The history of the Jews in Belgrade spans more than five centuries. A Jewish community has been documented in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, since at least the 16th century, and secondary evidence suggests a Jewish presence in the city from the mid-14th century. The community reached its greatest size on the eve of the Second World War, numbering about 12,000 in 1940, and more than 90 per cent of its members were killed in the Holocaust.
After the Ottoman conquest of 1521, Jews, mainly Sephardim, settled in growing numbers in Jalija, a quarter on the bank of the Danube in what later became the Dorćol district. In the 17th century Belgrade became a regional centre of Jewish law, with a yeshiva under Rabbi Judah Lerma, and by the 1660s the community numbered about 800. It was destroyed when Habsburg forces took the city in 1688 during the Great Turkish War: the Jewish quarter was plundered and burned, and its inhabitants were marched to distant prison camps. The community was slowly rebuilt after the Ottoman return in 1690, and an organised Ashkenazi congregation is first documented after the Austrian conquest of 1717.
The Serbian Revolution of 1804 brought violence against the community, but under Miloš Obrenović the Jews of Belgrade enjoyed a brief "golden age" of equal rights. These were revoked in 1844 under the Defenders of the Constitution, and despite international pressure following the Congress of Berlin, full equality came only with the constitution of 1888. Zionist activity began at the end of the 19th century, and in 1897 a Belgrade delegate attended the First Zionist Congress. After World War I, migration from smaller communities in the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes raised the community to about 8,000 by 1931.
After the German invasion of April 1941 Belgrade remained under direct German control. The men were held at the Topovske Šupe camp and shot at Jajinci, Jabuka and Kumodraž; the women and children were held at the Sajmište concentration camp and murdered in gas vans, and by mid-1942 the German security police reported Belgrade to be Judenfrei. Survivors returned after the city's liberation in October 1944, but about 1,000 emigrated to Israel between 1948 and 1952. Under socialist Yugoslavia the community became largely secular and assimilated; after the break-up of Yugoslavia communal and religious life was renewed, and in the late 2010s the community was estimated at between about 800 and 1,500 people.
History
In the Middle Ages Evidence for a Jewish community in Belgrade before the Ottoman conquest is sparse and mostly secondary. Scholars have hypothesised the presence of a Romaniote community as early as the 10th century. Isaac Cohen Schlang, the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Belgrade, argued that the custom among Belgrade's Jews of reading the Book of Esther on 15 Adar rather than 14 Adar, the practice of walled cities, was among the proofs of a community predating the Ottomans. In the mid-14th century, during the reign of Stefan Dušan, Jews are documented as living in the Serbian kingdom, though without specific reference to Belgrade. From the same period it is recorded that Jews in western Europe were accused of spreading the Black Death, and that many fled along the Danube, some reaching Belgrade. In 1374 Louis I of Hungary expelled the Jews of his kingdom, and Jewish families consequently arrived in Belgrade. In 1471 Louis IX, Duke of Bavaria expelled the Jews of Bavaria, and some of the expelled families probably reached the city as well. No primary source attesting to an organised and active community in Belgrade has been found for this period.
Following the Ottoman conquest of 1521, populations were transferred from the conquered territories into the Ottoman interior. Many of those moved were put to forced labour under the Ottoman Turkish designation sürgün, and were employed among other things in the development of Constantinople. A census conducted in Constantinople in 1540 recorded sixteen Jewish families from Belgrade, known collectively as the "Belgrade congregation". Scholars infer from this record that a Jewish community existed in the city before the conquest.
Early Ottoman rule
The Ottomans first besieged Belgrade in 1440 and tried for decades to take it without success. On 21 August 1521 the forces of Suleiman the Magnificent captured the city. Jewish merchants and officials arrived together with the Ottoman administrative apparatus and settled near the banks of the Danube, in a quarter called Jalija, from the Turkish yalı, meaning shore. The area later became known as Dorćol. A responsum sent in 1610 to Rabbi Hayyim Shabbethai of Salonica, which describes the Jewish quarter and the date of its establishment in detail, indicates that the quarter already existed and was inhabited by 1540. It was built in the form of a courtyard neighbourhood, but was not separated from the rest of the city by any gate or wall. The houses were generally two storeys high with tiled roofs and probably an attic; their balconies faced the inner courtyard, while their windows also opened onto the outer streets. The quarter stood close to the wall of the Belgrade Fortress and to the Danube, and its residents suffered frequent flooding. A synagogue stood at its centre, with a bathhouse and a Talmud Torah beside it. The land on which the quarter was built was known as miri, short for arazi emiriyye, the ruler's lands, which were imperial property. Residents held only a right of use in return for an annual lease payment, and had no possessory title.
The Ottoman authorities classified the Jews, like the Christians, as dhimmis, but treated them favourably as a minority without national aspirations that was regarded as loyal to the sultan. The community of this period is known from three kinds of source: rabbinic responsa, Ottoman records and the accounts of European travellers. Between the 1550s and the 1660s these travellers describe a Jewish quarter close to the fortress, with a synagogue and a school of its own, Jewish merchants active in the city's trade, and by 1620 some 60 to 70 Jewish households.
Questions sent in 1546 to Joseph ibn Lev, Samuel de Medina, Samuel Kalai and David ibn Abi Zimra indicate that five judges sat on the rabbinical court of Belgrade, a figure that points to the size of the community. They further suggest that there were at least two separate congregations, since one of the judges described himself as belonging to the "Shalom congregation" while the others did not. It is recorded that a number of Jews taken captive by the forces of Bohdan Khmelnytsky during the Khmelnytsky Uprising were brought to Belgrade and offered for sale into slavery, and were ransomed by members of the community.
Destruction and renewal of the community (1688–1717)
On 6 September 1688, during the Great Turkish War, the army of the Habsburg monarchy under Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria took Belgrade after a siege of a month. The Jewish community then numbered about 800 people, of whom between 100 and 150 fled the city before it fell. The Austrians looted the synagogue and burned it down, and went on to plunder the houses and businesses of the Jewish quarter. The Ottomans who remained in the city and the members of the Jewish community were put to forced labour, clearing the bodies of the dead and removing rubble from the streets. When this work ended, the entire community was arrested. About 600 were marched some 180 kilometres to a detention camp beside the Tvrđa fortress in Osijek, some of them naked or half naked, and were imprisoned there in irons. Half of the deportees survived the march and the conditions of their captivity until ransom money arrived. About 45 others, among them the chief rabbi Joseph Almosnino together with the community's notables and wealthiest members, were taken to a camp at Nikolsburg, where Almosnino died.
Questions addressed to Rabbi Moses ibn Habib indicate that a bitter dispute arose both among the captives and among the communities raising their ransom. Some of those collecting funds worked only for the release of the group of 45. The ransom the Austrians demanded for the group of 600 was four times as high per person as that demanded for the 45, because some members of the larger group had placed sums of money and jewellery in safekeeping in advance. Some captives acted independently to secure their own release rather than through the group. Books and letters circulated by the redeemed captives after their release describe their suffering at length; one such account opens: "The mouth that speaks with a broken spirit, says the bitter and sighing one, a heart broken and crushed, crying out and weeping, over the troubles of the time that have befallen me. I am the man that hath seen affliction, one of the exiles of Belgrade."
Three hundred of the captives were ransomed by the Jews of Vienna. After their release they travelled by way of Prague and dispersed from there. Many of the community's wealthy and educated members never returned to Belgrade, settling instead in Venice, Amsterdam and London. On 14 October 1690, after a siege of twelve days, the Ottomans retook Belgrade. A handful of Jews returned with them and the rebuilding of the community began. In 1692 Samuel Pinto of Salonica was appointed rabbi of the community. By the beginning of the 18th century it numbered 250 people, who were involved in the economic, administrative and political life of the city. Abraham Alboher of Belgrade served as the personal assistant and interpreter of the French ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, and on his behalf conducted contacts with Francis II Rákóczi, who later led a revolt against Habsburg rule in Hungary.
Under the Habsburg monarchy, 1717–1739 The Habsburg army besieged Belgrade again in July 1717, during the Austro-Turkish War of 1716–1718. The shelling heavily damaged the Jewish quarter and the synagogue and caused casualties in the community, and after the city fell on 17 August some members left for the Ottoman interior, among them merchants who settled with their families at Čepino Banya, now part of Velingrad in Bulgaria. Under Austrian rule, confirmed by the Treaty of Passarowitz in 1718, an organised Ashkenazi congregation with its own chief rabbi is documented in the city for the first time, while the Sephardim split into two congregations after an internal dispute.
Habsburg rule was harsh towards the Jews of the city. The Austrians distinguished between Ashkenazi Jews, most of whom were not Ottoman subjects, and Sephardi Jews, who were. The Ashkenazi congregation was granted no right of permanent residence apart from a few individuals, and its members lived under a standing threat of expulsion, whereas Ottoman subjects held certain trading and residence rights under the capitulations. In 1720, 33 families holding Ottoman nationality were counted in Belgrade. The city's Jews lived in two principal courtyard quarters: the "courtyard of the Ashkenazi Jews", with 47 rooms, and the "Jewish house" of the Sephardim, with 103. David Meir headed the Sephardi congregation and Samson Frenkel the Ashkenazi one.
Under the Belgrade Administration headed by Charles Alexander, Duke of Württemberg, the city was rebuilt and its trade with the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1732 he appointed Joseph Süß Oppenheimer as the administration's financial director. After Oppenheimer's fall and execution the authorities hardened their treatment of the community considerably, restricting its freedom of movement and occupation, imposing special taxes, confiscating property and banning sales to non-Jews; Catholic missionary activity is also documented, and some Jews were compelled to convert.
Decline of Ottoman rule