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The author provides an overview of Jewish history in the former Yugoslavia, with an emphasis on the lives and activities of women. Until the Holocaust, the diverse Jewish community prospered and Jewish women's organizations multiplied and grew. Jewish women were active in organizing and providing aid, in supplies and medical work, in every Balkan war. After the decimation of the Holocaust, only a fraction of the community remained. Yugoslavia enjoyed relative freedom of movement and freedom of religion under communism, however, and eventually some women's organizations were rebuilt and were able to continue their benevolent work throughout the modern conflicts, even at the high point of violence in Sarajevo. Each of the new countries continues to have its own women's organizations, even in smaller communities like Split, where the Jewish population is only 120.

A Survey of Jewish Museums in Europe

Author(s): Sion, Brigitte

Date: 2016

Topics: Jewish Museums, Main Topic: Culture and Heritage

Abstract: The goals of the Foundation in conducting this survey were manifold:
we aimed to generate a comprehensive picture of the Jewish museum
landscape across Europe, and to identify the most pressing issues,
challenges and needs faced by these institutions. We wanted to learn about
the mission, philosophy and methodology of Jewish museums, and better
understand their role and position in the cultural and educational realm at
large. We were also interested in the level of professionalization of Jewish
museums, both in staff training, collection preservation and cataloguing,
management, and the ways in which Jewish museums communicate and
arrange partnerships with one another. With a better understanding of
these issues, we want now to assess the resources needed and the funding
priorities for the next five to ten years.

The questionnaire was sent to 120 institutions in 34 countries and we
received 64 completed forms from 30 countries. The questions addressed
eleven broad topics: organisation, collections, permanent and temporary
exhibitions, facility, visitor services, public programmes, visitor
demographics, marketing and PR, finances, future plans and needs.

This diverse sample enabled us to get, for the first time, a quasicomprehensive
picture of the Jewish museum landscape in Europe, from
small community museums to landmarks of “starchitecture;” from
institutions boasting thousands of rare objects to others mostly text
panels- or technology-based; from museums employing scores of
professional staff and interns to synagogues-turned-exhibition halls run by
volunteers for a few hours a month. That was precisely the challenge: the
large and numerous discrepancies between institutions, depending on their
location, their financial and human resources, their political and economic
context, the type of visitors they receive, and other contextual
considerations.

The results point to four major findings:
1. Transition from museums to multi-purpose hubs;
2. Lack of collaboration and partnerships;
3. Tension between particularistic and universalistic missions;
4. Increasing need to serve a diverse audience.

Whose Jews? Whose Bosnia? Whose Europe?

Author(s): Markowitz, Fran

Date: 2012

Topics: Nationalism, Ethnicity, Conflict, Main Topic: Identity and Community

Abstract: Bosnia-Herzegovina’s governance depends on a constitution that was drafted in Dayton, Ohio. It designates the Bosniacs, Croats and Serbs (along with Others) the country’s constituent peoples. Although Jews have been residents of Bosnia-Herzegovina for 500 years, with the country’s new constitution they have disappeared from official records into the residual category of Others. This article considers how, nonetheless, the Jews of Sarajevo persist as an active community and a named group even as its identity is being defined by others. The interrelated questions, “Whose Jews? Whose Bosnia? Whose Europe?” have no neat, finite answers while Jews-as-Others and Bosnia as an ethnically divided and overdetermined, EU-supervised country remain precariously perched on unsettled and unsettling configurations of rights and power.

The Jewish Dimension of the Yugoslav Crisis

Author(s): Golub, Jennifer L.

Date: 1992

Topics: Main Topic: Other, Conflict

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