The Jewish Community of Split

Split

Also Spliet; In Italian: Spalato

Adriatic port, second largest city in Croatia.

21st Century

The Jewish community of Split consists of approximately 100 individuals.  There is no rabbi, and the members are mostly traditional, as opposed to religious.

The historic Sephardi synagogue built in the 16th century and renovated in 1728, is one of the oldest in the world still in use. In 2014, it was restored and damage repaired with help from the World Monuments Fund’s Jewish Heritage Program.  The black and white marble aron hakodesh,(holy ark) is built into the western wall of the Diocletian palace and oriented toward Jerusalem. An exhibition, Jews in Split, was created as an educational tool for the local community and visiting tourists.

History

A Jewish community with a cemetery existed in nearby Salona (now Solin), the capital of Roman Dalmatia in the third century CE. When Salona was destroyed by the Avars in 641, the survivors including Jews took refuge behind the walls of the Emperor Diocletian's palace, a structure of buildings, streets and fortifications. This became the origin of the town of Split. Archaeological digs have discovered menorahs inscribed on stone blocks of the palace that testify to the early presence of the Jews and are thought to belong to the first synagogue in Split.  

The register of the Church's properties in 1397 mentions a building that served as a synagogue.

At the end of the 15th century, the size of the community increased due to an influx of Jews fleeing the Spanish inquisition. Although the number of Jews did not exceed 300, they played an important economic role in the local economy.

The palace burned down in 1507 and was never rebuilt. The Jews left the southeastern part of the town and moved to the northwest section which later became the ghetto. A new synagogue was created out of the second floors of two medieval houses on what had been the western side of the palace.

In 1573 the Jewish community was given permission to construct a cemetery on the eastern slope of the Marjan hill overlooking the city. At present, it is one of the oldest preserved Jewish cemeteries existing in Europe with over 700 legible tombstones.  The Sephardic gravestones, in accordance with tradition, lie horizontal rather than stand vertical. The last burial was in 1945.

In the 16th century there were two groups of Sephardi Jews living in Split. The Ponentine (western) group came from Italy or from Spain via Italy, Split being a Venetian possession, and the Levantine (eastern) group from the Ottoman territories in the Balkans. Both groups later merged into one Sephardi congregation whose notable families were Pardo, Macchiero, Misrai (Mizrachi), Penso (Finzi), and Jesurun (Yeshurun). There were also some Ashkenazi Jews, such as the Morpurgo family from Maribor.

The Jews of Split were mainly merchants, physicians, and tailors. The Venetian authorities protected them from the inquisition and favored them in the interest of trade with the Ottoman Empire.

In 1592 the Jew Daniel Rodriguez succeeded, with the authorization of the senate of Venice, in establishing a free port in Split. He constructed the lazaretto, a building complex on the waterfront with the dual purpose of facilitating trade and quarantining goods and people. The lazaretto became extremely important to Venetian trade, and Split experienced an economic boom.

Jewish merchants from the Ottoman empire who wished to settle in Split were exempted from paying the residence tax, and were guaranteed immunity of person and capital when traveling to Venice via Split. The free port prospered, and there were Jews who became wealthy from traveling to the Ottoman territories in the Balkans and exporting the wares brought to Venice. Later they set up agents in major cities. In the 17th century, Joseph Penso, consul of the Jews, was instrumental in expanding the free port's activities.

The increasing wealth of Split's Jews brought about a prohibition on real estate ownership except by special license, to prevent gentiles from pledging houses and land to Jews.

During the Turkish attack in 1657 Jews took an active role and  were assigned the defense of the northwest tower  of Diocletian’s palace which later became known as the Jewish position (posto degl' Ebrei).

In the beginning of the 18th century there were several abortive attempts to exclude Jews from the food trade (1719, 1748), and from tailoring (1724, 1758). The law of 1738, regulating Jewish rights and duties in Venetian possessions was applied in Split. It included the requirement of Levantine Jews to wear a yellow hat, and other Jews a red one; confinement to the ghetto between midnight and sunrise; prohibition from leaving it all Thursday and Friday of holy week; closing the shops in the ghetto on Christian holidays; and an interdiction against employing Christians.

The general decadence of Venice in the late 18th century and its anti-Jewish measures of 1779 caused the departure of many Jewish families. In 1796 there were 173 Jews left in Split.

The ghetto was abolished by Napoleon who conquered Venice in 1797. When Split passed to Austria in 1814, the Jewish laws valid in Austria were applied there, and full emancipation was granted only in 1873. Many families left for Italy during the 19th century, and with the influx of Jews from Croatia and Bosnia, the community became increasingly Croatian speaking.

The Holocaust Period

When on April 6, 1941, the Italian army occupied the town, there were 400 Jews living there, some being refugees from Austria and Czechoslovakia. Although Dalmatia was nominally controlled by Ante Pavelic, founder of the Fascist ultranationalist Ustase organization, and head of the collaborationist Independent State of Croatia, the Italian army protected the Jews from his regime, and some 2,000 refugees from Croatia passed through Split by 1943.

In June 1942 a mob devastated the synagogue, community offices, shops, and private houses of Split and burned records and artefacts in the main square. Under German pressure refugees were interned in Italian camps on Dalmatian islands. When Italy capitulated in September 1943, and before the Germans entered the town, several hundred Jews crossed the Adriatic in small boats to Italy and to partisan-held islands, while others joined the partisan forces on the mainland. All remaining male Jews were made to register with the German authorities, and on October 13 were arrested and sent to the Sajmiste camp near Belgrade where most of them perished. Their families, some 300 women and children, were also arrested, but later released for lack of transportation to camps. On March 11, 1944, they were all sent to Jasenovac, a notoriously barbaric concentration and extermination camp in Slavonia, established by the Croation Ustase regime.

Over fifty per cent of the pre-war Jewish population of Split died either in concentration camps or fighting with the partisans.

Postwar

In 1947 there were 163 Jews in Split, and in 1970 approximately 120; there was no rabbi and very little communal activity. Many of the surviving Jews migrated to Israel. Yugoslavia became a socialist republic, but being less authoritarian than other members of the Warsaw Pact, allowed Jews to travel to Israel and other countries. The new military hospital inaugurated in 1965 bears the name of a Jew, Dr. Isidore Perera-Molic, the founder of the Yugoslav army medical corps.

With the dissolution of Yugoslavia, and after Croatia gained its independence in 1991 there was a revival of Jewish communal life in Split.