Jakob F., 78
Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina
“For the children, we started Sunday School… In this Sunday School, we had around 20 children[…]. We were able to have generator to produce some electricity, to show them movies, documentaries, television, offer them some soft drink, and the cookies, so it was a wonderful place compared with the rest of the city which was under permanent attack. And a lot of them asked, “You know I have my best friend. We spent last three months in the shelter together. May I bring my best friend to this school?” Answer was naturally “Yes.” So we are running this Sunday School, Jewish Sunday School, with 20 Jews, and 30 best friends.”
Interview originally conducted in English.
Okay–hello!
Jakob F., Sarajevo. June 23, 2022.
To start, tell me about yourself and your childhood– where did you grow up? What was a typical day like?
I was born in 1943. I’m the first member of my family, in 350 years, to be born outside of Sarajevo.
I was born in an Italian detention camp where my parents had been taken as Jews. That’s the reason why I was born outside Sarajevo. And maybe I will be the last one buried in Sarajevo, because for the time being, I have two sons, and four granddaughters and all of them are living in the states. So, maybe I will be the first one in the Finci family to be born outside Sarajevo and the last one to be buried in Sarajevo. Who knows. Life is in front of us, so we'll see.
After WWII, we came back to Sarajevo. My family stayed here. finished all of my education here in Sarajevo. Elementary school, secondary school, after that, Faculty of Law and post-graduate studies. I was working, in the beginning, as a lawyer. After that, I joined the biggest Yugoslav exporting company at the time, called Energoinvest, and I spent years with them. I was working, naturally, in the export department, but I was working abroad. I spent some time in Ethiopia and some time later on in Kenya.
I was here when the war started in Bosnia. In 1991, just before the war, we re-started the Jewish humanitarian organization, La Benevolacija, which is old Spanish name for “goodwill.” La Benevolacija became very popular not only as a humanitarian organization, but also as a cultural organization before the war. It was organized for the first time in April 1892. In 1991, we were born again. During socialism, it was forbidden to have organizations with the national denomination. So, all organizations had been, for example, workers organization, cience organization, women’s organization, but no Jewish, no Muslim, no Serbian organization. In 1991, this was permitted, and that’s why we again organized La Benevolencija.
I was elected to be Vice President. The first President was one of the students who studied a long time ago on a La Benevolencija scholarship. He was a member of the Bosnian Academy of Science. He moved from Sarajevo in early 1992. He left together with a lot of elder Jews who had been evacuated from here to a Jewish old age home in Zagreb, in Croatia.
So I took over La Benevolencija. For the last 30 years, I was President of La Benevolacija, and I finished my mandate just a few weeks ago.
Oh wow.
In 1995, I also became President of the Jewish Community of Bosnia-Herzegovina, a title that I’m still holding. I represent the Jews of Bosnia-Herzegovina in front of domestic governmental organizations on all levels, because we are a little bit complicated country with a lot of levels of government. For example, where we are sitting now [in the Jewish Community Center in Sarajevo], we are in the municipality of Old Town of Sarajevo. So we have municipality, we have town of Sarajevo, we have Canton of Sarajevo, we have Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and we have state of Bosnia-Herzegovina. So, five levels of government, and it’s not easy to manage and to fulfill the obligations or requests of each of these levels of organization. We’re usually asked some questions for statistical reasons, for fulfilling all of the obligations for European Union, etc. One of the goals for our government and for people here is to become a member state of the European Union, but today, we’re not even at the status of candidate for membership. So, it will be… it will happen one day, I hope, during this century.
Yes I hope so too. Going back a little bit. What made you decide to re-start La Benevolencija? Was it just that it became legal or was there some underlying motivation?
La Benevolencija was re-born as a Jewish humanitarian, educational, and cultural organization. At the beginning, it was 1991, before the war, our main goal was to provide scholarships for students because this was La Benevolencija’s goal when they started in 1892. Then, we wanted to also show the richness of the Jewish culture that we brought with us to the region almost 500 years ago.
The Jewish community here was established in 1565, almost immediately after expulsion from Spain in 1492. Naturally, a lot of people ask me “Where were you in between?” And then I’ll explain that air companies weren’t as punctual as they are today, so it took a while to reach from Spain to this part of the Western Balkans [laughs].
Bosnia was newly occupied territory of the Ottoman empire, and the Ottoman empire really accepted Jews without any problems. There was a statement from Sultan Bayezid, who said “I cannot understand this stupid ruler of Spain–why did they expell such brave people, like Jews.”
Nevertheless, this is our homeland these days.
Sarajevo got the name among the Jews as “Little Jerusalem” because only in Jerusalem and in Sarajevo can you find an Orthodox church, Catholic church, and a synagogue side by side, within 200 meters of each other. This is possible to be seen only in Jerusalem and in Sarajevo. That’s why we got the name Little Jerusalem or European Jerusalem.
Anway, the Jews have been living here without any problem for all this time, in very good relations with our neighbors. We have never been forced to live in only one part of town, so there is no Jewish part of town or some kind of ghetto, which was normal at the time in Western Europe. The only difference was that under the Ottoman empire, it was forbidden for non-Muslims to own land. So, uh, Jews had been forced to live in the cities, to be merchants, to have some small production on the marketplace, and after that to become the first lawyers, first pharmacists, first medical doctors, sending, uh, our sons at the time– only sons not daughters–to study abroad. People from Sarajevo went to study in Vienna, in Austria, or to Bucharest, or to Prague, in Czech Republic. After finishing university, they came back here, and that’s how they lived in Sarajevo, which was small town until 1941, when the Holocaust started in this region.
Sarajevo was a city of not more than 60,000 inhabitants with more than 12,000 Jews. So, 20% of the population was Jewish. That’s the reason why we have, even today, five synagogues in town.
Only this one [Jewish Community Center] is a working synagogue with regular service. The oldest one was built in 1581 and is now a Jewish museum in the old part of town. In front of this is the New Temple, but it’s more than 250 years old. The biggest one is the Bosnian Cultural Center in the downtown. The fifth one is on the hill, and, uh, I hope that maybe, very soon, we may open a holocaust museum in this synagogue. But, now we have only this synagogue that is working regularly. We have also two synagogues in– one is in Doboj and the second one is in Banja Luka, which is also working, but not permanently, because they don’t have minyan. Minyan is 10 adult men, which is the minimum to have a prayer in the synagogue with a full program. Otherwise, everyone can pray by himself. In Judaism, it is not necessary to have anyone between us and God. We can have direct interaction, we don’t need a priest or imam or anyone else. But, we have do naturally have someone leading services. It’s Friday evening at 7 o’ clock, if you are in Sarajevo, you can join and see how it looks like.
I would love to. Just a clarification question, you said in Banja Luka they don’t have the 10-person minimum, so the synagogue there is half-working?
It is working from time to time, when they have some event, celebrating something or they have some group visiting, when they have enough people to [have a full service]. Otherwise, there is no regular service.
Okay. Fast forwarding a little bit, coming back to Sarajevo in the 90s. The war started at the end of ‘91, beginning of ‘92, when did the war start for you? Was there a specific moment when you thought “This is happening, war has come.”
After war started in Slovenia, and after that in Croatia in 1991, it was clear that, it would reach Bosnia.
A few of us discussed when we thought it would be– the 6th of April. Why? Because 6th of April 1941, the second world war started in Yugoslavia, on 6th of April 1941, when the German planes attacked Belgrade, Sarajevo, and other big cities. This was the beginning of WWII. So, that was the discussion. “When will the war reach Sarajevo?” “The 6th of April.”
So, at the end of 1991, the coastal city of Dubrovnik–which you probably visited, it’s a wonderful city, with a tiny Jewish community of probably 40 members, originally almost all of them from Sarajevo– Dubrovnik was under the siege for 90 days. And the biggest problem for this aging community, like ours, was survival without medication. Being under siege, they had not been able to reach pharmacies or get pharmaceutical products to stay current with medication. You know, when you are almost 75, it’s almost impossible to start your day without two yellow, two green, two white pills, who knows what for, but pills are a way for survival [laughs].
So we called all of the Jewish doctors and pharmacies [in Sarajevo], asking them to please prepare a list [of medications], just in case of something in Sarajevo, to have enough medicines for 1500 members of the Jewish Community to be safe for three months.
They made an extensive list of almost everything, and we bought these medicines, either in town if we could find them, and the rest we imported. So, we had medicine covered. Then we said, “Okay, medicines is only one important thing, but we should also have some food.”
So, we decided to invest the rest of the money buying the food that can stay. Like, oil, flour, sugar, rice, pasta, beans, and so on. And the synagogue here was refurbished in 1965 when we celebrated 400 year anniversary of the arrival of Jews, celebrating 400 years of the existence of the Jewish community in Sarajevo. So we reorganized it [in 1991] so that down where usually it’s a synagogue, we have a community hall which we used as storage for medicines on one side and the food on the other side. Upstairs in the balcony, where ladies usually were, we used as the whole synagogue. And, uh, that’s how we organized to be well-equipped until 6th of April when the war really started in Sarajevo again.
Our political leaders told us on television, “Don’t worry, it will not be a war, we can sleep well.” The President of Bosnia said this on television on the 4th of April, and the war in Sarajevo started on the 6th.
Before this, we also sent a letter to all of the members of the Jewish community a few months before that asking them to renew their passports. The Yugoslav passport at the time was a good one, famous red passports with which you can travel on the East and on the West without a visa, without any questions. But, we needed an exit visa from Yugoslavia only for two countries at the time: one was Soviet Union, because we cut off relations with Soviet Union in 1948, and the second country was Israel. Yugoslavia was one of the first countries to recognize Israel in 1948, but in 1967, when the first war started [between Israel and Egypt], we cut off relations. By that time, President Tito was–one of his biggest allies of him was President Nasser of Egypt. This was the reason why he cut off relations with Israel, and it was necessary to get exit visa. Usually, 30-40 people go annually to Israel to visit relatives, friends, or just as a pilgrimage. But then, after this letter, when a few hundred requests for the Israel exit visa [came through the ministry], the local newspaper, Oslobođenje, wrote an article, “When the Jews are leaving a town, it’s a bad sign for the town.”
I went on television to explain that in 1992, there would be a huge commemoration of 500 years of expulsion of Jews from Spain, when they came to different countries around the Mediterranean coast, and in these seven countries, there would be huge celebrations. The idea was to have a flame that would start in Spain and go through these seven countries. One of these seven countries was Yugoslavia, and in Yugoslavia they selected Sarajevo to celebrate. And then these seven flames would go to Israel. And that was our plan to celebrate in 1992, and that’s the reason why we were asking for so many exit visas, because in 1992, we expected that a lot of people will go to Israel. [Sips water].
At the same time, we got signals, from our friends from abroad, mainly from the States, Israel, and other countries, that war is approaching and that we should be ready.
As I said, the war started here on the 6th of April, and we organized the first evacuation on the 10th of April.
At the time, we rented a plane from Yugoslav army. The only open airports in Yugoslavia were in Sarajevo and in Belgrade. So, this plane took Jews and non-Jews, our friends who joined us, from here to Belgrade, and from Belgrade, they went out in different directions. Uh, the second evacuation was on the 17th of April, and the last one, by plane, on the first of May, 1992. On the 2nd of May, blockade of the city started. After that, we organized eight more evacuations by bus and through land corridors from Sarajevo to the Adriatic Coast, to the coastal city of Split. Near Split is a tourist center called Makarska where we rented a hotel with the help of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee who paid the boarding costs for the people who left Sarajevo and stayed in this hotel, waiting for the end of the war.
We evacuated more than 2,500 people, a little bit less than 1,000 Jews and, uh, 1500 others. That means people who are originally Bosniaks, Croats, Serbs, or something else.
All of these convoys went smoothly, without any problem. At the same time, we used the buses that were evacuating people to bring in humanitarian help on the way back.
At that time, it was not easy to reach Split from Sarajevo. It’s a route of not more than 300 kilometers. Today, it will probably take you 5 hours.
But during the war, it was more than a 24 hour trip because there were 36 checkpoints, held by four armies, six militias, and who knows who was else.
At each checkpoint, they check who is traveling, whether or not you have all the permissions/paperwork, and the drivers usually refused to drive without someone recognizable from the Jewish community.
Image sourced from the JDC.
I was in this situation several times, to lead the convoy. I felt like James Bond, you know, traveling with four sets of documents. Muslim permissions, Serbian permissions, Croatian permissions, international papers. And then, in each checkpoint, you needed to present the right permission. Otherwise, we'd hardly survive. At some of these checkpoints, it was clear–you saw the flag and it was easy to recognize who ran this checkpoint and which kind of paper you should show. But, uh, if there was nothing, just a few boys with rifles, they’d stop us, and then usually we start:
“Oh, lovely day today.”
And then they’d say, “Yes, but these bloody Muslims are shooting us.” Then you’d that they are not Muslims, that they are something else, they could be Serbs or Croats. And then, based on how the territory was divided in some areas, it was easy to-to find the right paper to show. We always passed without any problem, evacuating all of these people, Jews and non-Jews together, and bringing in humanitarian help.
Sometimes, at these checkpoints, they usually took part of the humanitarian aid for themselves, saying “This is necessary for our people.” As some kind of custom, to take almost 10-20%. But they didn’t take anything from us. And this was, for me, a little bit strange. Why are they so friendly?
And at first, I was thinking, “They know that we are distributing this to all the citizens, regardless of ethnicity and nationality.” Second, maybe they remember that, uh, we paid the price during the Holocaust, and now, who-who-who is going to care about about small group of Jews still living in Sarajevo. Later on, I discussed this with one journalist from New York Times, Roger Cohen, and he told me, “One of your problems is that 95% of people reading New York Times doesn’t know difference between Serbs and Croats.” I said “Oh no, you are wrong, 98% doesn’t know the difference.” But, if the headline is, “Serbs stop the Jewish convoy.” Or, “Croats take part of humanitarian aid from the Jewish Community,” or “Muslims didn’t allow Jewish convoy to pass freely,” it would be bad for the image of whichever ethnic group. And all of them had been a little bit afraid of international public press. And, they have the wrong idea [stereotype] that all of the world’s press was in the hands of Jews. So, then it’s better to be good towards Jews than to make some mistake. That’s how we survived war in Sarajevo without any victims targeted for being Jewish. Yes, seven members of our community had been killed by accident because from the hill, snipers can see you, but don’t have a sign on what your nationality is or why they should (or shouldn’t) kill you.
Anyway, before we organized the convoy, it was necessary to get permission from all warring sides. From the Bosniak side here and from the local authorities, to get permission to leave the town and show that you are not obliged to be drafted in the army. Second, from the Serbian side, that you can freely pass through the Serbian territory, and that they are guaranteed that no one from the convoy will be taken out, and then from the Croatian side, they will also let you ass, and that the Croatian government would accept these Jews to enter into Croatia, because in 1993, it started war between Croats and Bosniaks. So, at the time it was difficult even for the people that are Bosniaks to enter Croatia because you were the enemy.
So, in these discussions with officers from the different armies, you were always obliged to show the list of passengers. And then sometimes they said, “This one is better not to be on this convoy because this one made some issue for us some time before.” So then, we succeed in providing false documents for the person who is, according to whichever side, would have been stopped.
My parents passed away before the war started, and, uh, I had ID cards from my parents and then I gave these ID cards to some of these suspicious persons to be free to pass. I think in the list of the different convoys that we organized, several times, you’ll find the names of Asher and Rashela Finci, my parents, they left town three or four times, [laughs].
They had been buried in Sarajevo and still today they are buried in Sarajevo. That was, uh, one part of organization.
The second one was with the food that we have here. We organized something like a food kitchen. We had a stove here, with two big pots of 15 liters each. 100 liters of water or food can provide around 300 lunches. And so we organized a soup kitchen, not for the Jews, but for everyone from the nearby community who was able to be here at lunch time. The kitchen was working seven days a week. We had Titsko, who is our Chief Cook. He is a professional, and he really was able to make a good lunch from nothing.
After few months, all of the foreign journalists had been stashed away in Holiday Inn, they discovered that there are not just three warring parties in Bosnia, that also here is Jewish community, and naturally they came to visit, and it’s lunch time, so we offered them lunch. And they said, “You know, your lunch is excellent and you’re giving it away for free.” They said, “The same plate, we are paying $20 in Holiday Inn, and your lunch is much better for free than this one that we are paying $20.” And that’s how La Benevolencija and the Jewish Community became known all over the world. Because, for these journalists, it was very interesting to find out that there is a small Jewish community, which is a definitively small minority in Sarajevo, which is helping everyone.
I should say that, uh, at the beginning of the war, by the second day, all of the shops in Sarajevo had been looted, by, uh… Sarajeveans. Everything except bookshops. No one was robbing for the books in the beginning.
Later on, when we had been cut off from electricity, gas, any energy, uh, we discovered that, uh, on a set of books you can prepare very good lunch. And then, even the bookshops had been looted.
But first had been pharmacies. And, having had a stockpile of medicines here, we put one pharmacist and a table here on the entrance, and it was some kind of pharmacy. The only question was, “What kind of medicine do you usually take?” You said the name and you got the medicine. In front of our community center, one of my school friends from Secondary School, he was running this shop, he came and said, “You know, it seems that you would like to open a pharmacy. So, please, use my shop because I’m closing anyway and I’m going to try and leave Sarajevo. Please, use my shop.”
So, we opened the first Jewish pharmacy. The official name was La Benevolencija Pharmacy. But, for Bosnians, it was not very easy to pronounce “La Benevolencija” correctly, so they gave the nickname Jewish pharmacy. It became very well known that if you are running out of some medicine, go to the Jewish pharmacy. If they don’t have it, then give up, this means that this medicine doesn’t exist in town.
After few months, citizens start to complain. What was the problem? “It’s very difficult to reach your pharmacy, because it is necessary to cross one of the bridges.” And each of these bridges was the actual target for sniper fire from the hill. And that’s the reason why they started to ask, “Can you open a pharmacy in the other part of town?”
So, uh–in 1984, Sarajevo was hosting the Winter Olympic Games. And, the Olympic Committee had an office in front of the National Theater. I was involved a little bit with Olympic Games, and I went to Olympic Committee and asked them for permission to open a pharmacy on their premises, which was the basement of the Olympic Committee. We got the permission, and we opened the second pharmacy, just in front of the National Theater. It’s a very good location, because even today, there’s a commercial pharmacy in this place, working pretty well. So, this was the second one.
In September of ‘92, we organized the first big cultural event in Sarajevo during the war. At the Holiday Inn, we organized several exhibitions, roundtables, and concerts commemorating 500 years of expulsion of Jews from Spain. All of Sarajevo was present, so to say, including the Presidency, members of the government, city leaders and so on. Among the others was one of the medical doctors, Dr. Hajir, who was running a hospital in Dobrinja. Dobrinja is a neighborhood just behind the airport. Pretty far from here.
He approached us saying, “You know, I am Palestinian, you are Jews, we are almost relatives. It will be good to open the pharmacy in my hospital, because people in Dobrinja cannot reach your pharmacies in town.”
We said, “No problem, but we have some requests.”
“What are the requests?”
“First one is don’t ask who you are [name/ethnicity]–ask only, what do you need. Second, each medicine should be given free of charge because we are getting all of these free of charge and we cannot charge anyone with this.”
“Ok.”
“And third one, put down on the paper to whom you give something, because we would like to have a list to show to our donors how we distributed all of this.”
He said, “Don’t worry, I will take care of the pharmacy.”
And this was probably first Jewish pharmacy all over the world, the third La Benevolacija pharmacy, which was run by Palestinian. It was very successful. I think Dr. Hajir wrote a book about this, and he mentioned this even in his book. Uh…that’s how we succeeded to help in Sarajevo. We have a certificate somewhere from the Federal Ministry of Health that La Benevolencija was supplying 40% of all the medicines that all hospitals used during the war in Sarajevo. Which is a huge number.
We collected the medicines, but, you know, big pharmaceutical companies used to donate medicines with the expiry date of tomorrow. Or ones with very short expiry dates. And we said, “No, no, we are not requesting this. We have a list of what we need. If you can supply this list, we’ll accept this. Otherwise, we are not ready to accept any medicine that is a surplus to you.” So, we had been very well stocked with the medicines and that is the reason why there is this famous saying that, “If there is none of this medicine is in the Jewish Pharmacy, don’t try to find it. It means it doesn’t exist.”
Naturally, having people out of work, we start to do something here. We had been able to organize courses to learn the foreign languages. We started with five languages. We started to learn English, French, German, Arabic, and Spanish. Later on, people immediately–this is spirit of Bosnia, we are making jokes from everything–and they said, you know, “Optimists are learning English, and pessimists are learning Arabic, just in case.”
Uh, the reason why we started with Arabic courses that the best professor of Arabic is member of our community and she said, “I’m ready to teach these lessons.” Later on, after the war, we continued only with the courses of English and then we finished with this.
We published the bulletin of the Jewish community 3-4 times a year. When you have electricity, there was no paper. When you have paper, there was no printing machine. If you have everything, then you don’t have enough articles. All of these articles had been bilingual, in our language [Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian] and in English to be able to show to the outer world what we are doing and how we are surviving here. That was something that we did for the others, and the adults.
For the children, we started Sunday School. Quite honestly, it’s not clear why, all over the world, why these Jewish schools are called Sunday School, and they are happening on Saturday. [Laughs]. But, okay. That, that was the name. In this Sunday School, we had around 20 children who never imagined that they are of Jewish origin. But, we have a lot of people who are of mixed marriages. In the Sunday school, we were able to have generator to produce some electricity, to show them movies, documentaries, television, offer them some soft drink, and the cookies, so it was a wonderful place compared with the rest of the city which was under permanent attack. And a lot of them asked, “You know I have my best friend. We spent last three months in the shelter together. May I bring my best friend to this school?” Answer was naturally “Yes.” So we are running this Sunday School, Jewish Sunday School, with 20 Jews, and 30 best friends.
Sarajevo Synagogue. Housed La Benevolencija’s pharmacy/Sunday school/soup kitchen. Image source here.
They were writing together greeting cards for the Jewish holidays, sending these greeting cards all over the world, writing long letters. At that time, uh, for the telefax machine, we used these rolls of paper. And this roll was maybe 20 meters long. And they wrote letters long paper, and sent this paper, these letters, all over the world. And I know that in the Jewish community in London, it was auctioned as the “Letter of Friends of La Benevolencija, Sarajevo.” It was 10 meters long it reached, I think, 300 pounds, price. It was just to collect the money for the help of La Benevolencija.
In one moment, we were one of the candidates for the Nobel Prize for Peace, but naturally, I think it was 300 or 400 applications for who deserved the Nobel Prize for Peace, so we didn’t get this. But, we got some other international recognition at the, uh… we became very popular after it, after the war.
Naturally, war was stopped here with the Dayton Peace Accords, which was signed in November and December of 1995. It was first signed in Dayton, Ohio, and after that, in Paris, in front of all of the leaders of the International Communities who were guarantors of these peace accords. And then we said, now it is probably time to stop some of these activities.
First, the local pharmacies ask us to stop with the free distribution of the medicines because no one was willing to go and buy and pay for the medicine if they could get this free. So, we closed the pharmacies first. And then, what to do with the soup kitchen? Like I said, the kitchen was working seven days a week, except one day a year for the Yom Kippur, which is a Jewish holiday when the work is forbidden, so one day it’s for free. Then, “Okay, people working in the kitchen, they deserve to have one free day also.” Being a Jewish organization, it would be normal to close it on Saturday. But, having 300 people who are eating here, a lot of them are non-Jews, for them, Sunday is a free day. So, after that, we said, “Okay, we will close the kitchen on Sunday. And on Saturday, we’ll prepare a much better lunch than usual.” This means with the fresh fruit, salad, the good meat, and all. So, it became very popular in town to say, “What is Shabbat?” (Saturday). “Shabbat is a day when there’s a very good lunch in the Jewish community.” And there was a long queue. Some families came here because it was a festivity day to have a good lunch together.
After the war, naturally, we start to organized a post-war life into something almost like normal. Uh, among the other questions you send me, you asked about burek.
Yes. Is there a story you’d like to share about burek?
It’s interesting. My granddaughter, she was born in San Francisco and is living in San Francisco, now she is 10 years old. When she started first grade of elementary school, the teacher asked all of the students, “What is your favorite food?” Of 20 of them, 19 said, “This is my preferred food” [gestures, sketching a picture of pizza]. And what it is? This is pizza
My granddaughter, she wrote something like this, [gestures, sketches picture of spiral burek]. What is this? She said “This is burek.” And the teacher says, “What is burek?” She says, “My mother will come and she will explain.” So her mother came and she explained that this is a Bosnian way of preparing pita which is, if it’s with meat, it’s burek. And that’s her preferred food.
So that’s my story about burek. Burek is the preferred food of my granddaughter.
[Laughs]. So just, backtracking… a lot [laughs]. You said that before the war started, there was a suspicion that it would start on April 6, did you or your family ever consider just straight leaving Sarajevo, knowing that war was probably coming?
My elder son, who was just a student at the time, he left before. He left in ‘91 because it was clear, after war in Slovenia and war in Croatia, that war would reach Bosnia, and he was studying engineering. The reason was not that he was in love with this [engineering], but this was one of the faculties with which you don’t have to go to the army when you are 18 years old, but after finishing the faculty. He was, a-afriad of the army.
In 1991, it was August I think, the war in Slovenia was almost finished, the war in Croatia was still going on, and I told him, “You know,” during the family lunch on Sunday, I said, “You know, you went to study engineering to avoid to go to the army. Now you will be drafted in the army to shoot your friends. Your friends from the school, from the neighborhood, and so on.”
“Okay, what can I do?”
I said the only way is to leave the country. And he left, he left in September of 1991, before the war started here, long before. He went to Israel, and he went first to one of the kibbutz. I don’t know if you know what is kibbutz. Kibbutz is, uh, some kind of… the highest level of socialism ever reached [laughs], where you are working as much as you can and getting whatever you need. So, he went to the kibbutz to learn Hebrew. And he was in the kibbutz with lots of Americans. So, he learned Hebrew and English at the same time. When he finished this, that was six months, he went to work as a photographer because he deeply loved photography at the time. He went to the Red Sea, to Aqaba, to a place called Eilat, which is Jewish place on the Red Sea in Israel, famous for underwater life. There is, as they say, much more fish than water in this Red Sea here.
So, he finished all these diving courses, he became a diving instructor, and also of photography, and he took photography under the water and this was very popular to print this. And, if you are a tourist, probably you have a camera, but you didn’t take any pictures, u-u-under the water and and he gives you these pictures for, I don’t know, $10 or $20 a piece.
And, uh, one day, o-on the first, when the war started, in the first convoy, was my younger son. He was 13 at the time. That’s when you finished elementary school here. He was in the eighth grade of elementary school. He went to Israel, he finished the whole school in Israel–
–He left in the first round of evacuations?
Yes, yes, the first evacuation. And, uh, one day, the war just finished, I got a letter from them saying “We would like to go to the states.” I said, “Are you crazy? You are now fluent in language, you have all the documents–” I mean, this was another problem for the Bosnians who had been abroad–how to get permission to stay in the country that you moved to. In some countries it was much more difficult, in some countries less difficult, now 30 years after the war, everyone had finished this, but everyone had problems.
“Why would you leave? Is it just to start a new life again? Your language, your country, you–” and the answer was, “We are young we would like to try.” With that, you don’t have any answer, “Okay, try.”
So both of them went to the states. Both of them studied in the States. One graduated at Berkeley, the other from UCLA, Los Angeles, after Berkeley this one went to Stanford for his, and both of them are employed now, got married. One is married with a girl from Croatia, from Makarska. And I said you don’t have to go 12,000 kilometers to find a wife who is from a town in font of your home!
And second one married with a girl from Berlin. One is in San Francisco, and the other one is in Los Angeles. And they are satisfied with this, and if they are satisfied, we as parents, we are also satisfied.
But, uh, for me, it was clear… I felt obliged to stay here. Because people here, they liked me to be one of the leaders of the community. And now, to leave them, it’s not fair. When I went for the first time leading one of the convoys– naturally all of these convoys had been very interesting for the journalists– some journalist took the pictures showing me leaving. One of these journalists, I think from France, he said, uh, “If you are leaving town, it’s finished, it’s finished.” I said, “Don’t worry, I will be back.”
A lot of local people said, “He’s bluffing us all the time, now he’s leaving.” When I came back after around 10 days, because it was not easy to organize everything for coming back to Sarajevo, uh, they said, “Look at this idiot, he’s back.” When I left for the second time, the comment had been, “Now he’s leaving for good.” When I appeared again, they said, “Really, he’s an idiot, he’s here.”
And then, I was asked, “Why do you stay here?” I said, “I feel obliged because I’m leading La Benevolencija, we have a lot of the do-donators, I should send the reports, and, I think that I am obliged to stay here until the end of the war and three months after.” Because three months, it is enough time to send all the reports and then, I will feel free to leave.
When Dayton Peace Accords were signed, I was asked by some people, “Oh, okay, now the war is over, are you leaving now?” I said, “Are you sure that this is over? The war is over? Or this is just extended time out?” “Don’t leave! Don’t leave! Stay here, stay here, please.” So, I’m still here.
How many times did you go in and out? How many convoys?
I don’t know. A lot of times. A lot of times means… at least once a month, between 30, 40, 50 times, maybe. In this beginning this was difficult, with the convoys with the buses, with the trucks. But our organization, La Benevolencija, was only local organization recognized by UNHCR, working under the auspices of the United Nations, because we were distributing everything throughout Sarajevo, without asking about ethnicity, nationality, name, nothing,. So, we got the blue cards of UNHCR, plate numbers for our truck and Jeep that we had at the time, and with these blue cards, you had been free to use the UNHCR planes, which were bringing in humanitarian aid. They had several kinds of passengers. First are members of UNHCR. Second are politicians, negotiators, peacemakers. Third are journalists. And fourth are people from organizations like La Benevolencija, so I was traveling from here, flying from here to Split or Zagreb, and then airports in Split cut relations with UNHCR, and then the planes had been from Sarajevo to Ankona, in Italy, so Ankona to go back to Croatia or through New York, to go all over. And, uh, naturally, I was traveling a lot promoting activities of La Benevolencija, and helping with fundraising for La Benevolencija, and the organizations that help us.
When did the war end for you? When did you feel like it finished?
For me, war ended with the Dayton Peace Accords. That means in November of 1995. This was end of the war. This was… the peace was signed in Paris on 14th of December, and very soon after that, all the roads had been opened, no checkpoints, no controls, everything became normal. Airports became open for the commercial flights, so, it was end of the war.
You said you would leave three months after it ended. What kept you here after those three months?
I-I-I-I’m not sure.
Where are you living?
Now? In the old town.
No, no, no, when you are not in Sarajevo, where are you living?
Oh, in the states.
Oh in the states. Okay, so shoe numbers here are different from the American shoe numbers. Probably your shoe size is 7, 7.5.
Exactly 7, 7.5, yeah.
Here, it would 36, 37. I find that… if the number of your years is bigger than your shoe size, thinking on the European or the Bosnian shoe size, then, it’s too late to start a new life. If you are 20, 22, 25, you are still young enough to start a new life in a new country. If you are over 40, my shoe number is 40, then it is too late to start a new life. Especially because I am a lawyer by profession, and the law is specific for the each and every country, so, without knowing the local law, you hardly can be lawyer anywhere else, than, in this region.
So, that was the reason why I– the reason why I stay here. Because I’m too old to start at the beginning. Sometimes, I think about this, but, uh, I never consider that this is a real course that I will take. And, uh, let’s hope that this was the last war in my life.
Yeah, you already have two.
What kind of changes in the Jewish community did you see sort of – before the war, during the war, and now, how has the community changed?
Quite honestly, this something which is strange, for some people, always unbelievable, but Bosnia is one of the countries which is always absolutely free of antisemitism. This is something which is strange because knowing that we have 50+% of the Muslim population here.
How you can be without, without antisemitism? And I always tried to explain it: living for 500 years here, we became very familiar with everyone else. With the Serbs, Croats, Muslims, everyone.
Our being in Sarajevo, where we have, probably 80-85% Muslim population, naturally we know how to live with them and they know how to live with us. All of our lives, side-by-side, in Bosnia, we have a good habit to give nicknames. So a lot of us, we have a lot of friends and know people here by nicknames without knowing the real name, family name, or you never ask about nationality and identity.
When I was a small boy, playing with the others, sometimes, they’d bring the cookies. “What is it?” “My mother said today is our holiday.” “Oh, very nice! Happy holiday.” And we took a cookie. And that was the only signal that someone was something else.
I remember once, I came from outside and my mother said, “You know, today is our holiday. It is the Jewish new year.”
“Oh,” I said, “I know.”
“How you know?”
“I saw on the mosques the lamps are open for the Jewish new year.”
“No, no, no it’s not because of that, this is because of something else. But, just know that it is holiday for us.”
So, we never paid attention to this because we live in a country which was officially Socialist country. If Socialism, generally speaking, is red, then Yugoslav socialism was pink. Because we were able to travel on East and the West, you were able to buy a car if you had money, to build a country house on the mountains or on the coast, wherever you wish. Everything was free, which was not possible in the rest of the socialist countries at the time. So Yugoslav socialism was, for us, something which was…user-friendly so to say.
And, uh, there were no problems at that time, but that was a war because of ethnicity. Now, according to Dayton constitution, I cannot run for the Presidency of Bosnia-Herzegovina, but this is not a mistake in the Dayton Peace Accord. This partition of power between three sides was the first thing that three of them agreed immediately.
When the Peace Agreement was signed, the Jewish communities in Belgrade, Zagreb, and Sarajevo, under the auspices of the World Jewish Congress, organized a special event in Jerusalem to give some decoration to Richard Holbrook for the peace in our region. During lunch, I told him, “You know Dick, you’re pretending you’re my friend. But according to your constitution, I cannot run for Presidency. I’m not trying to get this job, but this should be my right.” And he said, “My dear, this is not against you, but this is the first thing that three of them immediately agreed to, to share power equally on all sides.” And even today, everything is shared here on three sides. That means that if you are not a Bosniak, Serb, or Croat, you are not in the inner circle, so to say.
From time to time, you can get some of the jobs, so I was at one point, Head of the Civil Service agency, which is something like a ministry, which manages hiring civil servants, paying them, and appointing them in the different ministries on the state level. After that, I was Bosnian ambassador to Switzerland and Lichtenstein. When I came to Switzerland, the first question which I was asked by Bosnians living there was “Which party are you from? Which party are you?” I said, “I’m not a member of any party.” “Uh?!”
What was your role as ambassador to Switzerland and to Lichtenstein? What were your responsibilities?
Uh, I was in Switzerland from 2009 to 2013.
It’s hard to say, you know, because the main idea was that we should improve our economic relations with Switzerland. And if you try to do this, the answer is, “We are free country and each company chooses who will be their partner.”
I remember when this guy came in saying “I would like to make a factory in Bosnia.” Furniture. Factory to produce the furniture.
“Excellent. We’re the right country because we have experts, we have a lot of wood, no problem. Where in Bosnia?”
“I don’t know, what you have in Bosnia?”
“We have two entities?”
“Okay, which one is bigger?”
I said, “Federation is little bit bigger, 51%, Republika Srpska is 49%.”
“Okay, in the Federation.”
“Federation is divided in 10 cantons. In which canton?”
“Which one is the biggest?”
I said the biggest one is Sarajevo and Tuzla.
“Okay, Sarajevo.”
“If you would like to make it in Sarajevo, in which municipality?”
“How many municipalities in canton of Sarajevo?”
“10 municipalities. It has to do with taxes.”
“What are the taxes?”
“It depends, in different regions…”
“10 municipalities to choose from? I think that I will open my factory in Bulgaria. They are much simple, more simple country.”
So, it was not easy.
Just sort of wrapping up a little bit– Is there something specific that you would want to tell foreign students, people that aren’t from the Balkans, about the war?
Immediately after the war, I was pushing forward the idea to form Reconciliation Commission in Bosnia, something similar to South African commission.
I travelled a lot inside Bosnia, I spoke with the people from all three ethnic groups, young people who had been in the army, the old people who finished the army, the people who will be in the army one day probably…
from all sides, all ethnic groups, I heard the same thing, “Never again will I take the rifle for anyone. Because these people pushed us to fight each other, they made a fortune and we lost everything. Never again I will take a rifle, never again I will fight for anything.”
I think that, uh, on this side, we are pretty safe. Now we have these days in Ukraine, with Russia dividing Ukraine, there are some stories about the possibilities to extend this to Western Balkans. But, I don’t believe in this. I hope that this is the–that it will not be the war here. It will not be volunteers on any sides who are ready to go again and to fight again, but never say never.
Okay… thank you so much!
Of course. An hour twenty minutes is good [laughs].