Serbian Jews - Jews in Vojvodina

Jews in Vojvodina

While the rest of Serbia was still ruled by the Ottoman Empire, Vojvodina, now an autonomous province within Serbia, was ruled by the Habsburg Monarchy from the end of the 17th century. Vojvodina too had previously been ruled by the Ottoman Empire, and it was under Ottoman rule that the first Jews settled in the region.

In 1782, Emperor Joseph II issued the Edict of Tolerance, giving Jews some measure of religious freedom. The Edict attracted Jews to many parts of the Habsburg Monarchy, including Vojvodina. The Jewish communities of Vojvodina flourished, and by the end of the 19th Century the region had nearly 40 Jewish communities.

The 1931 census counted 21,000 Jews in the province. The Jewish communities of Vojvodina, as in the rest of Serbia, were largely destroyed in the Holocaust, particularly in Banat, which was under direct German occupation, and in Bačka, which was under Hungarian occupation.

In 1942 raid, the Hungarian troops killed many Jewish and Serb civilians in Bačka. In 2006, Dr. Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center charged Dr. Sándor Képíró with participating in the massacre on the evidence of his conviction in the trials of 1944 and 1946. Képíró, however, stated that as a police officer, his participation was limited merely to arresting civilians, and he did not take part in the executions or any other illegal activity. War crimes charges were subsequently brought against Képíró in a federal court in Budapest, for murders of civilians committed under his command during the January 1942 raids. His trial on those charges commenced in May 2011. Képíró has twice previously been found guilty: once by the pre-Nazi Hungarian courts, and again after the war, in 1946. By then he allegedly had fled to Argentina, but returned to Budapest in 1996.

The synagogue in Zrenjanin was demolished during war, while the synagogues in Pančevo and Kikinda were demolished after war because there were only a few Jews remaining there.

Presently, 329 Jews – almost half of Serbian Jewry – live in Vojvodina, most in Novi Sad, Subotica, Pančevo, Zrenjanin and Sombor.