Jewish Community of Tyrol and Vorarlberg

In the thirteenth century, the counts of Görz brought the first Jews to the shire of Tyrol, where they worked as toll collectors. Jewish families were generally tolerated, but not respected; they were often discriminated against, persecuted, and used as scapegoats in the wake of catastrophe. 

Today, the Republic of Belarus is a centralised state with a vividly expressed “vertical” of power. For the last 5 years, the country has enjoyed a certain stability, but, unfortunately, there is a definite lagging in democratic developments behind other republics of the former Soviet Union.

The communities of Brussels (15,000) and Antwerp (15,000) are the main centers of Belgian Jewry. Significantly smaller communities are located in Arlon, Liege, Mons, Ostende, Charleroi, and Ghent.

About half of the Jews live in Sarajevo and the balance in Mostar, Zenica, Tuzla, Doboj, and Banja Luka. Two-thirds of the community have left since the outbreak of conflict in the former Yugoslavia, but recently the tendency toward emigration has slackened. Some 90% of the community is Sephardi. However, only older people still speak Ladino.

Jewish have been lived in Bulgarian lands for almost 2000 years. They have been given an important contribution in the culture, social and economic life of the country.

More than half of Croatia’s Jews live in Zagreb, the capital. There are small communities in Osijek, Rijeka, Split, and Dubrovnik. The average age is well over 60, and there are only about 250 young people.

Appearance of the Jews in Cyprus dates back to the beginning of the 3rd century BC. The history of Jews of Cyprus is reach with events. The British established detention camps for Holocaust survivors from many European countries who were caught attempting to enter British-ruled Palestine. From 1946 until the founding of the State of Israel, the British incarcerated over 50,000 European Jewish refugees on the island. After establishing of the State of Israel the incarcerated Jewish refugees migrated to Israel.

Apart from Prague, in which the great majority of Jews live, there are several other communities, notably in Brno, Plzen, Olomouc, and Karlovy Vary. None of these smaller communities has more than 350 persons. Most Czech Jews are elderly. In recent years, however, the community has been bolstered by the presence of a large number of foreign Jews, primarily Americans, presently working in Prague. 

Before WWII, the Jewish Community of Estonia was small yet prosperous and active. In the early 20th century it built a Jewish school which currently accommodates the Tallinn Jewish School. All of Estonia’s major cities had synagogues that were destroyed during WWII. In the Soviet era, the Community’s activity was discontinued, only to renew at the end of 1980s. 

Riga (11,000) is the most important center of Jewish life in the Baltic States. There are several smaller communities, notably in Daugavpils (Dvinsk).

Most Jews live in Vilnius (Vilna), the capital, but there are also several smaller communities, notably in Kaunas (Kovno), Klajpeda (Memel), and Siauliai.

The first Jews arrived in the area now known as the Republic of Macedonia during Roman times, when some of the Jews fleeing persecution in other Roman territories settled in Macedonia. The first evidence of Jews in the region is an ancient synagogue dating from the 3rd or 4th century BC, located in the ancient town of Stobi in the south-east of the Republic of Macedonia.
Prior to World War II, the area’s Jewish community was centred in Bitola (approximately 8,000 Jews), Skopje (approximately 3,000 Jews) and Štip (approximately 500 Jews).
Most of these Jews, as well as almost the entire Jewish community of Bitola, were Ladino-speaking Sephardim.

To preserve and promote the ethnic traditions and cultural and religious heritage of Moldova’s Jews, through synagogues, communities, cultural centers and foundations, with the aim of optimizing the effectiveness of Jewish activities, reviving charitable activities, preserving historical monuments, cultural sites, and cemeteries, and establishing ethnic education

When Norway was invaded by Germany in 1940, 1,800 Jews were living in Norway ; all but 200 were Norwegian citizens. When the army surrendered and the state was taken over by the collaborationist government led by Quisling, Nazi demands for anti-Jewish legislation were accepted and implemented quickly. In 1942 when the Germans requested that Norwegian Jews be sent to Nazi concentration camps, the government complied by sending 770 Jews ; 760 were killed in death camps. The Norwegian underground succeeded in smuggling 900 Jews across the Swedish border to safety. In 1996 after revelations in the media and public pressure the Ministry of Justice appointed a commission to examine the issue of restitution of Jewish property confiscated by the Quisling regime.

The mission of Jewish Religious Communities of Poland as the central Jewish organisation in Poland is to serve each of the communities and their members through stimulating development, providing high-quality services, organising religious life, creating programmes that engage present and potential members, obtaining and allocating funds for implementing priority social projects and representing the interest and opinions of the Jewish community outside.

Lisbon is the main center of Jewish life, but there are some 200 Conversos in Belmonte who are in the process of returning to Judaism. A still smaller Converso community is found in Oporto.

The great majority of Romanian Jews are over the age of 70. Fewer than 1,000 are under the age of 25. Six thousand Jews live in Bucharest, and small Jewish communities exist in the principal towns of Moldavia-Iasi (Jassy), Dorahoi, Succeava, Radauti-and in Transylvania (Cluj, Arad, Timisoara, Satu Mare, Tigu Mures, Oradea), as well as in Constanta on the Black Sea coast.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of numerous successor states, “Russian Jewry” no longer embraces many of the communities that were once subsumed under the Communist and even pre-Communist rubric. Even so, Russia still accounts for one of the largest Jewish communities in the world. In addition to the two main cities, Moscow (200,000) and St. Petersburg (100,000), there are several dozen communities with more than 1,000 Jews. In recent years, Russian Jewry has been shrinking, primarily due to emigration and the ageing process. Estimates of the Jewish population of Birobidzhan, the so-called Jewish Autonomous Region, do not exceed 7,000.

In the scope of our Federation we have different Commissions in charge for different programs, projects and activities of the FJCS. Cultural Commission, Religious Commission, Hevra Kadisha (in charge of the Belgrade Jewish cemetery), Commission for Holocaust Survivors (in charge for different compensation programs aimed to Holocaust survivors), Social Commission (in charge for coordination of different social services, from cash relief to health and home care), Commission for the Restitution of Jewish property, Museum Commission, Youth Commission in charge for coordinating different youth projects, seminars, encounters etc. 

The majority of Slovak Jews live in Bratislava, the capital, but there are also Jewish communities in Kosice, Presov, Piestany, Nowy Zamky, and other towns. Most Jews are more than 70 years old, as intermarriage has taken a heavy toll. Yet in recent years, many younger people have rediscovered their Jewish origins, injecting new life into the remnant of Slovak Jewry.

The Jewish community of Slovenia (JSS) in its current form was established in 1997 with the help of JOINT. Before that time some people were gathering in a private apartment and tried to keep whatever was left of Jewish identity in Slovenia. After 1997 community life started developing. The first activities started to form, among them Hebrew classes and a few holiday celebrations. The first attempts of celebrating various holidays were very demanding since we didn’t know how to do it. The rich Jewish heritage was lost. For many years we tried to either revive the old or establish the new customs. We translated the Haggadah, published the first Slovene Jewish calendar and started publishing a two page “newspaper” called Menora. After two years Menora seized to exist.

The absorption of thousands of wartime refugees greatly influenced the Swedish community. As a result, Swedish Jewry is particularly active in international Jewish welfare activities and in supporting development projects in Israel. The community includes organizations such as WIZO, the General Organization of Jewish Women, Emunah, B’nai B’rith, and B’nai Akiva. The legal system in Sweden genetrally allows the free expression of anti-Semitic, racist, and xenophobic ideas, including Holocaust denial. Right-wing extremist groups, often with neo-Nazi sympathies, have perhaps a few thousand members. Some of these groups have links to Europe-wide extremist networks.

The Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities (SFJC) is the umbrella organisation for Jewish communities in Switzerland. It represents Swiss Jews politically, which includes maintaining contact with federal authorities, churches and other national organisations, as well as with domestic and international media and various international Jewish organisations. 

On the midnight of August 2nd 1492, when Columbus embarked on what would become his most famous expedition to the New World, his fleet departed from the relatively unknown seaport of Palos because the shipping lanes of Cadiz and Seville were clogged with Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain by the Edict of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain.

The Jews of Ukraine constitute the third largest Jewish community in Europe and the fifth largest in the world. Jews are mainly concentrated in Kyiv(110,000), Dnepropetrovsk (60,000), Kharkov (45,000), and Odessa (45,000). Jews also live in many of the smaller towns. Western Ukraine, however, has only a small remnant of its former Jewish population, with Lvivand Chernovtsy each having only about 6,000 Jews. The majority of Jews in present-day Ukraine are native Russian/Ukrainian speakers, and only some of the elderly speak Yiddish as their mother tongue (in 1926, 76.1% claimed Yiddish as their mother tongue). The average age is close to 45.

British Jewry has always been concentrated in Greater London, where two-thirds of the community now reside. Major regional centers include Manchester (30,000), Leeds (10,000), and Glasgow (6,500). In Birmingham, Brighton, Bournemouth, Gateshead, Hull, Leicester, Liverpool, Newcastle upon Tyne, Southend, and Westcliff, there are also sizeable communities, and there are dozens of smaller communities across the British Isles.