Bosnia: Anti-Semitic graffiti found on homes of Jewish community members

Via European Jewish Press:

Jewish community leaders in Bosnia have expressed concern after anti-Semitic graffiti were discovered this week in the country’s capital Sarajevo and in Tuzla on homes of community members.

“We received this news with regret and bitterness, aware that these incidents will not violate the good neighbourhood relations that Bosnian Jews have built with their fellow citizens from other ethnic and religious groups,’’ the Jewish community said in a statement issued on Friday.

“We appeal to the competent authorities to identify and punish the perpetrators,” it said, stressing that the country has no recent history of anti-Semitic incidents.

Jews have been equal citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina for more than 450 years and they did not deserve something like this, said the community President Jakob Finci. […]

About 1,000 Jews live in the country, half of them in Sarajevo and the rest in Mostar, Zenica, Tuzla, Doboj and Banja Luka.

Two-thirds of the community left after the outbreak of conflict in the former Yugoslavia (1992-1995), but the tendency toward emigration has slackened. Some 90% of the community is Sephardi. However, only older people still speak Ladino.

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