The Sarajevo Haggadah

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• The German 718. Infanterie Division attempts to drive about 2,000 of Tito’s partisans into a pre-set cordon of ten puppet Croatian battalions backed by artillery. Generalmajor Johann Fortner considers the flanking terrain impassable and is flummoxed when the partisans break up into small groups and escape.

 

- Fortner will be promoted to Generalleutnant after conducting massacres of Jews and Romani in Yugoslavia. He will also visit the Bosnian National Museum and demand a 14th Century Jewish Manuscript known as the Sarajevo Haggadah. The Bosnian Muslim librarian will tell him it has already been turned over to another German officer, then smuggle it to safety with a village imam. It will be returned to the museum after the war.

 

- The manuscript escaped destruction by Ferdinand and Isabella in the late 15th Century by being smuggled out of Spain, and hidden in Italy until the 16th Century. It will be hidden from fascists again in the early 1990s, and resurface in 1995.

 

The Sarajevo Haggadah"