Jasna Ciric, the president of the Jewish community in Nis, Serbia, reports a serious deterioration in the condition of the former mikveh building in Pirot, Serbia, prompting fears that the historic building may collapse entirely.
Ms Ciric, a leading Serbian activist in the reservation of Jewish heritage, visited the building on June 6 and documented the site.
Her pictures show a sharp worsening of the condition of the building in the 14 months since a delegation including Ivan Ceresnjes of the Center for Jewish Art and Jewish Heritage Europe coordinator Ruth Ellen Gruber visited in April 2012. (See the JHE post on that visit here.)
Ms Ciric says that although the building has been documented, measured, etc, and some clean-up took place before the winter, it was not protected and has suffered extensive damage over the past year from snow and rain. From her pictures, it is evident that parts of the roof and walls have crumbled and/or collapsed, leaving heaps of rubble in the interior and a big hole in the roof. (See bottom pictures.) Likewise, a fence that had partly isolated the building has been removed.
Ceresnjes says the small brick building, one of the very few tangible relics of Jewish presence in Pirot (aside from a gravestone or two from the destroyed cemetery, a fountain erected by Jewish merchants and the site of a Jewish-owned business) , is the only remaining mikveh from the Ottoman period in the Balkans.
