Jews of Slovenia

Nadene Goldfoot
                                                                     

Born April 26, 1970, Melania most likely
never met any Jews in Slovenia, at least not her home towns.  

Slovenia is a state that Melania Trump left for the USA.  Melanija Knavs was born in Novo Mesto, and grew up in Sevnica, in the Yugoslav republic of Slovenia. She worked as a fashion model through agencies in Milan and Paris, and moved to New York City in 1996. Her modeling career was associated with Irene Marie Models and Trump Model Management.

In 2001, Knavs became a permanent resident of the United States. She married Donald Trump in 2005 at age 35 and obtained U.S. citizenship in 2006. She is the second first lady (after Louisa Adams) born outside the United States, the first one to be a naturalized citizen and the first whose native language is not English.

                                                   

Slovenia covers 20,273 square kilometers (7,827 sq mi) and has a population of 2.084 million.

  The history of the Jews in Slovenia and areas connected with it goes back to the times of Ancient Rome. The present-day small Jewish community of Slovenia (Slovene: Judovska skupnost Slovenije) is estimated at 400 to 600 members, with the Jewish community of Slovenia  being about 500 to 1000 members Around 130 are officially registered,  most of whom live in the capital, Ljubljana.

I don't have to register as a Jew in Oregon, USA.  What does this mean?  Slovenia wants to know who and where Jews are living?  We register what political party we belong to, but not our religion!  Thank goodness for the USA!

Jews came to the lands of Slovenia in the 12th Century from Italy fleeing poverty and the laws and people of Central Europe towards Jews.  Even here they were forced to live in ghettos like they did in Venice, Italy.   

"In Maribor, Jews were successful bankers, winegrowers and millers. Several "Jewish Courts" (Judenhof) existed in Styria, settling disputes between Jews and Christians. 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. In 1397, Jewish ghettos in Radgona and Ptuj were set ablaze by anonymous anti-Jewish assailants."

The wealth of the Jews bred resentment among the Inner Austrian nobility and the burghers, with many refusing to repay Jewish money-lenders, while local merchants considered Jews as competitors.

                                                    

Maximilian I was Holy Roman Emperor from 1508 until his death. He was never crowned by the pope, as the journey to Rome was always too risky. He was instead proclaimed emperor elect by Pope Julius II at Trent.

 The antisemitism of the Catholic Church also played an important role in whipping up animosity against the Jews,  1492 was the year that the Spanish Inquisition was in full gear.  That's why in 1494 and 1495 the assemblies of Styria and Carinthia offered Austrian Emperor Maximilian a bounty for the expulsion of Jews from both provinces.  He did so and gave reasons like:   the Jewish pollution of the Christian sacrament, the ritual killings of Christian children (which were false accusations) , and the defrauding of debtors(accusations like this caused them to forget debts) . The expulsions started immediately, with the last Jews expelled in about 1718.The Jews were expelled from Maribor in 1496.   Following separate demands by the citizens of Ljubljana for the expulsion of Jews, Jews were expelled from Ljubljana in 1515. After the expulsion of the Jewish community, the Maribor synagogue was turned into a church.   Evidently the population of Christians took it over.  It most likely was

The first synagogue in Ljubljana, which remains the largest city of Slovenia, was  built  in 1213.  Issued with a Privilegium, Jews were able to settle an area of Ljubljana located on the left bank of the Ljubljanica River. The streets Židovska ulica ("Jewish Street") and Židovska steza ("Jewish Lane"), which now occupy the area, are still reminiscent of that period.  This amounts to Christians stealing a beautiful building and depriving the Jews of their synagogue.          

A provisional Maribor Synagogue:   The community center and prayer room are now also a part of this 70 square meter space. A rabbi comes regularly to visit from Trieste.  Trieste is a city and a seaport in northeastern Italy. It is situated towards the end of a narrow strip of Italian territory lying between the Adriatic Sea and Slovenia, ...

"It’s not an easy task to trace Ljublana’s jewish heritage in a few days. For example, no-one at the tourist office is able to tell me how to get to the synagogue. When I ask for the Jewish cemetery, one staff member even asks me if I come from "Jewishland".

                                                          

"In 1709, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI, ruler of the Habsburg Monarchy, 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). The decree was overturned in 1817 by Francis I and Jews were granted full civil and political right only with the Austrian constitution of 1867. 

Nevertheless, the Slovene Lands remained virtually without a consistent Jewish population, with the exception of Gorizia, Trieste, the region of Prekmurje, and some smaller towns in the western part of the County of Gorizia and Gradisca (Gradisca, Cervignano), which were inhabited mostly by a Friulian-speaking population."

According to the census of 1910, only 146 Jews lived in the territory of present-day Slovenia, excluding the Prekmurje region. Yet despite this, as elsewhere in Austria-Hungary, antisemitism started to intensify also in Slovenia, from the mid-19th century onward. propagated by prominent Slovene Catholic leaders, such as Bishop Anton Mahnič and Janez Evangelist Krek. The former called for a war against Judaism and the latter sought to persuade believers that the Jews were transmitters of the most harmful influences.                        

Adolf Hitler was a German politician and leader of the Nazi Party . He rose to power as the chancellor of Germany in 1933, and as Führer in 1934. During his dictatorship from 1933 to 1945, he initiated World War II in Europe by invading Poland on 1 September 1939. Wikipedia

          Hitler was born on  April 20, 1889, Braunau am Inn, Austria

Note that Hitler was from Austria and this was the garbage that his parents were exposed to, thus creating a palette of hatred in Hitler of hatred against Jews, even more than the rest of the population. 

"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. Soldiers returning from the front and locals looted Jewish and Hungarian shops. On November 4, 1918, in Beltinci, locals looted Jewish homes and shops, tortured Jews, and set fire to the synagogue.. After the pogrom, the once powerful Beltinci Orthodox Jewish community, numbering 150 in the mid-19th century, disappeared. In 1937 the local authorities demolished the Beltinci synagogue.  The Nazis' influence was great at this point.  The war was 

to start.  

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. In the 1920s, after the formation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Yugoslavia), the local Jewish community merged with the Jewish community of Zagreb, Croatia." 

 Only 63 members of the once largest Slovenian pre-war Jewish community survived the Holocaust. Quite the opposite, the majority of Jews arrested in Ljubljana in 1944 returned from the concentration camps. Similarly, most of the Jewish refugees who had fled to Italy managed to survive as well. These surviving Jewish refugees, who were mostly without a Yugoslav citizenship, rarely returned to Slovenia after the war. The few of them who returned home after the war usually soon left Yugoslavia, mostly for Israel.

Since the Holocaust of losing 6 million Jews all over Europe and elsewhere, we come to a time past 1990 in Slovenia and occasional antisemitic incidents still occur, such as the defacing of the Maribor synagogue with graffiti saying “Juden Raus” ("Out with the Jews"), while others have warned against Holocaust denial and antisemitic pronouncements by Slovene right-wingers.  It's probably keeping up with the rest of the world in getting worse today with their anti-Semitism.  

                                                   

Slovenia in perspective of other countries,
the tiny red state under pink Austria looks much smaller now.

Under Communism in Yugoslavia, the Jewish community in Socialist Slovenia numbered fewer than 100 members. The Federation of Jewish Communities was reestablished and upon the establishment of the State of Israel (1948), the Federation sought and received permission from the Yugoslav authorities to organize Jewish emigration to Israel. 8,000 Yugoslav Jews, among them Slovene Jews, who were all allowed to take their property with them, left for Israel. Podberšič says that data from the Belgrade archives indicate that just over 100 Slovenian Jews moved to Israel between 1945 and 1990. The last family to move there were the Bondis in the late 1980s, followed by a few individuals.

                                                

Melania Knavs immigrated to New York City in 1996. She modeled.  As a high-school student, she lived in a high-rise apartment in Ljubljana. She attended the Secondary School of Design and Photography in Ljubljana and studied architecture and design at the University of Ljubljana for one year before she dropped out. She speaks five languages: her native Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, English, French, and German.  Her father was a high ranking Communist who secretly had his daughters baptized as Catholics, as Communism advocates for aetheism.  Just think, in 1492 when Jews were threatened in Spain and then Portugal, they had to baptize their children Catholic but secretly practiced Judaism in their homes.  They were spied on to see if they are pork or not; if they were celebrating any Jewish holidays.  If caught, they would be killed.  

Since the year 2000, there has been a noticeable revival of Jewish culture in Slovenia. In 2003, a synagogue was opened in Ljubljana. 

Even the Jews of Slovenia have high academic standards for themselves as they do in other places, for being 0.02% of the world population, Jews here made names for themselves:

Famous Jews from Slovenia

• Kurt Sonnenschein , Gynecologist
• Mišo Alkalaj, Computer scientist, writer and journalist
• Katja Boh, Sociologist and politician, founding member of the Social Democratic Party of Slovenia
• Israel Isserlin, Medieval rabbi from Maribor
• Pavle Kornhauser, Pediatrician
• Lev Kreft, Philosopher and politician
• Paul Parin, Psychoanalyst
• Hannah Starman, Scholar
• Dušan Šarotar, Writer
• Mirjam Štajner, Writer
• Mladen Aleksander Švarc, Philosopher, Journalist and political activist
• Polona Vetrih, Actress
• Igor Vojtic (Woititz), Veterinarian and university professor

Religions in Slovenia today:  Judaism is not mentioned at all:

73% Catholicism 21.5% Non-religious 2.4% Islam 2.2% Eastern Orthodox 0.9% Lutheranism

Resource: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Slovenia

https://cafebabel.com/en/article/jewish-slovenia-but-maybe-not-for-much-longer-5ae0084bf723b35a145e357d/

http://www.sistory.si/cdn/publikacije/36001-37000/36294/ch10.html

https://www.total-slovenia-news.com/lifestyle/1098-slovenian-jewish-community-looks-back-at-those-who-moved-to-israel-and-warns-of-rising-antisemitism-feature