JEWISH CITIZENS OF SOCIALIST YUGOSLAVIA: POLITICS OF JEWISH IDENTITY IN A SOCIALIST STATE, 1944-1974 by Emil Kerenji A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (History) in The University of Michigan 2008 Doctoral Committee: Professor Todd M. Endelman, Co-Chair Professor John V. Fine, Jr., Co-Chair Professor Zvi Y. Gitelman Professor Geoffrey H. Eley Associate Professor Brian A. Porter-Szűcs © Emil Kerenji 2008 Acknowledgments I would like to thank all those who supported me in a number of different and creative ways in the long and uncertain process of researching and writing a doctoral dissertation. First of all, I would like to thank John Fine and Todd Endelman, because of whom I came to Michigan in the first place. I thank them for their guidance and friendship. Geoff Eley, Zvi Gitelman, and Brian Porter have challenged me, each in their own ways, to push my thinking in different directions. My intellectual and academic development is equally indebted to my fellow Ph.D. students and friends I made during my life in Ann Arbor. Edin Hajdarpašić, Bhavani Raman, Olivera Jokić, Chandra Bhimull, Tijana Krstić, Natalie Rothman, Lenny Ureña, Marie Cruz, Juan Hernandez, Nita Luci, Ema Grama, Lisa Nichols, Ania Cichopek, Mary O’Reilly, Yasmeen Hanoosh, Frank Cody, Ed Murphy, Anna Mirkova are among them, not in any particular order. Doing research in the Balkans is sometimes a challenge, and many people helped me navigate the process creatively. At the Jewish Historical Museum in Belgrade, I would like to thank Milica Mihailović, Vojislava Radovanović, and Branka Džidić. I would also like to thank professors Dubravka Stojanović and Milan Ristović from the Department of History at Belgrade University. In Zagreb, many thanks go to Elizabeta Serdar and Branka Ujaković at the Croatian School Museum, as well as to my good ii friend Željka Jelavić, a curator at the Ethnographic Museum and a long-time program coordinator at the Center for Women’s Studies, who helped me with contacts in Zagreb. Professor Ivo Goldstein from the Department of History at the University of Zagreb helped as well. In Sarajevo, I would like to thank Husnija Kamberović from the Department of History at the University of Sarajevo, and Bedita Islamović, deputy director of the National and University Library of Bosnia and Hercegovina, who instructed librarians to break well-established rules and allow me to order more than three items a day. Of course, navigating the academic landscape in Sarajevo would have been unthinkable without the help of my friend Edin Hajdarpašić. Warm thanks are due also to Misha Mitsel, Sherry Hyman, and Shelley Helfand at the Archives of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in New York, as well as to Zvi Locker, the curator of the Eventov collection of the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People in Jerusalem. His brusque remark during my research visit in Jerusalem, coming from an old Zionist from Novi Sad who settled in Palestine in 1934, provides the best nonacademic summary of my dissertation: once Yugoslav Jews were pioneers, today they are emigrants. For better or worse, I would not be who I am today without Nevena Ivanović, Orli Fridman, Leonid Oknyansky, Edin Hajdarpašić, Valerija Barada, and Daniel Kerenji. I thank them each for all they have given me. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ii List of Figures vi Abstract vii Chapter I. Introduction 1 Jewish and Non-Jewish European Histories 2 The Holocaust, Memory, and Identity 9 Yugoslavia and Yugoslav Jews 12 Chapter Outlines 19 II. Jews in the South Slav Lands in the Nineteenth Century 23 Jewish Communities in the Ottoman Realm 29 Jewish Communities in the Habsburg Realm 42 Conclusion 45 III. Serbo-Croatian Zionist Press and the Emergence of Yugoslav 47 Jewry, 1896-1941 Jewish Academic Societies and the Origins of South Slav 48 Zionism Židovska smotra: The First Zionist Newspaper in Serbo- 65 Croatian Židov: Zionism becomes Yugoslav 80 Conclusion 95 IV. World War II and the Holocaust in Yugoslavia: Related Histories 96 and Foundational Narratives World War II in Yugoslavia: Narodnooslobodilačka borba and 100 bratstvo-jedinstvo The Ambiguities of bratstvo-jedinstvo 106 V. The Autonomous Relief Committee, the Politics of American Jewish 121 Humanitarian Aid, and the Emergence of the Federation of Jewish Communities, 1945-1950 Prospects for Jewish Life in Yugoslavia after the Liberation 124 The Autonomous Relief Committee (ARC) and the Politics of 134 Jewish Aid Centralization Through Aid Distribution and the Emergence 165 of the Federation of Jewish Communities Conclusion 176 iv VI. From Victimhood to Citizenship: The 1952 Monuments to “Jewish 179 Victims of Fascism” as a Path to Socialist Yugoslavism and New Jewishness Holocaust Awareness in Yugoslavia and the Eichmann Trial 185 Early Yugoslav Jewish Discussions of Memorialization of Jewish 201 Victims 1952: The Five Monuments 205 VII. The Last Generation? Jewish Youth Journal, the Summer Camp, 237 and the boundaries of Yugoslav Jewishness Anxieties About the “Last Generation” and Critiques of Cultural 242 Work Kadima 246 Summer Youth Camp, Club Visits, and Maccabi Games 270 Conclusion 281 VIII. Conclusion 283 Bibliography 292 v List of Figures Figure 5.1. Frederick White (center) and Albert Vajs (right) meeting with Tito, 1950. 178 6.1. The monument in Belgrade, circa 1952. 223 6.2. The monument in Belgrade today. 224 6.3. The monument in Belgrade, detail. 225 6.4. The monument in Belgrade, detail. 226 6.5. The monument in Belgrade, detail. 227 6.6. The monument in Zagreb, circa 1952. 228 6.7. The monument in Zagreb today. 229 6.8. The monument in Zagreb, detail. 230 6.9. The monument in Sarajevo. 231 6.10. The monument in Sarajevo, detail. 232 6.11. The monument in Sarajevo, detail. 233 6.12. The monument in Sarajevo today, damaged by shrapnel. 234 6.13. The ceremony in Sarajevo, September 1952. 235 6.14. The ceremony in Zagreb, August 1952. 236 vi ABSTRACT JEWISH CITIZENS OF SOCIALIST YUGOSLAVIA: POLITICS OF JEWISH IDENTITY IN A SOCIALIST STATE, 1944-1974 by Emil Kerenji Co-Chairs: Todd M. Endelman and John V. Fine, Jr. This study investigates the process of Jewish communal rebuilding in Yugoslavia after the Holocaust. Focusing on the activities of the central Jewish organization in the period, the Federation of Jewish Communities, it explores linkages between Jewish identity, politics, social memory, and ideology in the context of a multiethnic socialist state. It tells the story of the Jewish rebuilding efforts in the post-Holocaust era in Yugoslavia in order to show how commemorative practices and processes of identification emerge, position themselves in, and are shaped by a matrix of conflicting state and non-state political projects. Taking advantage of the political climate in postwar Yugoslavia, the leadership of the central Jewish organization situated its rebuilding efforts within a wider narrative of Yugoslav reconstruction spearheaded by the Communist government. From rebuilding communal infrastructure to dedicating monuments to Jewish victims of the Holocaust, the leaders of the Federation of Jewish Communities pushed through a rebuilding agenda that was a part of a wider Yugoslav narrative, and that defined Jewishness as an identity vii firmly rooted in the new Yugoslav political project. By focusing on several micro-level debates about the boundaries of Jewishness in Yugoslavia, the dissertation shows how patterns of Jewish identification formed within the discursive framework provided by the new Yugoslav socialist ideology. This dissertation aims to contribute to the integration of seemingly separate “Jewish” and “non-Jewish” histories, provide insights into the processes of creation of space for Jewish identification in socialism and the forging of diverse Jewish identities after the Holocaust, as well as into the politics of memory and the competing narratives of victimhood in postwar Europe and their consequences for different politics of nationhood. viii Chapter I Introduction To choose as one’s dissertation topic the history of a Jewish population decimated by the Holocaust and further diminished by emigration in the aftermath of the infamous and well-televised disintegration of the very country whose citizenship they chose to embrace seems at first glance like a foolish enterprise. Indeed, presenting a paper focusing on Jewish history in Yugoslavia at a major American academic conference is likely to raise eyebrows and invite the well known “so what” question that young academics entering the job market fear most: why is the history of the Jews of Yugoslavia or any of its aspects relevant for us today? This dissertation shows how focusing on several specific aspects of post-Holocaust Jewish history and politics in socialist Yugoslavia can serve as a starting point for addressing broader questions about post-Holocaust Jewish diaspora identity, memory and commemoration of the Holocaust, and relations of ethnic and national minorities in Central and Eastern Europe with the state in the postwar period. By taking as its center of attention the small, but socially and politically prominent group of Yugoslav Jews in the period of socialist Yugoslavia from the liberation of Belgrade in 1944 until the passing of the 1974 constitution, the dissertation seeks to fine-tune key analytical concepts, such as identity and memory, that have framed our understanding of historical developments in Jewish history in the European