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Friday April 23, 1999

Yugoslav Jews relate daily drama of siege

RUTH E. GRUBER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

ROME -- Despite the NATO bombing campaign, a former leader of the Yugoslav Jewish community continues to play tennis with a group of friends two times a week in Belgrade.

When they now play, the men wear bull's-eye targets pinned to their backs -- a symbol worn by Yugoslav citizens protesting NATO's campaign.

Describing the situation via e-mail, the man said the games have been cut short recently due to air raids. But the games "will probably go on as long as the tennis courts are intact -- or as long as we are intact."

This man, like most people contacted via e-mail for this story, asked that his name not be used.

"I still feel that this is surreal," he wrote. "I still cannot believe all this is happening. OK, I do, but not yet 100 percent. I suppose people in Beirut, Sarajevo and perhaps Vietnam, for that matter, felt the same way."

NATO's war against Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's campaign against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo has placed Yugoslavia's 3,000 Jews, most of whom live in Belgrade, in much the same crisis as that faced by their fellow citizens.

Yugoslavia's Jews are well integrated into mainstream society, and they share the same concerns, frustrations and fears experienced by their fellow citizens as they try to carry on their daily lives.

"Our worries are the same, and our troubles, too," wrote one Belgrade Jewish man in an e-mail. "Food is still sufficient, so is water and electric power. Once that becomes scarce, we shall be in trouble."

Reported another man: "Where I live in Belgrade, you can hear explosions and see lights from the rockets and bombs. In the suburbs, the situation is worse. The rockets fall even on civilians, and some of our friends spend all the time in the bunkers."

The NATO attack has triggered shock, surprise and anger, as well as dismay and disruption. It also triggered a sense of common fate against an outside enemy.

"NATO united the Serbs for the first time since 1815," said one Jewish man.

Yugoslav Jews -- who throughout the series of Balkan wars in the 1990s steered clear of taking any official political position -- for the most part have closed ranks with the rest of the country in protesting the NATO campaign.

This was expressed publicly in a March 28 appeal issued by the Federation of Jewish Communities of Yugoslavia to halt the attack.

"The bombing hurts all Yugoslav citizens including Jews, as we also are citizens of Yugoslavia," it stated.

Individual Jews -- such as the tennis player -- protest symbolically by wearing a "target" or by dancing and singing at the anti-NATO open-air concerts held at noon daily in downtown Belgrade.

One young woman reported by e-mail that she had wanted to join other residents of Belgrade in a vigil as voluntary human shields on the city's bridges, but was too scared to do so.

"There wasn't any bombing in Belgrade last night, but my mother was awake all night listening for airplanes," she wrote. "We stayed in our beds. We are too cowardly to go on the bridge at night -- and I am not proud of that."

One member of the Jewish community, Avram Izrael, has become a well-known public figure during the crisis.

Izrael is the spokesman for Belgrade's Monitoring and Early Warning Center, a civil defense office that informs the public of imminent attacks. In this capacity, he appears regularly on local radio and television issuing air raid warnings and explaining what should be done in cases of emergency.

One Belgrade Jew said that among the placards carried by the crowd attending the daily protest concerts was one that reads, "Hey, Clinton, may Avram Izrael wake you up!"

Meanwhile, the European Council of Jewish Communities has launched an appeal to help Yugoslav Jews.

"Inside Yugoslavia, the situation is dark," it said in a statement earlier this month. "The Federation of Jewish Communities of Yugoslavia is maintaining daily contacts with the nine Jewish communities, financially supports them and coordinates the protection of all its members. War is creating emergency needs for these communities of Yugoslavia. The available funds the JDC has provided will soon run dry. As usual in such situations, money can solve some of the problems!"

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