parts of the cities. Their property was confiscated. In fact, in 1859 during
his second term in the Principality of Serbia, Milos Obrenovic abolished
all the anti-Jewish regulations, but after his death in 1860, the Supreme
National Serbian Committee reversed his edict. In 1861, the representa-
tives of the Jews appealed to the new Serbian prince and demanded their
rights. They dared to mention that even before the Principality, during
Ottoman rule, they had enjoyed equal rights with the other peoples of the
Ottoman Empire. Jews were accused of being Ottoman spies. Anti-Jewish
activities continued in Serbia after 1862 as well. Serbian-educated elite,
intellectuals, newspaper editors, parliamentarians, and writers were the
leaders of anti-Jewish campaigns in the country.
42
Serbia gained its independence in 1878. According to the Berlin treaty,
the rights of the Jewish and Muslim communities were guaranteed; Ser-
bia agreed to consider all the religious sects as equal. However, the equal-
ity of the citizens in the Kingdom of Serbia was only instituted in the
constitution of 1888. During the reign of Peter I, in the early twentieth
century, the Jews of Serbia were allowed to live in peace undisturbed
for a generation.
43
There were 60,000 Jews in the Serbian-Croatian and
Slovenian Kingdom in the 1920s. Most of them were living in the cities.
There were anti-Semitic tendencies in Belgrade, Zagreb, Sarajevo, and
Ljubliana. Their national church also involved itself in anti-Semitism in
the 1930s. Ustasha ideology, which developed in the second half of 1930s,
received many elements from Nazism, including anti-Semitism. The first
examples of anti-Semitism were propaganda, and then some new laws
Sharing the Same Fate: Muslims and Jews of the Balkans · 61
against the Jews were issued. In 1940, it turned into mass deportation
and killings.
44
In October 1940, about six months before the beginning of the war
in the Serbian-Croatian and Slovenian Kingdom, anti-Jewish laws were
promulgated. All Jews in Belgrade, Serbia, and Banat were killed by
the summer of 1942. “Serbia was the first European state to be declared
Judenrein.”
45
As a result of anti-Semitism in Yugoslavia and the migration
to Israel, the population of the Jews dropped to 6,000 after World War II.
46
Due to the war and other difficulties, most migrated to Israel, the United
States, and Europe. The number of Jews in Serbia is not more than 1,000
at present.
Serbia eliminated its Muslim population during the early nineteenth
century. However, after the Balkan Wars, it incorporated today’s Mace-
donia and Kosovo, and after World War I, it annexed Bosnia-Hercegov-
ina. Despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of Muslims migrated to
Turkey from Bosnia before the Balkan Wars,
47
and from Macedonia and
Kosovo during the Balkan Wars, Muslims were still dominant in those
regions. Even though the Serbian-Croation and Slovenian Kingdom was
propagating that “we are brothers and religion is not very important in
our brotherhood,” Muslims were second-class citizens in this new state.
Therefore, many Muslims, Turks, Albanians, and Bosniaks migrated to
Turkey. Between 1918 and 1941, the number of Muslims in the Serbian-
Croatian and Slovenian Kingdom was about 1.5 million. After World
War II, the Kingdom became Socialist Yugoslavia under the leadership of
Marshal Tito. The second-class citizenship status of the Muslims contin-
ued in Yugoslavia. Anti-religious policies of the Socialists were applied
harshly toward the Muslims. Their properties were nationalized. Some
of their rituals were banned. Several mosques were closed, and religious
leaders were arrested. Therefore, hundreds of thousands of Turks and
Muslims, especially from Macedonia, migrated to Turkey.
48
During the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the suffering of the
Muslims increased. Following Slovenia and Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina
also separated from Yugoslavia in 1992. Serbian nationalists attacked the
Muslims, burned their houses and mosques, raped the women, and car-
ried out the genocide of hundreds of thousands of Bosnians. In her war
diary dated 18 August 1992, Zlatka Dizdarevic describes how the last
seven hundred Jews were leaving Sarajevo where they had lived for five
62 · Ömer Turan
hundred years. The Jews did not not want to leave their Muslim com-
patriots behind and wanted the latter to join them.
49
Stephen Schwartz
describes Jewish religious and cultural achievements in Bosnia under
Muslim rule and explains how Bosnian Muslims and Sephardi Jews got
on well in the past and present. Obviously, he has no positive remarks
about Serbs.
50
Sarajevo was called the little Jerusalem of the Balkans in
the past, but now it has very few Jewish families left, if there are any at
all. The last mosque of Belgrade, Bayraktar Camisi, was burned five years
ago. Similar cruelties were conducted against the Muslims in Kosovo by
the Serbs.
Romania
Russian influence increased in the Romanian Principalities after the Turks
lost the 1828–29 Ottoman-Russian War. Legally they were dependent on
Istanbul until 1878, but in practice the representatives of the Russian tsar
were the most influential figures in the country. In that period, as a reflec-
tion of the anti-Semitic climate in Russia, they put anti-Semitic articles in
their constitutions. The rights of the Jews were limited. In order to limit
their increase and power, an article ordered the deportation of the Jews in
the Moldovian constitution. Citizenship rights were not given to the Jews
of Romania. For instance, the sentence of “only foreigners of Christian
religion may become Romanians” was put in the constitution of 1866.
Emphasizing that Romania was a Christian Roman country, several
laws were issued against Jewish religious, educational, economic, and
cultural life after Romanian independence in 1878. Between 1899 and
1904, one-quarter of the total Jewish population of Romania (41,754) left
the country.
51
Many of them drifted toward Turkey. They were hoping
to create agricultural colonies there.
52
When Carol Iancu analyzed the
factors in the rise of anti-Semitism in the nineteenth and early twenthi-
eth centuries in Romania, he put religious factors above other economic,
political, and xenophibic factors. He comments, “Whereas prior to 1878,
it was the lack of assimilation which seemed to justify hostility toward
the Jews, after that date, it was rather the fear of such assimilation which
explains the severe legislative measures taken against them.”
53
Even though Romania had to sign a treaty concerning minority rights
like the other Balkan countries at the end of World War I, it was not willing
Sharing the Same Fate: Muslims and Jews of the Balkans · 63
to practice the articles of the treaty. For instance, Romanian citizenship
was not given to all the Jews who were living in the country. Romania, in
those years, had the biggest Jewish population of all the Balkan countries.
According to the census results of 1930, most of Romania’s 756,930 Jews
were traders and industrial workers.
54
Alexander Kittroeff claims that the
reason for anti-Semitism in Romania between the two world wars was
economic more than religious and national, and the Romanian church
simply condoned it.
55
Before World War II, the anti-Semitic winds of the Balkans passed
from Romania as well. Fascist governments that began in 1937 adopted
the “Romanization” policy. The agricultural lands of all non-Romans,
Turks, Jews, etcetera. were confiscated. Jews who were working in the
industrial and trade sectors were dismissed. The Jews were baselesly ac-
cused of inviting the Soviets in 1940 and 1941. In Jassy, 8,000 Jews were
killed. Some authors claim that the number of deaths was higher. When
185,000 Bessarabian and Bukovina Jews were sent into exile in Trans-
Dnistra on the Romanian-Ukranian border, only 30,000 survived. It is
claimed that the number of Jewish deaths of Bessarabia, northern Bu-
kovina, and Trans-Dnistria was 380,000. The Romanian government
and the Nazis agreed to deport 350,000 central Romanian Jews to Nazi
camps, beginning in September 1942. However, this did not happen.
56
After World War II, the Communist regime took over Romania. Although
some authors claim that the Jews filled all the posts in the Communist
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