JEWISH HERITAGE SITES IN CROATIA PRELIMINARY REPORT United States Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad 2005 UNITED STATES COMMISSION FOR THE PRESERVATION OF AMERICA’S HERITAGE ABROAD Warren L. Miller, Chairman McLean, VA Members: Ned Bandler August B. Pust Bridgewater, CT Euclid, OH Chaskel Besser Menno Ratzker New York, NY Monsey, NY Amy S. Epstein Harriet Rotter Pinellas Park, FL Bingham Farms, MI Edgar Gluck Lee Seeman Brooklyn, NY Great Neck, NY Phyllis Kaminsky Steven E. Some Potomac, MD Princeton, NJ Zvi Kestenbaum Irving Stolberg Brooklyn, NY New Haven, CT Daniel Lapin Ari Storch Mercer Island, WA Potomac, MD Gary J. Lavine Fayetteville, NY Staff: Michael B. Levy Jeffrey L. Farrow Washington, DC Executive Director Rachmiel Liberman Samuel D. Gruber Brookline, MA Research Director Laura Raybin Miller Katrina A. Krzysztofiak Hollywood, FL Program Manager Vincent Obsitnik Peachtree City, VA 888 17th Street, N.W., Suite 1160 Washington, DC 20006 Ph: (202) 254-3824 Fax: (202) 254-3934 E-mail:
[email protected] October 10, 2005 Message from the Chairman One of the principal missions that United States law assigns the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad is to identify and report on cemeteries, monuments, and historic buildings in Central and Eastern Europe associated with the cultural heritage of U.S. citizens, especially endangered sites. The Congress and the President were prompted to establish the Commission because of the special problem faced by Jewish sites in the region: The communities that had once cared for the properties were annihilated during the Holocaust. The atheistic Communist Party dictatorships that succeeded the Nazis throughout most of the region were insensitive to American Jewish concerns about the preservation of the sites.