The synagogue in the town of Šabac, Serbia has been renovated and will be reopened November 23 as a cultural space. It is being developed for future use as a museum telling the history of the local Jewish community, which was destroyed in the Holocaust.
The museum will also include material on the so-called Kladovo Transport — around 1,200 Jews from central Europe attempting to escape down the Danube to British Palestine in 1939 who were halted at the Yugoslav Danube port of Kladovo when Romanian authorities refused them passage. They were later sent to Šabac and were killed along with local Jews in 1941.
Šabac City Council member Igor Marsenic, who was delegated to manage the town’s application to the Ministry of Culture for funding, told JHE that the the project had been carried out via an investment of 6.5 million RSD (approximately €60.000) from the Šabac municipality and a 9 million RSD (approx. €75.000) grant from the Culture Ministry.
The project was begun at the end of 2015, when the city purchased the dilapidated building of the former Sephardic synagogue from the owners who had possessed it since the end of World War II.
“The culture of remembrance is a very important topic in our cultural policy agenda,” Marsenic tod JHE. “We started this project to establish a Jewish museum Šabac, with the aim to preserve the memory of our Jewish citizens, the values we created together and to have a modern facility for organizing panel discussions about the Holocaust, tolerance, cultural events, presentations, etc.”
As a first stage, he said, the synagogue is now included in the cultural map of the town and has already been used for cultural events.
The second stage will involve creating and installing the museum, as well as further fund-raising to carry this out.
Branislav Stanković, a curator and historian at the Šabac National Museum, is in charge of the future Jewish Museum display, Marsenic said, aided by the architect Alexandra Savatic, who runs the citizens’ initiative called “Workshop: Culture of Remembrance”, which was a partner in the project.
3 comments on “Serbia: Synagogue in Šabac restored; will become Jewish museum”
Hello;
My great grandfather, Miodrag Petrovic, was the Mayor of Sabac who took in the Jews. He ordered the people of Sabac to convert the mill and all his villas into hiding places. He had them agree to protect the Jews even under threat of their own executions by Nazis and Ustase.
Would have been historically accurate and respectful to him for you to have included his name.
I hope you will add his name and contact me for a more complete understanding of who was the man who had an entire city protect others.
Sincerely
Olga
“…a culture of remembrance…”:an intrinsic tristfullness….
however another sjabbes is there,full of promise!
“I cannot bring a world quite round
and there’s no sense trying…….”
Even for a Thousand Years,by Dahlia Ravikovitch[ Hovering at a Low Altitude ,Translated by
Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld,Norton,New York-
a poetry beyond praise,such a sensitivity and especially in Hebrew a wonderfully voyage through
ages and ages till nowadays,in my “reception “ .]
“the culture of remembrance” :
signatures ,human signatures of hate,failure,indifference,all too well known in Jewish History ,
indelible signs of ununderstandable facts …
sad,so sad,…and bitter:too many lives has been fallen to remembrance…
a living sign and signature still there is : the Sjabath!
So I wish you a gut sjabbes and a little bit too early : a shavouah tov!