Ivan Ceresnjes - Biography

Biography

Ceresnjes was born in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia (today Bosnia and Herzegovina). He received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the Arhitektonsko - Urbanisticki Fakultet (Faculty of Urban Architecture) in the University of Sarajevo and afterwards worked as a practicing architect-designer, project manager, and manager of the building department, with responsibility for approximately 500,000 square meters of buildings in the Sarajevo area. His work included designing, building, restoration and conservation of sacred buildings of various religious denominations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, such as churches and mosques.

A significant part of his professional activity was devoted to Jewish buildings and sites. He was engaged in initiating, supporting, organizing the funding, and actively working on revitalization, reconstruction, and conservation of the 16th-century old Sephardic cemetery in Sarajevo. That project was prepared for a public presentation twenty-four hours before war broke out in Bosnia and Herzegovina in March 1992. Ceresnjes also surveyed and planned restorations for the Ashkenazi synagogue in Sarajevo (built in 1902), the 17th-century Il Kal Nuevu Sephardic synagogue, and the cemetery chapel on the Jewish cemetery (1926).

In 1989–1990 he planned and headed the reconstruction of the Jewish summer camp in Pirovac, Croatia, which served as a central meeting place for the entire Jewish community of the former Yugoslavia. In 1990–1991 he prepared and headed the restoration and conservation of the complex of the burial site of Rabbi Moshe Danon, a significant historic person from the Bosnian Jewish community (1832, The Sarajevo Megilla) in Stolac, Herzegovina.