History of the Jews in Slovenia

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The history of the Jews in Slovenia and areas connected with it goes back to the times of Ancient Rome. In 2011, the small Slovenian Jewish community (Slovene: Judovska skupnost Slovenije) was estimated at 500 to 1,000 members, of whom around 130 are officially registered, ^[1] most of whom live in the capital, Ljubljana.

History of the community

Ancient community

The ancient Jewish community of

The first synagogue in Ljubljana was mentioned in 1213. Issued with a Privilegium, Jews were able to settle an area of Ljubljana located on the left bank of the Ljubljanica River. The streets Židovska ulica (Jewish Street) and Židovska steza (Jewish Lane), which now occupy the area, are still reminiscent of that period.

The expulsion of the Jews

The wealth of the Jews bred resentment among the Inner Austrian nobility and the burghers, with many refusing to repay Jewish money-lenders, and local merchants considered Jews to be competitors. The antisemitism of the Catholic Church also played an important role in creating animosity against the Jews,^[6] In 1494 and 1495 the assemblies of Styria and Carinthia offered Austrian Emperor Maximilian a bounty for the expulsion of the Jews from both provinces.

Maximilian granted their request, citing as reasons for the expulsion the Jewish pollution of the Christian sacrament, the ritual killings of Christian children, and the defrauding of debtors.^[6] The expulsions started immediately, with the last Jews expelled by 1718.^{[7][dubious – discuss]} The Jews were expelled from Maribor in 1496.^[8] Following separate demands by the citizens of Ljubljana for the expulsion of the Jews, Jews were expelled from Ljubljana in 1515.^[9] After the expulsion of the Jewish community, the Maribor Synagogue was turned into a church.^[8]

The modern era

In 1709, the

According to the census of 1910, only 146 Jews lived in the territory of present-day Slovenia, excluding the Prekmurje region.^[7] Yet despite this, as elsewhere in Austria-Hungary, antisemitism started to intensify also in Slovenia, from the mid-19th century onward. propagated by prominent Slovene Catholic leaders, such as Bishop Anton Mahnič and Janez Evangelist Krek. The former called for a war against Judaism and the latter sought to persuade believers that the Jews were transmitters of the most harmful influences.^[10]

In 1918, in the chaotic transition between Austria-Hungary and the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, riots broke out against Jews and Hungarians in many places in Prekmurje.^[11] Soldiers returning from the front and locals looted Jewish and Hungarian shops. On November 4, 1918, in Beltinci, locals looted Jewish homes and shops, tortured Jews, and set fire to the synagogue.^[11] After the pogrom, the once powerful Beltinci Orthodox Jewish community, numbering 150 in the mid-19th century, disappeared. In 1937 the local authorities demolished the Beltinci synagogue^[12]

Rampant

According to the 1931 census, there were about 900 Jews in the Drava Banovina, mostly concentrated in Prekmurje, which was part of the Kingdom of Hungary prior to 1919. This was the reason why in the mid-1930s Murska Sobota became the seat of the Jewish Community of Slovenia. During that period, the Jewish population was reinvigorated by many immigrants fleeing from neighbouring Austria and Nazi Germany to a more tolerant Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

Nevertheless, in the prewar period the Slovene Roman Catholic Church and its affiliated largest political party, the Slovenian People's Party, engaged in antisemitism,^[13] with Catholic papers writing about "Jews" as "a disaster for our countryside", "Jews" as "fraudsters" and "traitors to Christ", while the main Slovene Catholic daily, Slovenec, informed local Jews that their "road out of Yugoslavia ... was open". and that from Slovenia "we export such goods [I.e. Jews] without compensation".^[10] While interior minister in the Yugoslav government, the leading Slovene politician and former Catholic priest, Anton Korošec, declared "all Jews, Communists, and Freemasons as traitors, conspirators, and enemies of the State".^[14] Then in 1940 Korošec introduced two antisemitic laws in Yugoslavia, to ban Jews from the food industry and restrict the number of Jewish students in high schools and universities^[10] Slovene Jews were severely affected, as Sharika Horvat noted in her testimony for the Shoah Foundation, "everything fell apart .... under the Korošec government."^[10]

According to official Yugoslav data, the number of self-declared Jews (according to religion, not to ancestry) in Yugoslav Slovenia rose to 1,533 by 1939. In that year, there were 288 declared Jews in Maribor, 273 in Ljubljana, 270 in Murska Sobota, 210 in Lendava and 66 in Celje. The other 400 Jews lived scattered around the country, with a quarter of them living in the Prekmurje region. Prior to World War Two, there were two active synagogues in Slovenia, one in Murska Sobota and one in Lendava. The overall number of Jews prior to the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941 is estimated to have been around 2,500, including baptised Jews and refugees from Austria and Germany.

The Holocaust

The Jewish community, very small even before

In Ljubljana, 32 Jews were able to hide until September 1944, when they were betrayed and arrested in raids by the collaborationist Slovene Home Guard police and handed over to the Nazis, who then sent them to Auschwitz, where most were exterminated. The Slovene Home Guard greatly intensified the antisemitism already present in prewar Slovene Catholic circles, engaging in vicious antisemitic propaganda. Thus the Slovene Home Guard leader, Leon Rupnik, attacked Jews in virtually all his public speeches,^[15] In 1944, the Home Guard newspaper wrote: "Judaism wants to enslave the whole world. It can enslave it if it also economically destroys all the nations. That is why it drove nations into war to destroy themselves and thereby benefit the Jews. Communism is the most loyal executor of Jewish orders, along with liberal democracy. Both ideas were created by Jews for non-Jewish peoples. The Slovenian nation also wants to bring Judaism to its knees, along with its moral decay and impoverishment."^[16] The influential Catholic priest, Lambert Ehrlich, who advocated collaboration with the Italian Fascist authorities, campaigned against "Jewish Satanism," which he maintained was trying to get its hands on other peoples’ national treasures.^{[citation needed]}

The Jews of

Some Slovene Jews managed to save themselves by joining the partisans. Unlike the Polish resistance, which did not allow Jews in their ranks,^[citation needed] the Yugoslav partisans welcomed Jews. 3,254 Jews in former Yugoslavia survived by joining the partisans, more than one-fifth of all survivors. After the war 10 Jewish partisans were named Yugoslav national heroes.^[18] For assisting Jews during the Holocaust, 15 Slovenes have been named Righteous Among the Nations, by Yad Vashem.

Post-war community

Under

In Ljubljana, Jewish properties were confiscated as "enemy property" by the City Confiscation Committee (Slovene: Mestna zaplembena komisija) and turned over to the communist elite.^[20] These properties included the Ebenspanger Mansion (used by Boris Kidrič), the Mergenthaler Mansion (used by the OZNA, or secret police), and the Pollak mansion (used by Edvard Kocbek).^[20] In addition, the Moskovič mansion was sold under questionable circumstances and is now used by the Social Democrats,^[20][21] the successor of the Communist Party of Slovenia.^[22]

The Judovska občina v Ljubljani (Jewish Community of Ljubljana) was officially reformed following World War II. Its first president was Artur Kon, followed by Aleksandar Švarc, and by Roza Fertig-Švarc in 1988. In 1969, it numbered only 84 members and its membership was declining due to emigration and age.

In the 1960s and 1970s, there was a revival of Jewish themes in

Occasional antisemitic incidents still occur, such as the defacing of the Maribor Synagogue with graffiti saying Juden Raus 'Out with the Jews',^[31] while others have warned against Holocaust denial and antisemitic pronouncements by Slovene right-wingers.^[32]

The only functioning Synagogue in Slovenia has been in the Jewish Cultural Center at Križevniška 3 in Ljubljana since 2016, where the sefer torah of the Slovene Jewish community is located. Rituals are occasional for Sabbaths and for major Jewish holidays.

In 2021, a new Synagogue was opened in Ljubljana, which is also the first synagogue that is not managed by the municipality, but directly by the Jewish community.^[33]

Notable Jews from Slovenia

• Israel Isserlin
  , Medieval rabbi from Maribor
• Kohn, President of Jewish community of Slovenia
• Dr Aleksandar Švarc (Solomon Schwarz), President of the Jewish community of Slovenia
• Dr Rosa Fertig-Švarc, President of the Jewish community of Slovenia
• Mladen A. Švarc, Official Secretary and President of the Jewish community of Slovenia
• Paul Parin, psychoanalyst

See also

• Carlo Michelstaedter
• Graziadio Isaia Ascoli
• History of the Jews in Trieste
• Jewish Cultural Center (Ljubljana)
• Synagogue Ljubljana
• History of the Jews in Yugoslavia

Notes and references

• Jewish Virtual Library – Slovenia, Stephanie Persin
• Jewish Monuments in Slovenia
• Excerpts from Jews in Yugoslavia – Part I
• Demographic Overview, Jewish Community of Slovenia

External links

• (in English and Slovene) Jewish Community of Slovenia