

Holding the joint event on such a symbolic day was strongly criticized by members of the local Jewish community, especially in light of another controversial joint statement, which was published a few weeks after October 7 by the chairman of the Congress of Bosniak Intellectuals, Emir Zlatar, and the head of the Jewish cultural society La Benevolencija, Vladimir Andrle. Both declared in the statement, “It is necessary to clearly distinguish between the military-political establishment of the State of Israel and the Jewish people. Today, a similar scenario is unfolding in Gaza that we witnessed in Sarajevo and BiH, so it should not surprise anyone that today, the democratic world is siding with the Palestinian people.”

Adopting a resolution for genocide 

On May 23, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on the Srebrenica “genocide,” designating July 11, the day the massacre began, as an International Day of Reflection and Commemoration. 

Germany and Rwanda initiated this resolution, and it was adopted by a majority of 84 member states in what is considered a politicized move, creating another connection between the Holocaust and Srebrenica. The Israeli delegation was absent during the vote.

“One cannot compare the Holocaust to what happened during the civil war in Bosnia and then to Gaza,” said Tauber. “These are different things. What happened in the Holocaust was a tragedy for the Jews and for the entire world. What happens in Gaza has nothing to do with the Holocaust.

“In Bosnia, though, people talk about it as a genocide. But I don’t think it is. I live here among Muslims. I can understand what they feel. They went through a war, although it was a different war. I keep on telling them that during their war, nobody came from Gaza to assist them or defend them. So, why are they so pro-Palestinian? They are Muslims, and they feel an obligation to support the Palestinians. They send food, medications, and clothes to Gaza. There were demonstrations here even when hundreds of thousands were murdered in Syria. Muslims, Jews, and Christians took to the streets of Sarajevo. Now, the pro-Palestine demonstrations are organized by the Muslims.

“The good thing is that nobody touches the Jewish community. They only condemn Israel, the Israelis, and the Israeli policy of war. I don’t feel any antisemitism.

“But I don’t speak for everybody. As a historian I speak about our joint history in Bosnia and what should be done to develop this country. People know I stand on Bosnia’s side and support the idea that it should be a state for all its citizens.”

Ariel Muzicant, president of the European Jewish Congress, told The Jerusalem Post regarding the comparisons between the Holocaust, Srebrenica, and the situation in Gaza: “Not only does it belittle the memory of the Shoah, the mass industrialized premeditated slaughter of six million Jews, it also minimizes the recent Bosnian experience of Srebrenica. 

The deliberate slaughter of Bosnian men taken out of their houses to be shot and placed in mass graves has no comparison whatsoever to military acts by Israel in Gaza in response to an invasion of its territory, the massacre by Hamas of 1,200 civilians, and the taking of hostages. The comparisons are misplaced, wrong, and deeply offensive.”

JAKOB FINCI, president of the Jewish community in BiH and a former ambassador of his country, is a Holocaust survivor. He was the first child born in the Italian camp of Rab in 1943. “At the beginning of World War II,” Finci said, “the Kingdom of Yugoslavia received many Jewish refugees, mainly from Germany and Austria, thinking that Hitler would not attack Yugoslavia.

“A big part of Serbia and almost all of today’s Bosnia became the Independent State of Croatia, run by the Ustasha, who collaborated with the Germans. Some Jews succeeded in fleeing to the southern part of the country, to Herzegovina, and to the Dalmatian coast, which was under Italian occupation. My parents flew from Sarajevo to Mostar, where they met and married at the local synagogue in October 1942.

“Later, the Italians were forced by Hitler to gather all the Jews in their zone of occupation, and they moved them to Lopud island on the Adriatic coast, near Dubrovnik, while building a huge camp on the island of Rab, on the north Adriatic. I was born in this camp.

“Other Bosnian Jews survived the Holocaust fighting with the partisans, as it was the only army during the war who accepted the Jews. Some survived the POW camps. They were drafted into the Yugoslav army and surrendered to the Germans, who took all of them to camps in Germany, where they were forced to work. Some survived underground, hiding with friends, relatives, and neighbors.

“At the end of the war, many came back home. In 350 years, I was the first member of the Finci family to be born out of Sarajevo. Maybe I will be the last to be buried in Sarajevo, because my children live today in the US.”Finci also rejected any comparison between the Holocaust, Srebrenica, and Gaza.

“It’s impossible to compare anything with the Holocaust,” he emphasized, “because it was an organized genocide, killing a whole people till the last one of them, regardless if you were over 80 or just a newborn baby. Everybody was a victim of this genocide. Six million Jews were killed because they were Jews. This cannot be compared.

“You have this strange case of South Africa against Israel in The Hague. Other countries joined South Africa; some are considered good friends of Israel. At least, they claim to be such.

“For the local people, the case of Srebrenica was a catastrophe because it happened in one week. In one week, the Serbs killed 8,000 unarmed people, saying that all of them were soldiers. When Srebrenica became a place of commemoration for the victims of this crime, I said that their approach was not good, because they were commemorating the event only as a Muslim funeral.”

Finci is very proud that there is no security needed around the Jewish community center, situated next to the Sarajevo Synagogue. He defends his participation at the event on International Holocaust Remembrance Day in Srebrenica.

“In Sarajevo, 85%-90% of the population are Muslims, and we have a few hundred Palestinians in origin who came here as students during Tito’s time, got married, and stayed here. They organized, till now, very decent pro-Palestine demonstrations. They avoid marching in front of the synagogues and the community center. There is no graffiti or swastikas on Jewish buildings. The situation is absolutely calm.

“A few days after the war started, I had coffee with the grand mufti of Bosnia. He issued then a statement saying that the war in the Middle East is not a war between Muslims and Jews; it’s not even a war between Israel and Palestine. It’s a war between Israel and Hamas, which is a terrorist organization. Our shared position is that every human life is important, and we are against the killing of civilians on both sides, and the killing should be stopped.

“Then, on January 27 in Srebrenica, the WJC and the Jewish community of Bosnia published an appeal for peace, without mentioning Israel, Palestine, or the Middle East. It was a call for peace in the world and was well accepted.

“From the very beginning, the Bosnian authorities contacted us and asked us to be informed if we had any problems. But we live freely here, with an open door, and we are not afraid. At the same time, in other European cities, there have been demonstrations, which very often targeted the local Jewish communities.”

THE ALMOST idyllic take of Finci on the situation of Jews in BiH is not shared by other members of the community, most of whom fear expressing their views openly, as it might put them or their families in danger.One of the rare few to publicly express their critical opinions is the musician Frano Yehuda Kolonomos-Martincevic.

Yehuda was born in 1967 in Sarajevo to a Jewish mother and a Catholic Croat father. During the civil war, he moved to Italy, then to Norway, and returned to his birthplace 10 years ago.

“One of the reasons for my return was that the Jewish community here is tiny and elderly,” he told the Post. “I have 10 children, seven of them are sons. They are the future of the community. The community was very happy that I came back.

“But then problems started because of my open support of Israel. The leaders of the community thought that it was not appropriate for a Muslim environment. In the community, they are used to being tolerated and working only in the Muslim political arena. I said that we have to develop contacts with the other ethnic groups in BiH and defend Israel in a way that people would know where we stand. I understand that politically, we have to be cautious. But we shouldn’t turn our backs on Israel.

“Now they say that one must differentiate between the Jews and the Israelis. During the Bosnian civil war, Jews and members of their families (some of whom were not Jewish) fled to Israel, which sheltered them and saved them. Now, they are talking against Israel.

“I don’t feel safe here. I get threats. The community says that it’s my problem because I am supporting Israel. If I have to fear because of that, something is very wrong here. I don’t hate Muslims. It’s a matter of sticking to our identity and not of putting a finger in the eye of the Muslims.”

Kolonomos-Martincevic plans to present his candidacy for the coming election for the presidency of the community. He stresses that he will do it for his children and Israel. Some 167 members of his mother’s family, the Kolonomos, were murdered in the Holocaust.

“My family was sent to the death camps from Bitola (today in North Macedonia). My mother managed to hide in the woods. Her father was a police officer. My grandmother, my mother’s sister, and two of her brothers were murdered.

The comparison is a form of  schizophrenia

“The comparison between the Holocaust and Srebrenica is a form of schizophrenia. Srebrenica was a pure crime of war. Finci says that all Jews in BiH think that Srebrenica was a genocide, but this is not true. The community in Sarajevo is indeed the main Jewish community in Bosnia. But there are other communities in non-Muslim areas, and they see things differently.

“Now they are preparing a law in Bosnia that will criminalize those who would dare say that Srebrenica was not a genocide. There is an evident attempt to put the Holocaust and Srebrenica on the same level, so that they can accuse the Serbs of committing another Holocaust.

“The Muslims here act exactly like the Palestinians against Israel. The others are always blamed, while they become the victim.

“Nobody tries to find out what really happened around Srebrenica. Some 3,500 Serbs were murdered then. One of my half-brothers was among them. The Muslim forces under the command of Gen. Naser Oric raided Serbian towns and villages, murdered their inhabitants, and then came back to Srebrenica, which was a protected zone under UN control.

“There are many points of comparison between Srebrenica and October 7. The Serbian Army reacted to repeated attacks, but in a very cruel way toward the civilian population; I don’t justify what they did.”

Another prominent member of the Sarajevo Jewish community, who spoke under condition of anonymity, warns that the Muslims in Bosnia went through a process of radicalization that is reflected in their position on the war in Gaza.

“One shouldn’t be afraid of what will happen in Bosnia. One should be afraid of what is already in Bosnia,” he told the Post.

“During the Bosnian civil war, we witnessed how the Muslim mujahideen operated in ways that were repeated on October 7 in Israel – beheading and burning mainly Serbs and Croats.

“What happened in Srebrenica also reminds me of October 7. Muslim fighters left this town, attacked Serbs, raped women, killed, burned and beheaded people. Then, when the Serbs reacted and took revenge, this became a genocide, even though the Serbs had no genocidal intentions.

“The fighting methods of the Bosniak mujahideen were very similar to those of the Muslims in Gaza: In Sarajevo, too, they were shooting from kindergartens, schools, and hospitals. Once the other side reacted, the Muslims showed the bodies of kids and women who were killed.

“The whole idea of a Bosnian Muslim nation resembles the creation of the Palestinian nation. Before 1991, the Bosniaks were just Muslims with no national identity, unlike Serbs and Croats. All of a sudden, Bosnia belonged to the Muslims, and all the others were supposed to go away. In the ’90s, many Muslims felt part of the West. Now, 95% of them feel complete solidarity with the Muslim world. It’s an emotional solidarity. If there is somewhere in the world a conflict in which Muslims are involved, the Bosniaks side with those Muslims. It doesn’t matter if it’s Azerbaijan or Palestine.

“I was born and grew up in Sarajevo with Muslims and Croats,” stated the community member. “After October 7, only one Muslim friend publicly expressed solidarity with me. Some others sent private messages. They ask about me, not about Israel. Most of my other friends publish every morning on social media photos of Palestinian children from Gaza.

“It doesn’t mean that they all became religious or will take rifles and attack the small Jewish community here. They are too spoiled to do that. But among them live also dangerous radical elements.

“The Muslims are very critical of the West and its support of Israel, which they compare to the way they were betrayed by Western powers during the civil war. There is a general demonization of Israel. The word ‘Zionist’ became a curse.

“The leadership we have today is only siding with the Muslims and is neglecting the other major groups in Bosnia, the Serbs and the Croats. Such one-sided loyalty makes the other groups in BiH angry.

“Andrle stated that denying the genocide in Srebrenica opens the door to denying the Holocaust,” said the prominent member of the Sarajevo community. “He seems to be using the Jewish community for his political ambitions. Can such a person speak in the community’s name or be considered leading it? Should he be the one causing conflict between the community and the other groups in BiH?

“In the Muslim cantons of Bosnia, antisemitism has reached levels that we haven’t seen up until now. That is not the situation in the Serbian or Croat areas of the federation. 

The Jewish community gathered hundreds of antisemitic declarations from dozens of imams after October 7, but instead of presenting the report to the Americans and Europeans, they went with it to the grand mufti, who came up with a void declaration, and that was it.

“The leadership of the community pretends that all is well here, while Bosniaks – even secular and educated people – consider Hamas to be freedom fighters and say that Israel should disappear.”