History of the Jews in Slovenia
In 2011, the small Slovenian Jewish community (Slovene: Judovska skupnost Slovenije) was estimated at 500 to 1,000 members, of whom around 130 are officially registered, [1] most of whom live in the capital, Ljubljana.
Israel Isserlein, who authored several essays on medieval Jewish life in Lower Styria, was the most important rabbi at the time, having lived in Maribor.
Issued with a Privilegium, Jews were able to settle an area of Ljubljana located on the left bank of the Ljubljanica River.
[8] In 1709, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI, ruler of the Habsburg monarchy,[10] issued a decree allowing Jews to return to Inner Austria.
Nevertheless, Jews in that time settled almost exclusively in the commercial city of Trieste and, to a much smaller extent, in the town of Gorizia (now both part of Italy).
[10] In 1918, in the chaotic transition between Austria-Hungary and the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, riots broke out against Jews and Hungarians in many places in Prekmurje.
On November 4, 1918, in Beltinci, locals looted Jewish homes and shops, tortured Jews, and set fire to the synagogue.
In 1937 the local authorities demolished the Beltinci synagogue[12] Rampant anti-Semitism was among the reasons why few Jews decided to settle in the area, and the overall Jewish population remained at a very low level.
During that period, the Jewish population was reinvigorated by many immigrants fleeing from neighbouring Austria and Nazi Germany to a more tolerant Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
[10] While interior minister in the Yugoslav government, the leading Slovene politician and former Catholic priest, Anton Korošec, declared "all Jews, Communists, and Freemasons as traitors, conspirators, and enemies of the State".
[14] Then in 1940 Korošec introduced two antisemitic laws in Yugoslavia, to ban Jews from the food industry and restrict the number of Jewish students in high schools and universities[10] Slovene Jews were severely affected, as Sharika Horvat noted in her testimony for the Shoah Foundation, "everything fell apart .... under the Korošec government.
The Jewish community, very small even before World War II and the Shoah, was further reduced by the Nazis occupation between 1941 and 1945; the Jews in northern and eastern Slovenia (the Slovenian Styria, Upper Carniola, Slovenian Carinthia, and Posavje), which was annexed to the Third Reich, were deported to concentration camps as early as in the late spring of 1941.
[quantify] In Ljubljana and in Lower Carniola, which came under Italian occupation, the Jews were relatively safe until September 1943, when most of the zone was occupied by the Nazi German forces.
[citation needed] In late 1943, most of them were deported to concentration camps, although some managed to escape, especially by fleeing to the zones freed by the partisan resistance.
[citation needed] In Ljubljana, 32 Jews were able to hide until September 1944, when they were betrayed and arrested in raids by the collaborationist Slovene Home Guard police and handed over to the Nazis, who then sent them to Auschwitz, where most were exterminated.
"[16] The influential Catholic priest, Lambert Ehrlich, who advocated collaboration with the Italian Fascist authorities, campaigned against "Jewish Satanism," which he maintained was trying to get its hands on other peoples’ national treasures.
[19] In 1953, the synagogue of Murska Sobota, the only remaining after the Shoah, which the handful of Jewish survivors were unable to maintain and therefore sold in 1949 to the city, was demolished by the local Communist authorities to make way for new apartments.
[20] In addition, the Moskovič mansion was sold under questionable circumstances and is now used by the Social Democrats,[20][21] the successor of the Communist Party of Slovenia.
The present chief rabbi for Slovenia, Ariel Haddad, resides in Trieste and is a member of the Lubavitcher Hassidic school.
Following the delegation, WJC Executive Vice President Maram Stern issued an open letter to the Slovenian Minister of Foreign and European Affairs Tanja Fajon.
The letter stated that "Invariably, tendentious attacks on Israel fan the flames of antisemitism… Ultimately, the people of Slovenia and the government will be most affected by the hatred that has been metastasizing throughout the country, and only you and your colleagues can administer the cure.”[33] The only functioning Synagogue in Slovenia has been in the Jewish Cultural Center at Križevniška 3 in Ljubljana since 2016, where the sefer torah of the Slovene Jewish community is located.
