There have been Jews in Serbia from Antiquity, when the area was a part of the Roman Empire, and from the Middle Ages, when it was the Kingdom of Serbia. Sephardi Jews arrived en masse when Serbia was within the Ottoman Empire. The Jewish picture became even more colourful in 1699 when Austria invaded Vojvodina. With the Austrians came many Ashkenazi Jews.
Modern Serbia emerged as a sovereign state in 1830, and Jews were quick to feel the brunt of the government's discriminatory policies. The 1878 Congress of Berlin compelled Serbia to treat all of its minorities equally, yet Jews were not given de facto rights until at least 1889. Zionism picked up momentum. Still many well-to-do Jews in culture, banking, commerce and the civil service assimilated themselves. During the Balkan Wars and the First World War the Serbian army included many Jews.
The Jewish community expanded as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was founded after the First World War. Jews in Serbia were joined by Jews in Croatia, Montenegro, Slovenia and Bosnia. At the onset of the Second World War there were about 70,000 Jews, with 33,000 living in Serbia. In 1941 Nazi Germany and its allies, including Bulgaria, invaded Yugoslavia. In less than
a year, the overwhelming majority of Jews were rounded up and sent to concentration camps, including some set up within Yugoslavia. In 1942, the Germans proudly announced that Yugoslavia had become the first European country where the "Jewish" and "Gypsy" questions were solved. Bulgaria controlled the area around Pirot, still referred to in Bulgaria as the "Western Outlands." The Pirot Jews were the last to be rounded up and sent to Poland for extermination.
Two concentration camps in Serbia were operative. One was near Niš and the other near Belgrade.
When Yugoslavia was liberated in 1944, just 14,000 Jews survived.
Yugoslavia became a Socialist country after the war. Most of its Jews emigrated. According to a 1953 census just 1,500 Jews remained.
Yugoslavia began to disintegrate in 1992. The old Jewish cemetery of Sarajevo was infamously used by Serb snipers to shoot at passers-by downtown.
Today about 800 Jews live in Serbia, mainly in Belgrade, Novi Sad and Subotica.
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