• • \\ , , • , \\\ \ \ \\ \ , \\, \ Center of newly reopened community center in Zagreb is a dream come true for Croatia's war-torn Jews A EDWARD SEROTTA SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS Scene from a Zagreb kindergarten, housed in the new JCC. agreb — One year ago, in the pre-dawn hours of an August morning, a bomb ripped through the Jewish commu- nity center in Zagreb, capital of the former Yugoslav republic of Croatia. The street was sealed off by police and snake-like hoses were run into the blackened building. No one claimed re- sponsibility and no clues have yet been found. Damage was estimated well into the tens of millions, sums the tiny Jew- ish community decidedly did not have. Thirteen months later, the street was again sealed off by police, but instead of fire trucks, Mercedes and BMWs disgorged diplomats and politicians, film stars and dignitaries, all heading into the glittering new Jew- ish community center to cel- 1Z 112 Edward Serotta is a Berlin- based photographer whose book "In a Timeless Place: Central Europe and its Jews 1986-1990" appeared last year. ebrate its reopening. Of the 5,000 guests, somewhere be- tween the hors d'oeuvres and the dessert trays, were many of Zagreb's 1,400 Jews, shaking hands, kiss- ing cheeks and beaming. They felt they had every right to smile. Their com- munity center had reopened, the bombing proved to be an isolated incident and there had been no further attacks. Further, anti-Semitism was not being flaunted in the press or parliament and re- cent elections showed the far right nationalists could only draw 5 percent of the vote. While Croatia itself was technically still at war with Serbia, the killing fields had moved to Bosnia. Zagreb, a museum-piece of Austro- Hungarian charms — coffee houses, baroque palaces and leafy green parks — was try- ing to return to normal. The question for Jews in the newly emerging state of Croatia was, what defined "normal?" Twelve thousand Jews lived in the city prior to World War II. They were wealthy, well connected and proudly Croatian. When sympathies were most need- ed, however, they were not returned. Yugoslavia was dismem- bered in the war, and an "independent" fascist Croatia came into being, headed by Ante Pavelic and his Ustascha regime. Under their aegis, nearly the entire Jewish population was mur- dered. The Croatians fought Serbs loyal to the Yugoslav king in exile while Tito's communist partisans fought them all. By 1945, a full 10 percent of Yugoslavia's population of 17 million had died in the fighting. After the war, Croatia re- turned to the fold in Tito's idea of a socialist Yugoslavia. The tiny Jewish communities throughout the country, which had gone from 80,000 to 6,500 (15,000 left for Israel in 1948), turn- ed inward. With no religious leaders or teachers and few corn- munities extant, Jewish life looked to be withering. But the generation coming of age in the late 1960s, uninter- ested in communism, be- came the engine that drove the communities back into relevance. Over the next 20 years, Jews re-established kindergartens and summer camps, youth clubs and sports jamborees, and re- painted, restored and rebuilt centers and memorials. Some funding came from the government. The bulk, however, totaling in the mil- lions, quietly came from the American Joint Distribution Committee, the aid- dispensing arm of American Jewry. Even with these small communities, JDC ex- perts were often heard to say the Yugoslav Jewish communities were among the most active and forward- looking in Europe. Tito's Yugoslavia — this union of South Slays, as it was known — lasted only as long as Tito lived. When he died in 1980, Serbs, Croats and Slovenes began staking out territories, positions and enemies, real and imagined. Jews, it seems, were the