Abstract
The chapter deals specifically with a political attempt at history’s erasure. As detailed throughout the anthology, the manipulation and often willful misinterpretation of history in order to benefit one group while belittling the suffering of another group by changing the record of, or even denying, their experience has led to distrust among the groups involved, no less today than previously. The appropriation of private and communal property of a powerless or minority group by a country’s dominant group through manipulation of the historical record, treated here through a case study of the theft over many decades of the Bosnian Jewish community’s property, is, thus, a clear example of the politicization of history.
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Notes
- 1.
However, the official date of Bosnian Jewish settlement in Sarajevo is 1565, as celebrated by the Bosnian Jewish community.
- 2.
See, for example, the Czechoslovak law of 23 April 1990, which annulled previous theft of property and made at least some restitution for crimes that were beyond material compensation.
- 3.
See Annex Seven, containing the provision that “all refugees and displaced persons have the right freely to return to their homes of origin. They shall have the right to have restored to them property of which they were deprived in the course of hostilities since 1991 and to be compensated for any property that cannot be restored to them” (Chap. 1, art. I.1).
- 4.
Anders H. Stefansson describes the importance of the home for prewar Yugoslav citizens and the consequent destruction of that home during the war as “the ruins of a life project and shattered dreams of enjoying ‘the good life’ at home, a lifetime of work, saving, and planning blown up in a second” (Stefansson 2006, 123).
- 5.
See, for example, Sretenovic and Prauser 2004, 55.
- 6.
See Hajim Kamhi’s speech during the dedication of the Menorah in Spomenica: 400 godina od dolaska jevreja u Bosnu i Hercegovinu (Sarajevo: Oslobodjenje, 1966?), p. 8.
- 7.
Interview with Boris Kožemjakin, Sarajevo, June 2010.
- 8.
European Commission - Council of Europe Joint Programme: Integrated Rehabilitation Project Plan / Survey of the Architectural and Archaeological Heritage (IRPP/SAAH) -- Bosnia and Herzegovina -- March 2004.
- 9.
Janice Arnold, “Canadian Soldier Initiates Restoration of Bosnian Cemetery,” Canadian Jewish News http://www.cjnews.com/viewarticle.asp?id=11972. Accessed 25 October 2010
- 10.
“Bosnia Will not Officially Mark January 27, Day of Remembering the Holocaust,” Bosnia News (15 January 2007).
- 11.
UNHCR 2002 Global Appeal.
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Friedman, F. (2021). Thrice Plundered: The Politics of Restitution with Regard to the Jews of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In: Ognjenovic, G., Jozelic, J. (eds) Nationalism and the Politicization of History in the Former Yugoslavia. Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65832-8_6
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