History of the Jews in Serbia
The history of the Jews in Serbia is some two thousand years old. The Jews first arrived in the region during Roman times. The Jewish communities of the Balkans remained small until the late 15th century, when Jews fleeing the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions found refuge in the Ottoman-ruled areas, including Serbia.
A plaque dedicated to the Jews of Subotica murdered in the Holocaust says: "In memory of the 4000 Jews with whom we lived and built Subotica together who perished in fascist death camps in World War II." | |
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 787 (2011 census) | |
| Languages | |
| Serbian, Hebrew, Ladino, and Yiddish | |
| Religion | |
| Judaism | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Sephardi Jews, Ashkenazi Jews, Montenegrin Jews |
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The community flourished and reached a peak of 33,000, of whom almost 90% were living in Belgrade and Vojvodina, before World War II. About two-thirds of Serbian Jews were murdered in The Holocaust, having been particularly targeted as Hitler sought to punish both ethnic Serbs and Jews for German defeat in World War I. After the war, most of the remaining Jewish Serbian population emigrated, chiefly to Israel.
In the 2011 census only 787 people declared themselves as Jewish. The Belgrade Synagogue continues to function as a synagogue. The renovated Subotica Synagogue, once the fourth largest synagogue building in Europe, is now mainly a cultural space, but is available for services and other religious purposes. The Novi Sad Synagogue has been converted into a cultural art space.