By Nathan

In January 2003, I travelled from Budapest to Novi Sad, a town in the north of Serbia, to participate in a chess competition that was being held there. During my ten-day stay, the winter snow melted and the greenery appeared, doing full justice to the meaning of Novi Sad as a “New Garden”.

The tournament organiser, when I told him I was Jewish, put me in touch with a player from the local community, who came to visit me at the hotel. Despite my inability to speak the native tongue, using a mixture of Hungarian, Serbian, German, Yiddish and English, Mr Ujhazi kindly offered to take me on a tour of the synagogue the following day.

The Novi Sad Jewish community now numbers about five hundred. Much assimilation and immigration has taken place since before the war, when as many as 4,000 of Novi Sad’s 80,000 inhabitants were Jews. Until the First World War, Novi Sad (Ujvidek in Magyar) used to be part of Hungary, and most of the community even now, when it has become rare amongst Serbs in the city, can and do speak Hungarian. Luckily for me, Mr Ujhazi brought his son Igor, seventeen years old and fluent in English, to conduct the tour in a language I could understand!

The synagogue stands as a proud reminder of former times, and is one of the most prominent and beautiful buildings in the city (see below). Nowadays it is owned by the city council who, because the acoustics are so great, hire it out for concerts. However the Jewish community are allowed to use it as they please, and come together to celebrate the festivals. To one side, the former Jewish school is now a ballet hall. The community centre is hidden at the back of the building on the other side, but has been renovated to include a library, administration office and communal space.

A postcard depicting the great domes of the Novi Sad Synagogue.

The synagogue is on “Zsidovska ulica” – Jews street, one of the main roads in central Novi Sad. Mr Ujhazi said that he remembered the time when all the houses and shops there were owned and worked by Jews. The interior is beautifully decorated, having been restored by the local council. They took over the property when it became too expensive for the Jewish community to maintain. When I asked to look inside the ark, Mr Ujhazi said, with a twinkle in his eye, that it hadn’t been opened in many years.

My timing was opportune, as the following day a Memorial Service was being held on the bank of the River Danube to commemorate the death of 2,000 Jews and a similar number of Serbs, who had been killed by enemy forces in January 1943. Next to a bridge, newly rebuilt after the Allied bombing in the mid-nineties, stands a memorial reminding us of the atrocity, which was committed before the Nazis had invaded Hungary and were rounding up Jews. The bitter cold that day had added poignancy: the Jews were rounded up and their bodies dumped in the river under the ice, as the ground would have been too hard to dig graves.

A few hundred people turned out for the Service, which is held on this day every year. It is a joint ceremony, half Jewish and half Serbian Orthodox, and it is deemed so important that TV cameras were broadcasting onto national television. A local choral group sang Enosh in perfect four-part harmony, and the Chief Rabbi from Belgrade gave an address and led Kaddish. For their part, Orthodox Christian monks led prayers involving “smells and bells”.

Afterwards I accompanied Mr Ujhazi and his wife back to the community centre, where we warmed up with hot tea. His family was most welcoming, and I very much hope that Igor and his friends have the opportunity to join in EuroJews events.

Another postcard depicting the Novi Sad Synagogue and former Jewish buildings.