Book on the Righteous - Jevrejska opština Zemun

Righteous Among The Nations - Serbia
Historical Background
battle fields and the rear lines. Apart from those who
were killed in battle, or who died of sustained wounds,
or from diseases, many perished in Austro-Hungarian
camps. The courage of Jews and their dead, killed in the
battle for liberation, was highly regarded. The deference
for their war effort fortified Jewish integration into the
Serbian environment. Witness of this is best found in
the impressive monument standing by the entrance into
the Jewish (Sephardim) cemetery in Belgrade and contemporary
media publications and literature. The accentuated
national and patriotic feeling of Serbian citizens
was equally shared by Serbian Jews. 4
Inheriting the liberal policy of the Serbian state, the
Memorial commemorating Jews killed during the Balkan
wars and WWI – the Jewish Cemetery in Belgrade
Kingdom of Yugoslavia was able to extend full equality
and prosperity to its Jewish Community for almost the
entire period of its existence. This approach vis-à-vis
Jews in the newly founded country was fundamentally
a continuation of their status in Kingdom Serbia, i.e., a
continuation of the state’s liberal regulations.
Relatively small Jewish Communities of different po-
litical, cultural and economic background were integrated
inside the Yugoslav state boundaries defined in
1918. The principal distinction between them was their
Sephardim and Ashkenazi background. There also existed
a separate community of Orthodox Jews of small
number. The framework of the newly established country
offered the possibility of identification with a new
state and national ideal; however, it also provided input
for additional strengthening of ethnic identity. For the
Jewish Community this was embodied in the form of
Jewish nationalism, Zionism, which at the time of the
establishment of the Yugoslav state was gaining weight.
Within the boundaries of the new country, the Kingdom
of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, Jews were practically
one of the smallest ethnic, i.e., religious community.
Throughout the existence of the Kingdom, their numbers
were more or less in the range of half a percent of
the total number of inhabitants. This rate of participation
gradually receded due to the accelerated growth of
the number of other inhabitants. The relatively small
number of Jews could best be explained by their association
to the major centres of the great monarchies,
Habsburg and Ottoman; whereas the lands that formed
the new Kingdom were in reality the borderlines of the
said monarchies. Two thirds of Jews in the new country
of the South Slovenes originated from lands belonging
to Austro-Hungary. The new borders had practically
separated them from major Jewish centres of the former
monarchy, Vienna and Budapest, to which they had
been bound in multiple ways. Prior to this, Jewish Communities
of Old Serbia and Macedonia went through a
similar process after the Balkan wars of 1912/1913.
Conditions in which Jews lived in the Princedom and the
Kingdom of Serbia during the XIX century were prone
to change, at times unfavourable due to the launching
of a national marketplace and capital. The structuring
of a liberal civic society, especially after the 1878
Berlin Congress and the gaining of full citizen equality
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