קהילת יהודי זאגרב

אלברט וייס (1905 -1964), משפטן ומנהיג קהילה שנולד בזמון, סרביה (אז חלק מאוסטריה-הונגריה). הוא למד פילוסופיה וכלכלה בברלין ובפריז וקיבל דוקטורט במשפטים בשנת 1929 מאוניברסיטת זגרב בקרואטיה (שהייתה אז חלק מיוגוסלביה). במהלך מלחמת העולם השנייה הוא היה שבוי מלחמה בגרמניה.

בתום המלחמה וייס היה חבר בוועדה הממלכתית היוגוסלבית לחקר הפשעים שביצעו הכובשים ושותפיהם. בנוסף, הוא היה חבר במשלחת היוגוסלבית במשפטי נירנברג של פושעי המלחמה הנאצים.

וייס עבד כפרופסור למשפטים בבלגרד, סרביה, והרצה על תולדות המשפט והיסטוריה של הציוויליזציה משנת 1947 עד 1964 במחלקה להיסטוריה של המכון למדעי החברה בבלגרד. וייס כיהן כנשיא איחוד הקהילות היהודיות הדתיות ביוגוסלביה בין השנים 1948 עד 1964.

Oskar Danon (1913-2009), composer and conductor, born in Sarajevo, Bosnia (then part of Austria-Hungary). He studied music in his native Yugoslavia, then in Prague, Czech Republic, earning a PhD in musicology from Charles University. He was a conductor in Sarajevo until Yugoslavia was invaded by Nazi Germany and its allies in 1941.

During the war, Danon joined the partisan forces led by Josip Broz Tito. He served as deputy commander in a number of partisan battalions and reached the rank of major. In 1944 he was transferred to the Cultural Department of the Partisan General Staff and was one of the founders of the partisan theater and choir. He composed several songs, including Uz Maršala Tita ("Together with Marshal Tito"), the Yugoslav partisan anthem which became popular in German occupied Yugoslavia.

After the war he served as the musical director of the Belgrade Opera between 1944-1965. He was director of Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra in Ljubljana from 1970 to 1974, of the Radio Zagreb Symphony Orchestra, and of the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra. Danon conducted the festive concert celebrating 400-year of Sarajevo Jewry held on October 14, 1966 in Sarajevo, attended by representatives of the local government and representatives from Israel.

Danon directed various orchestras in the world, among them the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London (1962-1963), Vienna State Opera (1964), the Verdi Theatre in Trieste, Italy. He recorded a large number of works by Smetana, Enescu, Dvořák, Rimsky-Korsakov, Prokofiev, Stravinsky Saint-Saëns, Wagner, Verdi, Mussorgsky, Puccini, Kalman, Stravinsky, Cesar Franck and others.

Danon was a professor at the Belgrade Music Academy. He was a member and president of the Association of Music Artists of Serbia. Danon was awarded the October Award of the City of Belgrade. He died in Belgrade, Serbia.

Ludovic Feldman (1893-1987), violinist and composer, born in Galati, Romania. He started his musical studies in Galati during 1903-1909, and then continued at the Conservatory in Bucharest until 1911, when he received an internship at Neues Wiener Konservatorium In Vienna, Austria, staying there until 1913. 

Feldman was the concert-master of the Zagreb Opera Orchestra during 1925-1926. He returned to Bucharest in 1926 as first violinist at the Romanian Opera Orchestra, a position he held until 1940. In parallel he was a member of the Teodorescu Quartet in Bucharest and violinist at the Romanian Philharmonic Orchestra until 1940, when he was fired as a result of the anti-Semitic policy of the Fascist regime in Romania. Feldman was defended by Mihail Jora and Geore Enescu, who intervened, in difficult moments, for the exceptional violinist of the Philharmonic.

After the Holocaust, he returned to the Romanian Philharmonic Orchestra serving as its concert-master for eight years until his retirement in 1953. From 1953 to 1963 Feldman was director of the Symphony and Chamber Music Bureau of the Romanian Union of Composers.

Many of his compositions contain a theme of folk inspiration translated into a modern language. His works include 4 Orchestra Suite (1948, 1949, 1952, 1960), Concerto for two string orchestras, celestial, piano and percussion (1958), Concert Symphony for String Orchestra (1971), Concertino (1975), Concert piece (1979), Ballad for violin and orchestra (1952), Miniatures, sketches, preludes for piano 2 and 4 hands (1959), In memoriam of Anne Franck, Tragic poem.

Feldman received the Prize of the Romanian Union of Composers (1968, 1970, 1972), the State Prize (1952), and the Prize of the Romanian Academy (1978).

Rosa Papo (1914-1984), physician, Major General of the Yugoslav Army, born in Sarajevo, Bosnia (then part of Austria-Hungary). She studied medecine at the University of Zagreb and before WW 2 she worked as a physician in various hospitals in Sarajevo, Begov Han and Olovo in Bosnia, then part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. After Yugoslavia was invaded by Germany and its allies in April 1941, Papo joined the partisans led by Josip Broz Tito in December 1941 and became commander of a field hospital of the Ozren unit of partisans. In 1942 she became a member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. Papo was in charge of the recruitment system for the health service of the partisan forces and was appointed commander of the field hospitals operated by the partisans. In 1942 she was wounded during an enemy air raid and lost one eye. Papo was advanced to the rank of captain in 1943 and a major in 1945. Most of her family, including the parents and two siblings, were killed in concentration camps. 

After WW2, Papo continued her professional medical career in the Yugoslav Army. She completed her specialization in epidemiology and was the first head of the newly formed Infectious Diseases Clinic (1961) at the Military Medical Academy (VMA). From 1965 to 1970 she was a member of the newly formed Clinic for Infectious Diseases. Author of over 50 research papers, she became a professor at the Military Medical Academy and served as president of the Central Military Medical Commission.

In 1973 Papo was advanced to the rank of Major General, the first woman to reach the rank of general not only in the Yugoslav Army, but in any other army of the Balkan countries.

Miroslav Feldman (1899-1976), poet, writer, physician, and partisan, born in Virovitica, Croatia (then part of Austria-Hungary). He studied medicine in Zagreb and Vienna. He worked as a physician in various places in Yugoslavia, among them Virovitica, Pakrac, Osijek, Sarajevo and Zagreb. After Yugoslavia was invaded by Germany and its allies, he fled to Split where he joined the partisan forces. Feldman was instrumental in organizing the partisan medical service, serving as a naval medical officer for the partisan forces in the region of Istria and the Dalmatian coast of Yugoslavia.

Feldman started his literary career as a poet, and then became a playwright. His works include Arhipelag snova ("Dream Archipelago"), Vožnja (“Driving”), Profesor Žič (Professor Zic), Zec (“Rabbit”), U pozadini (“In the background"), Iz mraka (“Out of the Dark”). Feldman was the president of the Yugoslav and Croatian branches of PEN – the international association of writers.  

George Mantello (born György / Baruch Mandl, aka George Mandel) (1901-1990), businessman, rescuer of many thousands of Jews during the Holocaust, born in Lechinta, Romania (then part of Austria-Hungary). His father, Baruch Yehudah Mandl, owned a mill in Lechinta. He studied in Budapest, Hungary, and after 1921 worked for a bank in Vienna, Austria. Mantello then moved first to Cluj, Romania, and eventually to Bucharest, where he became a textiles manufacturer and a banker. He supported the Zionist movement and visited the Land of Israel. In Bucharest he befriended Colonel José Arturo Castellanos, the consul of El Salvador in the Romanian capital, while being involved into a sale of Romanian weapons to El Salvador.

Mantello was in Vienna in 1938 and in Prague in 1939 and witnessed the anti-Semitic persecutions that followed the annexation of Austria and Czechia by Nazi Germany. After the annexation of Northern Transylvania by Hungary in August 1940, Mantello tried to escape from Hungary. However, he was arrested by the Gestapo in Rijeka (Fiume), in Axis occupied Yugoslavia and detained in Zagreb for a number of months. He managed to escape to Bucharest and then to Switzerland, where in 1942 he started to work as First Secretary for Castellanos who was now the Salvadorian consul in Geneva. Castellanos and Mandello issued thousands of Salvadorian certificates that were smuggled into German occupied territories. Particularly, Mandello was involved in the effort to save the Hungarian Jews from deportation to Auschwitz in 1944. With the assistance of Florian Manoliu, a Romanian diplomat in Switzerland, Mantello obtained and then published a reported detailing the ghettoization and mass deportations of the Jews of Hungary in the spring of 1944. The publication in the Swiss press, and then outside Switzerland, had a huge impact on the local and international public opinion and led to protests and letters of advertisement sent by world leaders to the Hungarian authorities with the effect that the deportations were stopped on July 9, 1944.

Mantello died in Rome, Italy, and was buried in Jerusalem, Israel.

José Arturo Castellanos Contreras was recognized by Yad Vashem as a Rightenous Among the Nations in 2010.  

Miroslava Despot (born Bluhweiss) (1912-1995), the first female economic and cultural historian in Croatia, and an athlete, born in Varaždin, Croatia (then part of Austria-Hungary). In 1921 the family changed their surname to Bliss. In 1923 she moved to Zagreb, where she attended high school from 1923 to 1931. During those years she became an outstanding tennis player – in 1929 she was classified fourth in the first official rankings of Yugoslavia and a winner of the Yugoslav tennis championships.

After the invasion of Yugoslavia by Germany and its allies and the establishment of the Fascist state of Croatia, she hid along with her parents in a house attics and then at the Srebrnjak sanatorium in Zagreb, managing to escape deportation thanks to her relationships. 

After WW2 she studied history at the University of Zagreb from 1945 to 1949, and then earned a PhD in 1957. In 1958 she attended archival studies in Paris.

Despot worked as a curator at the Museum of National Libedration in Zagreb from 1950 to 1953, at the Museum of Arts and Crafts, from 1953 to 1963, and after 1963 until her retirement at the Institute for the History of the Croatian Workers (now the Croatian Institute of History). She was a lecturer at the Faculty of Science of the University of Zagreb from 1957 to 1967, and as a scientific adviser, until 1973.

Despot was a leading authority in the history of the 19th century landowners in Croatia. Her works include Pokušaji manufakture u Građanskoj Hrvatskoj u 18. stoljeću (“Attempts at manufacturing in Civic Croatia in the 18th century”, 1962), Privreda Hrvatske na domaćim i međunarodnim izložbama do osnivanja Zagrebačkog zbora 1910. god (“Croatian economy at domestic and international exhibitions until the founding of the Zagreb Choir in 1910”, 1969), Industrija i trgovina građanske Hrvatske 1873–1880 (“Industry and trade of civil Croatia 1873–1880”, 1979) and dozens of research articles. She died in Zagreb.  

Miroslav Radan (born Weiss) (1907-1982), veterinarian, born in Bjelovar, Croatia (then part of Austria-Hungary). He started studying veterinary medicine in Zagreb and then continued in Vienna, Austria. He immigrated to 1948 to Israel. He attended professional courses in Denmark, Norway, Italy and Switzerland. Radan served as director of the bacteriological laboratory for inspection of meat and meat products at the Veterinary Institute of the Isreali Ministry of Agriculture. In 1972, he was appointed a lecturer at Tel Aviv University, where he founded a laboratory as part of his postgraduate studies in veterinary medicine. He spent time in the United Kingdom serving as a consultant for kosher cattle slaughter. Radan is the author of a number of scientific articles on meat control, hygiene control and ritual slaughter rules. He died in Tel Aviv.  

Oskar Nettel (1895-?), businessman and industrialist, born in Trutnov, Czech Republic (then part of Austria-Hungary). He moved to Yugoslavia in 1931 settling in Zagreb. Along with Leo Hahn, he founded Hahn & Nettel, a textile plant located in the Penkala building on Branimirova St. that produced linen, cotton, wool, silk, hemp and jute fabrics as well as products made of horsehair. Following the invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers in 1941 and the establishment of the Fascist State of Croatia, the assets of his company estimated at over 8,000,000 dinars in June 1941, were confiscated. Nettel perished in the Holocaust.

Paul (Pavao) Neuberger (1894?-1976), lawyer and community leader, born in Zagreb, Croatia (then part of Austria-Hungary). He studied at the Law School of the University of Zagreb earning a doctorate in 1918. He became a judge in Zagreb in 1922 and later turned to private practice and opened a lawyer office on Haulikova St. in Zagreb. He was active in Jewish youth organizations and in many other Jewish organztions, particularly in the Zagreb 1090 Lodge of Bnei Brit. Neuberger was a member of the Zagreb delegates to the inauguration of the Yugoslav Grand Lodge of Bnei Brit in Belgrade in 1935.

He immigrated along with his family to the United States in 1940. He settled in New York, attended the New York University, obtained a law degree, and became an expert on immigration isssues. Already an American citizen, he succeeded in obtaining for himself and another 29 former Yugoslav citizens hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Yugoslav government as compensation for the properties left in Yugoslavia. Neuberger was a co-founder, first secretary and longtime president of the Association of Yugoslav Jews in the United States, then its honorary president. He published on Jewish topics.