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Obituaries
Kosovo Jews Uncertain About Future
Prizren, Kosovo/ JTA — On a forlorn
road dotted with half-built houses, Ines
Quono reflects on her struggle in a land
so remote to most Americans it might as
well be Oz.
But instead of a yellow brick road, there
is crumbling, mud-drenched pavement
piled high with garbage.
"The only thing that works in Kosovo is
the banks; we all have to borrow money to
do something — anything;' says Quono,
28.
Quono is among the last Jews of Kosovo,
a southern province of Serbia about half
the size of New Jersey that declared inde-
pendence on Sunday.
Unemployment in Kosovo hovers at 50
percent and the average wage is $350 a
month. "We all worry how we will get by,"
says Quono, a university student, wife and
mother of a toddler.
The future of Quono and her family is
uncertain, as they decide whether their
destiny is in Israel or in southeastern
Europe, where their roots go back to the
Spanish Inquisition, when thousands of
Sephardic Jews fled to the Balkans.
There are 50 Jews left in Kosovo.
Belonging to three families, or clans, they
all live in Prizren, a rare gem of ancient
architecture amid a landscape devastated
by war, poverty and communist-era con-
crete.
The United Nations took over the
administration of Kosovo in 1999 after a
brutal conflict between Kosovo Albanians
seeking independence and Serbian
troops controlled by strongman Slobodan
Milosevic.
Ethnic Albanians account for 90 percent
of Kosovo's population of 2.2 million. The
Albanians are Muslim, but largely secular.
Distressed by a war they watched from
the sidelines and facing an uncertain
future, the Jews of Prizren are gloomy.
When the war started, the other Jews in
Kosovo — the 50 living in the capital city
of Pristina — fled to Serbia, where they
spoke the language and felt part of the
culture.
But those in Prizren, where Jews speak
Albanian and Turkish, stayed.
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