How King Peter honored the Jewish people

Jews are mentioned in Belgrade back in the 10th century. Kordopa caliphs, Khazarian khagans, merchants from Ancona, Dubrovnik and Venice testify to this in writings and correspondence, as well as the remains of demolished synagogues on the Sava and Danube sides of the city.

During the time of the Principality and Kingdom of Serbia, Belgrade Jews gained full affirmation as an ethnic and religious community. There are numerous Jewish names among Serbian heroes from the First and Second World Wars, as well as on monuments and commemorative plaques in the oldest gymnasiums in Belgrade. Even today, the names of dozens of streets, schools and other institutions remind us of the closeness of these two peoples. They were engaged in crafts, trade, banking and had money exchange offices. At the same time, they were very loyal to their tradition, culture and completely devoted to their family and nurturing the cult of ancestors. Very soon their political rights were equalized with the Serbs - in the second half of the 19th century they called themselves "Serbs of the faith of Mosji", and some families added the suffix to their surnames -go where –Ovic and thus they Serbianized them.

They recognized the Serbian state idea as a European one, they realized that the Serbs had taken long steps towards a modern state institution and helped the development of Serbian society and the building of institutions, they connected Serbia with the world, and, among other things, they endowed Belgrade with shops, the first department stores, craft workshops of all professions, magnificent buildings on Dorćol, Zerek and in the innermost city center, the appearance of the streets themselves, which resembled the streets of major European cities, giving the city had the spirit of a metropolis and long before it reached the number of fifty-sixty, later one hundred thousand inhabitants.

In the second half of the 19th century, there were Jews among people's deputies, among ministers, among officers of the Serbian army, among doctors, lawyers, and above all among civil officials - in many respects it could be said that Jews even, among other things, "taught Serbs to live in the city". They greatly helped the Serbs to create an independent and modern state, included in world trends, with the support of the entire known world. From the Jews, the Serbs could learn systematicity and long-term planning, all in exceptional harmony with two things: the demands of the modern world and deep historical awareness. At the base of Jewish life is a system - a relationship to one's own identity and holy places - society, work and reward for work, school and God, which does not change regardless of the climate in which they live.

Among the Jews, already in the family everyone knew their place, role, duties and tasks. Historical awareness was fostered in the family through the reading of the Torah (the books of Moses) and the relationship to God, which had to be sincere and deep, not just at the level of choreography and empty words. The family talked about the coordinate system of history and the role of each individual in that system. Then followed the respect for the school and teachers, for the social hierarchy and the goals of the school, the ethical model of the future citizen that did not change was known, and it was known how today's children will teach their children, and she will teach her children, at the level of the highest system. Through a family with a strong father figure and a school with a strong teacher figure who was considered an inviolable personality, he acquired a permanent awareness of the hierarchy that a grown and educated man must respect in order to be a gentleman.

At the end of the 19th century, the Sephardim, the so-called Spanish Jews, were joined by the Ashkenazis, the German Jews. At that time, there were several religious schools and smaller temples in Belgrade, but not a single worthy synagogue. That is why the question was asked where to build it, whether on the Danube bank where the Sephardim lived or in the center of the city inhabited by the Ashkenazis, but also whose should it be - Sephardic or Ashkenazi. The Sephardim prevailed, and it was decided that its location would be in Cara Uroš Street, between the parts where they lived, so that it would serve both. It was, as Jewish sources remember, the fifth synagogue in Belgrade since the Jews first entered that city.

And in May 1907, Karađorđe's grandson King Petar I, it was written in the newspaper, did the highest kindness of a European ruler to his Jewish subjects in their thousand-year history: he laid the foundation stone for a new synagogue "to his brothers, the Serbian Moisijevci" in Tsar Uroš Street.

According to the Jewish "Vesnik", the people greeted him tumultuously, and David Alkalaj, the vice president of the Jewish Municipality, emphasized in his speech that the Karađorđević dynasty "never made any differences between the sons of this country, regardless of their religion". There was also a representative of the rabbi and several ministers, and King Peter I, expressing his hope that he would see the completion of the construction, expressed his gratitude for the invitation and told the representatives of the Jewish community to hurry up and call him when the consecration takes place!

And indeed, the very next year, on the evening of September 17, after the pompous daily festivities that followed the event, King Peter found himself in front of the entrance to the new synagogue of Bet Yisrael, accompanied to it by the music of the 6th Regiment and welcomed by the Jewish clergy with the representative of Rabbi Haiham Teatomi at the head. "Standing on the ativa, greeted tumultuously by the world that filled the synagogue, the king removed the ribbon placed in front of the ativa and thus symbolically opened the synagogue." After his departure, the first service was held, after which the public rejoicing continued until late at night.

After the First World War, during the time of Peter's successor, King Alexander I Karađorđević, when Belgrade grew into the capital of the Yugoslav state (Kingdom of SHS), on June 15, 1924, "on Sunday", as Jewish newspapers accurately record, the foundation stone for the Ashkenazi synagogue Sukat Shalom ("Hut of Peace") was laid under Obilić's Wreath, in Sremska Street. Then Alexander and Queen Maria signed a bilingual "Hebrew-Serbian charter" with Rabbi Ignat Šlang and laid the foundations of this sixth Belgrade synagogue, this time "in the temple of the Ashkenazi rite". Exactly two years later, the royal couple attended the ceremonial consecration of this synagogue.

The high degree of emancipation and integration with the Serbian environment in Belgrade that the Jews had in the restored Serbian state was canceled on the same day when, on April 12, 1941, before the capitulation of the Yugoslav Army, German troops entered the capital, which was still smoky, full of burns and ruins after the bombing on April 6, and began looting Jewish shops. The following mornings, the city awoke with posters inviting the Jewish community to register with the City Administration. When the first executions began after they were taken to the camps, it became clear that the leaders of fascist Germany had already decided how the "Jewish question" in Europe would be solved - by complete extermination. Belgrade, the only occupied city with three concentration camps, was the first to open graves. The luxurious Ashkeka synagogue Sukat Shalom, with its many rooms, classrooms and apartments for teachers, was desecrated and turned into a public house, "very prestigious" for German officers and soldiers, and the Sephardic synagogue was first turned into a warehouse for Jewish clothes and belongings, and then weapons and explosives.

Already in the first year of occupation, Belgrade lost almost 10.000 of its inhabitants, which is five-sixths of all who lived there. Along with flames and explosions, during the retreat of the German army in 1944, the walls of the Bet Yisrael synagogue were blown up, and the Sukat Shalom synagogue miraculously survived the war and after the Holocaust serves as the only synagogue in the city and in the whole of Sumadia.

Jews in Serbia participated in both Balkan wars as well as in the First and Second World Wars, and many became war heroes. The monuments at the Jewish cemetery in Rooseveltova in Belgrade bear witness to their military participation and loyalty to Serbia, which they considered their country, because at that time the state of Israel had not yet been formed. At the entrance of the Jewish cemetery is the Sumbul - a monument to the Jews who perished in the Serbian wars of 1912-1918, on the top of which is dominated by a two-headed eagle with spread wings with a Star of David in the middle of the column and a soldier's cap with a shajka, a rifle and a saber at the base. A persecuted people in the circle of world history, a people with a long memory, witnessed that the target of evil this time was Serbia, where he found the warmth of his country, and he decided to deal with the old enemy in a new guise, under the sajkach. And the Jewish cemetery in Belgrade, on Palilula, and individual monuments to heroes, of whom as many as 37 died among the 1.300 corporals in the Battle of Kolubara. The rest is history.

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