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invitation to a wedding at the Ashkenazi Kosmajska Temple in Belgrade Serbia. Date is in the first few months of World War 2.
Serbia remained neutral until April 1941, when it was occupied by German forces. One can only image what fate held for the couple and their guests.
Berta Krakauer I Pavel Kraus venčaće se u Beagradu 3. Decembra 1939 g. u 9 ½ h pce padne, u sinagazi : Kosmajska ul. 19. Cestitanja u sinagozi
Telegrami : Kraus, Beograd, Zagrebačka 4
Berta Krakauer and Pavel Kraus will get married in Belgrade on December 3, 1939. at 9 ½ o'clock it falls, in the synagogue: Kosmajska St. 19. Congratulations in the synagogue
Telegrams: Kraus, Belgrade, Zagrebačka 4
Stain on left, some toning spots.
3 x 5 ½"
Ashkenazi religious lessons were held in the newly constructed synagogue on Kosmajska Street. That is the sole remaining synagogue today. The headquarters of the Ashkenazi community and the rabbinate were located in that building.
Belgrade’s only functioning synagogue, at Marsala Birjuzova 19. Known as the Kosmajska Temple because the street was called Kosmajska before World War II, the synagogue was opened in 1926 by Ashkenazim, although today most of its congregants are Sefardim. Rather than destroy it, the Nazis used it as a brothel.
In Serbia, German occupiers established concentration camps and extermination policies with the assistance of the puppet government of Milan Nedić.
The Nazi genocide against Yugoslav Jews began in April 1941.[24] The state of Serbia was completely occupied by the Nazis. The main race laws in the State of Serbia were adopted on 30 April 1941: the Legal Decree on Racial Origins. Jews from Srem were sent to Croatian camps, as were many Jews from other parts of Serbia. In rump Serbia, Germans proceeded to round up Jews of Banat and Belgrade, setting up a concentration camp across the river Sava, in the Syrmian part of Belgrade, then given to Independent State of Croatia. The Sajmište concentration camp was established to process and eliminate the captured Jews and Serbs. 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: "Serbien ist judenfrei."
By the time Serbia and Yugoslavia were liberated in 1944, most of the Serbian Jewry had been murdered. Of the 82,500 Jews of Yugoslavia alive in 1941, only 14,000 (17%) survived the Holocaust.
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