History of the Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina
The location of Bosnia and Herzegovina (green) in Europe | |
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 281 | |
| Languages | |
| Bosnian, Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino | |
| Religion | |
| Judaism |
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The history of the Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Serbo-Croatian: Jevreji Bosne i Hercegovine; Jevrejski narod Bosne i Hercegovine) spans from the arrival of the first Bosnian Jews as a result of the Spanish Inquisition to the survival of the Bosnian Jews through the Holocaust and the Yugoslav Wars. Jews are one of the minority peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina, according to the country's constitution. The Bosnian Jewish community is composed of both Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews.
Judaism and the Jewish community in Bosnia and Herzegovina have one of the oldest and most diverse histories of all the former Yugoslav states, and is more than 400 years old, in terms of permanent settlement; records of Jewish presence in Bosnia and Herzegovina date back to the second century CE. Some scholars have argued that there has been a more or less continuous presence of Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina since the Roman Empire. Bosnia, then a self-governing province of the Ottoman Empire, was one of the few territories in Europe that welcomed Jews after their expulsion from Spain.
At its peak, the Jewish community of Bosnia and Herzegovina numbered between 14,000 and 22,000 members in 1941. Of those, 12,000 to 14,000 lived in Sarajevo, comprising 20% of the city's population.
Today, there are 281 Jews living in Bosnia and Herzegovina, recognised as a national minority. They have good relations with their non-Jewish neighbors, both Muslim and Christian.