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Landless in Sarajevo
Jennifer Friedlin Sarajevo
 JENNIFER FRIEDLIN |
NIKOLA GAON SITS IN A trendy cafe in downtown Sarajevo, smoking Bosnian cigarettes and reminiscing in fluent Hebrew about the three years he spent in Israel during the Balkan war. As the conversation drifts back and forth between pleasant memories of Israel and his current middle-class life in Bosnia, it is clear that Gaon, who was 16 when he left for Israel in 1992, could have made it in either country. But at the end of the war in 1995, Gaon returned to Sarajevo for what was supposed to be a short visit, and decided to stay in his native city.
"I built my life anew in Israel and I started planning my future there, but when I came back, I found that the friends I had before I left were still my friends and they were glad to see me. Plus my family was here," says Gaon, now 25, whose Mediterranean looks allowed him to pass easily between the Slavic and Semitic cultures. "This just felt like home."
The only hitch was that Gaon, who grew up knowing little about Judaism, had changed. Israel provided a crash course in Jewish history and identity.
Like Gaon, about two dozen other young Jewish Bosnians between 17 and 25 were in Israel in the 1990s and later returned, determined to see their community survive. While it is premature to say that Jewish Sarajevo is experiencing a rebirth, the return of these young people at the very least signals that Jewish life in Bosnia has a chance for a future -- a statement few might have hazarded between 1992 and 1995, when 1,000 Jews, two-thirds of the community, fled amid the worst ethnic cleansing in Europe since World War II.
The fighting, which involved Bosnia�s three main ethnic groups -- Serbs, Croats and Muslims -- left some 250,000 dead and more than half the population of 4.2 million displaced. Massacres, such as the well-documented Srebrenica atrocity, killed thousands of Muslims, who were the war�s primary victims. Today, the Muslims, Serbs and Croats live in strained harmony.
The Jews, who maintained their distance and used their political connections with the various factions to bring goods in and get people out, continue to exist above the fray. Although some members of the community fear the rise of Islam in Sarajevo, a city that is now more than 90 percent Muslim compared with 49 percent be-fore the war, others dismiss their concerns.
"London has three times the number of Muslims as Bosnia, and you don�t hear about the Islamization of London," says Jakob Finci, the 58-year-old Jewish community leader. The synagogue, Finci notes, remains open and unguarded, and anti-Semitism is rarely displayed. When it is, the Muslim-led government is generally quick to denounce it.
Tolerance may allow Sarajevo�s 700-strong Jewish community to live relatively peacefully, but the demographics are a constant worry. Most of the Jews are over 50, and only a handful of people between 30 and 50 stayed through the war or have returned. This puts the burden on the younger generation.
Yet young people like Nikola Gaon remain confident. "I think there will always be a Jewish presence here," says Gaon, who divided his time in Israel between a boarding school in Rishon Letzion and an adoptive family in Yavneh. "There are enough young people who are intelligent and dedicated enough to continue the work."
Still, Gaon�s optimism belies another compelling truth in Sarajevo: Life here is tough. The Jews, like the rest of Bosnia, are still reeling from the war. Unemployment is running at 40 percent, the political future is uncertain. So, many educated people continue to leave.
THOSE WHO STAY ARE SO BUSY trying to keep going that few have time to invest in rebuilding the Jewish community, which has taken many beatings over the past 60 years. And there is little in Sarajevo for them to build on.
On Saturday evenings at 6, about 20 young Jews meet regularly at the city�s last remaining synagogue for what could be called Jewish tradition Sarajevo-style. They sit in the cafeteria, eating non-kosher food. Kosher food has not been available in Sarajevo since World War II. There is no agenda and nothing particularly Jewish about the meeting. Although the communal elders still rustle up a minyan for Friday night services, the young people seem more interested in pursuing cultural rather than religious ties to Judaism.
"People just come to hang out and to see each other and to do something for the community," explains Gaon, who also helps to prepare communal holiday celebrations. But he admits that Judaism is not central to his life. He is dating a non-Jewish girl and does not believe that it is important to marry in the faith.
Gaon�s story, which is typically Bosnian, reflects a long history of intermarriage and assimilation. Sarajevo�s Sephardi community, which was decimated during World War II, when the Germans killed more than 10,000 of its 12,000 members, dwindled even more after the war. Many women sought to marry non-Jews, hoping that a non-Jewish last name would prevent them from facing death should another Holocaust occur. The rise of Communism and Tito�s efforts to suppress ethnic divisions throughout Yugoslavia also helped Jews slip into anonymity.
Only a handful of Sarajevo�s Jews meet the religious definition of who is a Jew and only one baby has been ritually circumcised since 1971 -- and that was in Hungary. The community does not have a rabbi, bar mitzvot do not take place and classes in Jewish tradition, taught by the older, non-religious community members, are available only for children.
Ironically, during the most recent Bos-nian war, Jewish was suddenly a good thing to be. The Jews managed to maintain their neutrality. They also had ties to the outside world. With the help of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, they organized convoys that helped about 2,000 people, Jews and non-Jews, to escape the city. Papers proving one�s links to Judaism were suddenly in great demand. "During the war, I learned what being a member of a community is," says Gaon, who like many of his peers, is not halakhically Jewish (both his parents had Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers).
Yet not everyone is so sanguine. Sitting in a conference room in the faded pink synagogue, Finci, the community president, offers a more pessimistic forecast. With work hard to come by, he suggests there is little to keep young people here. "The international help has gone to rebuild the infrastructure, but nothing has been invested in industry or enterprises where young people can find jobs," he says. "The best employment now is to be a driver, translator or a security guard for a foreign organization. I don�t see a long-term future in that."
Nikola Gaon is a case in point. Although he has found work in the public information department of a European non-governmental organization, he is not necessarily committed to staying put. While he no longer thinks about moving to Israel, he confesses that he would consider moving to Western Europe or the United States.
Finci now spends much time and energy pushing for the establishment of a high-profile panel, modeled on South Africa�s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, that would seek to write the official history of the 1992-95 conflict. It would, he hopes, give the former warring factions a way to start rebuilding their country.
Whether Finci is a visionary, a cynic or a self-promoter seems to be a matter of debate within the Jewish community. Critics say his focus on the larger social and political picture means that he is perhaps less dedicated to some of the other causes that are important to his constituents, such as Jewish education and property restitution.
On a warm summer�s day, Sonja Elazar, a feisty 55-year-old, walks through downtown Sarajevo between elegant buildings inherited from the Austro-Hungarian empire. Elazar, who teaches kindergarten and Sunday school in the Jewish center, points out building after building that she says once belonged to Jews. She says most of their property was first taken by the Nazis during World War II and then nationalized under the Communist regime that followed.
Today, even those with papers to prove original ownership have no way of getting it back. And, Elazar complains, no one locally or abroad is taking up the issue. "The Jewish community does not have enough power and we need some support from abroad," she says, adding that a return of the property would serve as an incentive for young Jewish people to return to Bosnia.
But whoever took on the case would be stepping into a legal and ethical quagmire. The local government and international community are currently mired in claims stemming from the recent war, which forced many to flee their homes and move into abandoned buildings. On top of that, complex laws dating back to the Communist era, when people were given life-long occupancy rights to apartments, must be waded through to determine who has the current right to live in and buy particular homes the government is now trying to sell.
"Everyone�s concerned about human rights," sighs Elazar, who lost most of her family during the Holocaust. "My mother�s family had a lot of houses. Now, I don�t have anything."
AS THE LAND GETS LITERALLY pulled out from under them, the future looks tenuous for Sarajevo�s Jewish community. They and other minorities have been marginalized by the legal system that was devised to end the Bosnian war. Signatories to the 1995 Dayton Agreement, which convinced the Serbs, Croats and Muslims to put down their arms, agreed to a political system that serves the interests of the three parties. Group identity is determined by religion.
"If you are a Catholic, you are a Croat, if you are Orthodox, you are a Serb," says Morris Albahari, a 70-year-old former fighter pilot in Tito�s air force. "The Jewish people are lost. I have no nationality. I�m not Bosnian because Bosnians are Muslim. Who am I? I am one lost man."
Sarajevo�s younger Jews are not giving up that easily. Gaon says he is optimistic the country will eventually, albeit slowly, solve its problems. For their part, he says, the youngsters are pulling together, seeking the strength to rejuvenate the weakened community they inherited.
"My Jewish identity is stronger now than before the war," Gaon says. "Now I feel it. There are so many beautiful things about Judaism and Jewish history in Sarajevo that it is important to maintain the tradition and the culture."
(10 September, 2001)
Jewish World
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