... I’ve
decided to look at the wider picture, the relationship of the Jewish
people to the former Yugoslavia and to see what can be learned from it ...
We are
fortunate in having a survivor! A most remarkable survivor! A survivor from the Bosnian War, from the
Nazis, - and from anti-Jewish persecution going back to the Inquisition
and the Expulsion from Spain. The
survivor is not a person, but a book. A familiar book which we have
all read in different editions, and re-read from year to year. It is the famous
Sarajevo Haggadah. The Sarajevo Haggadah is a work of art, a masterpiece of
medieval illumination. A copy of it will
cost you about £140 on Amazon. The original is kept under lock and key in Bosnia, access denied to the public. A
facsimile is kept a few hundred yards from here in the Rylands Library in
Deansgate. The Haggadah is handwritten and
illuminated in copper and gold on bleached calfskin.
The Sarajevo
Haggadah reflects the whole story of the Jews in the region – and beyond. It
was not written in Sarajevo but in Spain - possibly Barcelona. Apparently it
was presented as a wedding gift to a couple getting married in Barcelona.
One of its
most famous pages is of a family gathered around the Seder Table, and it is
believed to depict the family that commissioned it. The Haggadah itself says
‘consider yourself as if you yourself had been saved’, and families would take
that literally and include themselves in some way in their book. [You can see wine stains!]
They were clearly well off to have such a
book made for them, and would have lived in one of the more tolerant periods
under Muslim rule in Spain in the mid-14th century. It was during
the convivencia period in Spain, when Jews, Muslims, and Christians all
coexisted. At the end of
the 15th Century they, and
many other families were flung far and wide, (Muslims too). Many Sephardim
arrived in the Balkans, in Bosnia, then ruled by the Ottoman Turks.
They
prospered here, despite some restrictions, living side by side with their
Muslim neighbors, as one of the largest European centres for Sephardi Jewry in
the world. They were generally well-treated and were recognized under the law
as non-Muslims. They were granted autonomy, various rights, could buy real-estate, build synagogues and conduct
trade abroad. Ashkenazim joined them
later. By and large they flourished and grew in prosperity up to the twentieth
century.
But the
Haggadah seems to have found its way there by a roundabout route. From
Spain, it somehow found its way to Venice.
There the book came under the hand of the Church censor. This is known from a hand written inscription
in Italian underneath the final lines of the Hebrew text: “revisto per me”—inspected by me, words of approval which saved the book
from the bonfire.
From Venice, the Haggadah’s whereabouts disappear off
the radar until the end of the 19th century. But it found its way to
Sarajevo. It re-appears in the
possession of a man there called Josef Kohen, who sold it to the Museum in
Sarajevo. When they sent it to Vienna
for assessment and preservation, it was immediately recognized as a great work
of art.
The Haggadah’s modern-day tale of survival
continued. During World War II, the
Bosnian National Museum’s chief librarian and an Islamic scholar, risked his life to ensure the book’s
safety. In 1942, a Nazi General was visiting the Museum making confiscations.
The librarian stuffed the book underneath his shirt. When the Obersturmfuehrer
asked for the famous Haggadah, the director told him that one of his officers
had already been to the museum and asked for it. He said he had of course handed it over
immediately. When the angered commander asked for the officer’s name, he
swiftly replied: “I did not think it was my place to require a name.”
So the Haggadah survived. By 1941, Bosnia-Herzegovina was home
to approximately 14,000 Jews. By the end of World War II, only 4,000 Bosnian
Jews were still alive. Jews were killed both by Nazi Germans and Croats who
assisted in the Jewish extermination.
Sir Martin Gilbert notes that whilst a Muslim SS unit was set up, at the
same time many Muslim saved Jews. So it is not clear cut. There were
deportations, but mainly massacres on the spot, just like Srebrenica 20 years
ago.
The Haggadah spent the remaining war years in a
mountain village, where the friend of the man who saved it was the Imam of a
small mosque. After the war, when many surviving Bosnian Jews came back, it
returned to the museum. But in 1992, the building was almost destroyed by the
Bosnian Serbs aiming to make the city ethnically cleansed. They later burned
the city’s library to the ground. Once again, the museum’s Muslim librarian
secretly stowed the book away, this time in a bank vault . He risked his life
doing so driving through a hail of bullets, with the help of police who thought
he was mad. His name is Imamovic. And what he said about what he did is
important.
He said: “Although Serb nationalists attempted
to separate ethnic identities, most Bosnians — especially those in
Sarajevo — didn’t see themselves as Muslims, Croats and Serbs: but part of a
shared identity.” He said, “The city’s
Jewish heritage is as important to them as any other because it’s what made
Bosnia the rich cultural mix that the nationalists wanted to destroy.” The Haggadah was a
symbol of that.
The book is now kept under shatterproof glass in the
Sarajevo National Museum but is inaccessible. The museum is bankrupt; it closed
its doors in 2012, unable to pay its employees from then till now. The State does not care about the
museum or its contents, but paradoxically won’t give up the book. Bids from America and Israel to buy it have
failed.
And so the book that represents freedom and survival through
exile is inaccessible - a silent, imprisoned witness to enormous tragedy, its
own people’s and the world’s. Its creators illuminated it for
posterity, and unwittingly, gave it to
the world as an inheritance. We have something just as valuable: their
story.
But the
Sarajevo Haggadah is also testimony to a
sad fact: surviving so many threats: expulsion, persecution, war, theft,
it now faces the greatest threat of all – indifference, apathy towards
cultural heritage, in a country where
people of different cultures live parallel lives and struggle for
reconciliation.
That is a threat which we all face, and one
which we do well to confront and overcome.
