The ruined and long-abandoned Jewish cemetery in Novi Pazar, Serbia is under restoration sponsored by the city, and work should be finished this spring, according to local media. The work is being overseen by the city’s public utilities service.
An article in January in the newspaper Danas said work began in September last year and will continue in March. It said 20 grave sites can be identified, along with many other toppled monuments or their fragments. Part of the cemetery has long been built over by unauthorized structures. Plans were to enclosed the area and restore the 20 remaining gravestones, as well as create access paths with benches and lighting and erect a monument to the Jews who once lived in the city.
By December, two street sides of the cemetery had been enclosed by fencing incorporating images of the Menorah and star of David, Sandzakpress.net reported.
In her 2013/2016 article about Jewish heritage in Novi Pazar, the scholar Marina Mihajlovic noted that the cemetery had been officially declared a cultural monument by the Novi Pazar Municipality in 1987, and it was listed in the Central Register of Cultural Monuments of the Republic of Serbia in 1992.
She stated that the date of the establishment of the cemetery was unknown, but there were sources saying that it dated back at least two centuries. She described the state of the cemetery as desperate:
In 2017, an NGO produced a video about Jewish heritage in Novi Pazar, including the Jewish cemetery:
3 comments on “Serbia: Jewish cemetery in Novi Pazar under restoration”
my family Jacob steiner and his wife Katalin Venetianer steiner and their 5 children including my father Sandor steiner lived in Horgos Those who died in Hungary/serbia were buried in the Jewish cemetery in Szeged My guess that Szeged as the main Jewish Community of the region was the main burial site for the district
the Jewish prisoners of Bor were murdered in the town of Cservenka october 8 1944. the first group went on a death march. the bodies of the murdered were dugg out after the war and buried in a Jewish cemetary. I would like to know where my uncle Chaim Itzik Deutsch who was in that group was buried. thanks for any information.
It is always uplifting and encouraging to read about a restoration of a cemetery, however belated, the final home for inhabitants who were once part of a local community.
Contrast Novi Pazar with the situation at the other, North end of Serbia in the villages of Horgos and Martonos, near the border with Hungary. Once there were active Jewish communities here with synagogues which were demolished after WWII. Burials date at least as far back as the first half of the 1800s. The home of one Jewish family, unacknowledged, serves as the location of the town council in Horgos. There are other “Jewish houses” elsewhere, at least in Horgos.
The Jewish cemeteries in Martonos and Horgos, as was the custom when this area was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, are adjacent and at one time separated by a fence from the Catholic cemetery (which is in pristine condition) and are the sole remaining aspect of the Jewish heritage of the town. Their neglect is part of its tainted past and now present.
The leadership of the Subotica Jewish community as other larger communities in Serbia had assigned responsibility for the cemeteries in surrounding villages; however, it has maintained a “just let it go” approach regarding at least Martonos and Horgos, at the same time maintaining a perfectly maintained and fenced cemetery for itself complete with a groundskeeper’s cottage. At the time the leadership professed to have no resources to protect Martonos and Horgos, just half an hour away, it was able to arrange a grandiose re-opening of the beautiful and unique Subotica synagogue where hundreds of international dignitaries attended while nearby locals who for years had done selfless restoration of Jewish heritage were not invited.
ESJF agreed to fence the cemeteries in Martonos and Horgos as they met its criteria of flat land, imminent risk and geographic proximity. During a survey their staff removed most of the vegetation, leaving the remaining matzevot exposed to further harm, then declared that they would not erect the promised protective fencing citing new, never before declared criteria. ESJF cited its exclusive relationship with the Jewish Federation of Serbia while the cemetery coordinator for the Federation placed the decision at the door of ESJF. The local municipalities pushed the envelope further shifting responsibility back to the Jewish community. There have also been quiet references to some one in Tel Aviv directing decisions behind the scenes.
And so it goes: the dead in Martonos and Horgos lie waiting for some respect and dignity while political footballs are tossed. Those charged with responsibility must be forgetting that Jewish burial grounds are sacred sites, to remain undisturbed for eternity (LO Tishkah).