Bosnia-Hercegovina -- Report on Jewish Heritage is Online

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

A comprehensive survey of Jewish heritage sites in Bosnia-Hercegovina has recently been posted online by the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad, which oversaw its research and compilation.

It includes information on synagogues, Jewish cemeteries and Holocaust sites in about three dozen towns. Much of the data dates from the early to mid-2000s.

Most of the sites are abandoned or ruined -- and some were the scene of heavy fighting during the Bosnian war in the early 1990s. As late as 2005, the report notes, mines were believed to still prove a danger  in the ruined Jewish cemetery in Derwenta.

Much of the onsite research was carried out by Ivan Ceresnjes, a former leader of the Bosnian Jewish community who is now with the Center for Jewish Art in Jerusalem.