“During and after World War II, many synagogues were demolished.” Those preserved today are not religious objects, but have a completely different purpose. Those buildings represent a valuable historical, cultural, civilizational and architectural legacy that has been forever erased from these areas,” writes the editor of the monograph, Dr. Uglješa Belić, in the introduction to the monograph.

Before the Second World War, 4350 Jews lived in Novi Sad. 1300 survived the war. According to the last census, about 400 Jews live in Novi Sad. As the number of Jews in Novi Sad and the entire Vojvodina decreased, so did the number of synagogues. The first association with the “synagogue” today is the one in Novi Sad’s Jevreska Street. However, before 1941, a large number of settlements in Vojvodina, from villages to large cities, had their own synagogue – Bačka Palanka, Crvenka, Senta, Kovilj, Mali Iđoš… – a total of 76 Vojvodina settlements. The authors of the monograph “Synagogues in Vojvodina – witnesses of the past” write about each of these 76 buildings.

“This monograph contains almost 60 photographs of Vojvodina synagogues – the demolished ones and the three that remained. They were all architecturally beautiful buildings. After the Second World War, the synagogues were demolished, because there were no Jews to maintain them, and they were mostly built in the very center of the settlement. In the monograph, we researched synagogues, but also the places where Jews lived, who was the rabbi, how they were organized, everything we could collect,” Goran Levi, one of the authors of the monograph, told Autonomija.

The reviewer of the monograph, Dr. Duško Radosaljević, emphasizes that such books do not allow the memory of the Jews to be taken away.

“If the whole world was home to the Jews, then the areas of Central and Eastern Europe were their living room. A big mark has been left here as well, and that’s why we study them. In the political atmosphere in which we have been living for the last 30 years, the Jews have become a showpiece. A lot has been renovated, but it’s all for show. Jews should not be an ornament. They made a great cultural contribution to these areas. And these three synagogues that remained in Vojvodina captivate with their appearance.”