Welcome to the 21st issue of Teaching the Legacy. This edition focuses on the Sephardic Jews of Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Greece, and their unique experience before, during, and after the Holocaust. The e-newsletter includes a main article on this theme and an interview with Davor Bakovic, whose mother was saved by a Muslim man in Bosnia and later helped the Righteous' daughter who needed refuge during war in the 1990s. There is also a featured artifact from the Yad Vashem collection as well as new publications, book reviews, and updates on recent and upcoming activities at the International School for Holocaust Studies and across Yad Vashem. We hope you find this issue interesting and resourceful and we look forward to your feedback.
Sephardic Jews in Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Greece
IntroductionThe Holocaust is described as the destruction of European Jewry. What is often not discussed is the devastation of Sephardic Jews who mainly lived in the area of the Balkans, including Greece, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria. These Jews, who can be traced back to their ancestors in Spain before the Jewish expulsion in 1492, lived happily in southeastern Europe for centuries, with their own cultures and traditions. Jews in each country had very different experiences during the Holocaust, and while this newsletter will not be able to address every angle, it will bring to light...
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Interview with Davor Bakovic, Son of Yugoslav Partisan and Second-Generation Link to Muslim Righteous Among the Nations
For this issue of our quarterly e-newsletter, we interviewed Davor Bakovic who has provided us with two special aspects of the Balkan arena in the Holocaust and its aftermath. His mother, Mira, was saved during the Holocaust by a Righteous Gentile in Bosnia and shortly after she passed away in 1998, some fifty years later, there was an unexpected development involving the children of the savior and the saved.The interview thus highlights aspects of the Jewish tragedy in the Balkans during the Holocaust, growing up in communist Yugoslavia after the war and concludes with a surprising encounter between...
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A Brit Milah (Circumcision Ceremony) Kit from a Greek Jew
The community of Zakynthos is the only Greek Jewish community that was saved from annihilation in its entirety. Moshe Matza, who worked as a mohel and a hazzan (cantor) in his community and in other Greek Jewish communities, continued to perform circumcisions despite the inherent danger because he felt he had a responsibility to Jews in the area.
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