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Jewish Historical Museum, Belgrade

Jewish museum in Belgrade, Serbia

Jewish Historical Museum

Јеврејски историјски музеј המוזיאון להיסטוריה יהודית בבלגרד
Jewish Historical Museum Building
Established	1948; 76 years ago (1948)
Location	Stari Grad, Belgrade, Serbia
Coordinates	44°49′17″N 20°27′25″E / 44.8213°N 20.4569°E / 44.8213; 20.4569
Type	Jewish museum
Director	Vojislava Radovanović
Owner	Federation of Jewish Communities of Serbia

The Jewish Historical Museum (Serbian: Јеврејски историјски музеј / Jevrejski istorijski muzej, Hebrew: המוזיאון להיסטוריה יהודית בבלגרד; abbr. JHM) is a museum located to the southeast of Kalemegdan, Stari Grad, Belgrade. Founded in 1948, it is the only Jewish museum in Serbia.^[1] The museum is situated in a building constructed in 1928 for the Sefardic community.^[2] The museum's collection is comprehensive and also complex in its content, with exhibits arranged thematically.

It focuses on Belgradian Jews from the 2nd century until World War II,^[3] encompassing the lives of Jews who lived in Serbia and Yugoslavia.^[4] There is a predominance of memorial displays ^[5] as well as a large collection of documents and photographs which attest to the Holocaust in which many Jewish families were totally decimated.

The museum is located in a building designed by Samuel Sumbul in 1928 for the Jewish Sephardic community; an inscription near the top of the building states: "The Home of the Jewish Religious-School Community".^[6] The Jewish Historical Museum was founded in 1948.^[6] The Federation of Jewish Communities had the intention to establish a museum to cover some 2,000 years of history from the earliest history of Belgrade.^[7]

In 2005, the museum donated a thematic collection to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum International Archives Project Division. It contained documents regarding "arrests and persecutions of, and reprisals against, Jews, members of antifascist movements, communists, and the general population" as well as documents regarding concentration camps in the former Yugoslavia.^[8]

Unlike the Jewish museum in Sarajevo, which is administered by the city, the Belgrade museum falls under the auspices of the Federation of Jewish Communities.^[9] Milica Mihajlović, daughter of General Herbert Kraus, Minister of Health,^[10] served as curator (1964–90) and director (1990–06) before retiring in 2007.^[11] The current director is Vojislava Radovanović.

A rich collection of items, documents and photographs on the history of the Jews in Yugoslavia is in the possession of the museum.^[12] There are 1,000 ethnological items including books and historical and Holocaust collections, as well as paintings and drawings.^[1] The museum has documents related to the Zemun Jews.^[13] The archives in the museum also contain several of the annotated documents related to the sufferings of the Jews of Yugoslavia written by Jasa Almuli, former president of the Belgrade Jewish Community.^[14] The museum's embroidery and costume collection was displayed in 1978 in London at the International Centenary Conference of the Folklore Society.^[15] In September 2013, a new exhibition opened called "Synagogical Ritual Items", containing deported items which were never displayed previously.^[1] In addition to the museum, the building houses a children's theater, the Jewish Community Belgrade (second floor), and the Federation of Jewish Communities of Serbia (third floor).^[6]

The Jewish Historical Museum has published numerous books including "Studije i gradja o Jevrejima Dubrovnika" which contains studies and documents related to Jews who lived in Dubrovnik.^[16] Since the 1960s, the museum has published a historical magazine, Zbornik.^[17]

• History of the Jews in Serbia

Bibliography

• Albahari, David (28 April 2011). Leeches. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-547-54908-8.
• American Folklore Society (1978). Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Newsletter. Vol. 2. Simon Bronner. IND:30000116752837.
• Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, University of California, Los Angeles. Viator. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-02392-5.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Cohen, Richard I. (2012). Visualizing and exhibiting Jewish space and history. Institute by Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-993424-9.
• Gordiejew, Paul Benjamin (1999). Voices of Yugoslav Jewry. SUNY Press. ISBN 978-0-7914-4022-3.
• Kerenji, Emil (2008). Jewish Citizens of Socialist Yugoslavia: Politics of Jewish Identity in a Socialist State, 1944--1974. ISBN 978-0-549-81639-3.
• Palavestra, Predrag; Abroad, Association of Serbian Writers; centar, Srpski P.E.N. (2003). Jewish writers in Serbian literature. ASWA. ISBN 978-0-9541777-3-7.
• Radovanovic, Vojislava (2010). "The Jewish Historical Museum In Belgrade" (PDF). The Federation of Jewish Communities of Serbia. Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 February 2014. Retrieved 8 October 2013.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Jewish Historical Museum in Belgrade.

• Official website