Family Stories from Jewish Bosnia
Here is an interesting assortment of personal recollections — and photographs — from Bosnian Jewish life in the early 20th century. The page also contains an interesting documentary about the life of Hana Montiljo Gasic and the life of Sarajevo’s Jewish community.
Our Jewish heritage tour of Bosnia will allow you to absorb much more of that rich Sephardic — and Ashkenazi — history of Jewish life in Sarajevo and Bosnia. You can expect a thorough Sarajevo Jewish tour which includes the old Sephardic synagogue, also home to Sarajevo’s Jewish museum, the gorgeous 1902 Ashkenazi synagogue, the hub of Jewish life for Sarajevo’s Jewish community, the 1930 Sephardic Great Synagogue (Il Kal Grande), converted after WWII into the Bosnian Cultural Center. A crucial highlight of our Sarajevo Jewish tour — and of our overall Bosnia Jewish tour — is our visit to the National Museum in order to see the stunning Sarajevo Haggadah. Atop one of the capital’s hills, we will also visit the historic Jewish cemetery, one of the oldest Sephardic cemeteries on the Balkans. It is particularly notable for the shape of its rounded tombstones. Some of the most prominent Sephardic Jews of Sarajevo buried here are the Sephardic scholar Moshe ben Rafael Attias, also known as Zeki Effendi, and Isak Samokovlija, one of Bosnia’s greatest writers.