The oldest communities of Jews in the port cities of the Balkans date back to the 4th century B.C during the reign of Alexander the Great in what would become North Macedonia.
Communities continued to form in Dalmatia, Slavonia, and Serbia from the 1st century A.D., partially as a result of the First Jewish–Roman War violently put down by Emperor Titus.
[1][4] The Jews, Muslims, and other religious minorities were exempt from the "Child Tax" which conscripted young Christian boys, brought them to Istanbul, educating them into a military force.
Its members murdered hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, and Roma as well as political dissidents in Yugoslavia during World War II.
They made Jews wear a yellow star on their clothing, confiscated property, and, among other requirements, closed and destroyed the synagogue in Zagreb.
German occupied Serbia followed in step with Croatia, establishing concentration camps and extermination policies with the assistance of the puppet government of Milan Nedić.
[10] The main race laws in the State of Serbia were adopted on 30 April 1941: the Legal Decree on Racial Origins (Serbian: Zakonska odredba o rasnoj pripadnosti).
As a result, Emanuel Schäfer, commander of the Security Police and Gestapo in Serbia, famously cabled Berlin after last Jews were killed in May 1942: Similarly.
[13] Of the Jewish population of 16,000 in the territory controlled by Nazi puppet government of Milan Nedić, police and secret services murdered approximately 14,500.
Miriam Steiner-Aviezer, a researcher into Yugoslavian Jewry and a member of Yad Vashem's Righteous Gentiles committee states that in World War II, "The Serbs saved many Jews.
After the war, state propaganda propagated the idea that Tsar Boris III opposed Adolf Hitler and refused to send over the Jews when he was actually the one responsible.