Memories of a Jewish Family in Šabac

Prior to World War I Šabac, like other Serbian cities, had a Jewish population. According to the 1910 census there were 132 Jewish families. However, after the end of the war, only 18 families remained in the city. Until 1941, when Nazi Germany occupied Serbia, Jewish families lived in every area of Šabac. While they engaged in a variety of professions, the majority were merchants who owned their own stores. Affordability and variety made their businesses successful.

The Jewish community in Šabac had its own synagogue on Artillery Street (now Vlada Jovanović street), which still stands. In the fall of 1941, German occupiers, together with Croatian Ustaše, rounded up all the males in Šabac older than 14 years of age. All of them were sent on a so-called “bloody march” to the village of Jarak in Srem, which is 21 kilometers from Šabac. Concurrently, all the Jews who lived in Šabac were gathered together. Among them was Oto Fišer, an Austrian of Jewish descent. At the time of his arrest, he played football for the Šabac team Maćva. During the exodus to the village of Jarak, he was killed.

From 1941 until the liberation of Šabac in 1944, the city’s synagague served as the “Janko Veselinović” primary school. By late 1944, the synagogue was no longer used for religious ceremonies.

At the corner of Karadjordje and Zanatliska Streets (now, Ivo Lola Ribar) is the building in which one of Šabac’s Jewish citizens, Solomon Albahari, had his store. There was a sign on that store which read in Cyrillic “Solomon Alba-hari sells used things” (“Solomoni Albahri što prodaje stare stvari”). Usually, young people in Šabac who needed to buy something frequented his store. As soon as he opened the store, they would follow him into the shop and begin buying such items as shirts, sweaters, coats, and shoes. Abahari followed an established Jewish tradition so that, when the first customer of the day entered the store, the merchant had to sell him/her something. To make the sale, at times the merchant had to lower the price 50% or 60% due to the superstition that if he failed to sell to the first customer of the day, the entire day’s profits would be low.

Among the many Jewish families in Šabac, there was a childless couple. The husband, Avda Karabegović, was a merchant, and his wife, a homemaker. They lived in a beautiful, large home with a spacious and well-organized yard, full of various flowers and many fruit-bearing trees. When the wife became seriously ill, the husband searched for medical help. Finally, he brought his wife to Dr. Čeda Knežević for what was still a relatively new procedure, an x-ray. The doctor’s office was located in his large home on Karadjordje Street, the main street in Šabac. It boasted a large courtyard with a blooming flowerbeds. At that time, in the city’s streets, cafes and marketplaces, as well as various stores what one often heard was people saying: “I am going to be examined ‘on the glass’ at Dr. Knežević’s.” This was their colloquialism for “being x-rayed.”

The x-ray revealed that the wife was suffering from a serious illness—tuberculosis. At that time, there was no available medicine. Dr. Knežević recommended that the husband buy a special kind of goat, a Sanska goat. For medicinal purposes, the wife was instructed to drink its milk—three glasses a day. She drank it in the morning, in the afternoon and in the evening. This type of white goat was quite rare, and usually it could only be found in Srem. There was only one village near Šabac where one could find this type of goat, in Dragojevac, and only one household had that type of goat. Avda Karabegović, following the advice of the physician, made plans to go to Dragojevac and purchase a Sanska goat for his wife. That village was 15km from Šabac, a distance that called for special transportation to be arranged. Prior to the Second World War, the...