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Bosnian Jews mourn Moris Albahari, one of Sarajevo’s last Ladino speakers
(JTA) — Moris Albahari, a Holocaust survivor, former partisan fighter and one of the last Ladino speakers in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s dwindling Jewish community, passed away at the age of 93 last month.
It is believed that he was one of four native Ladino speakers remaining in a country where the Judeo-Spanish language once flourished and was spoken by luminaries like Flory Jagoda, the grande dame of Ladino song, and Laura Bohoretta, the founder of a uniquely Sephardic feminist movement in Bosnia.
Bosnia’s small Jewish community — with barely 900 members throughout the country, 500 of whom live in Sarajevo — are mourning the loss of a living link to communal memory as well as a dear friend.
“From you, uncle Moco, I learned a lot about Judaism, about life, about nature and especially about people. About both the good and the evil,” Igor Kožemjakin, the cantor of the Sarajevo Jewish community, wrote in a memorial post on Facebook, referring to Moris as “Čika,” or uncle, a term of endearment in Bosnian.
“It is a terrible loss, especially for Sarajevo. Our community is very small, especially after the Holocaust,” Eliezer Papo, a Sarajevo-born Jew and scholar of Ladino language and literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “We’re not speaking just in terms of prominent members of the community, we’re speaking in terms of family members. Everyone is like a family member.”
When Albahari was growing up in the 1930s, the Jewish community of his native Sarajevo numbered over 12,000. Jews made up more than a fifth of the city and it was one of the most important centers of Jewish life in the western Balkans.
In his youth, the city was part of what was then the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Formed out of the borderlands between the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, it was a multiethnic state composed of Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks, Slovenians, Macedonians, Hungarians, Albanians and more. Among them were many Jewish communities both Ashkenazi and Sephardic.
The unique mix of of Muslim, Jewish, Catholic and Orthodox Christian communities, with their mosques, synagogues and churches defining Sarajevo’s skyline, earned the city the nickname “Little Jerusalem.”
Speaking in a 2015 documentary made by American researchers, “Saved by Language,” Albahari explained that his family traced their roots back to Cordoba before the Spanish Inquisition, and through Venice, before settling in what would become Bosnia when it was part of the Ottoman Empire.
“We didn’t want to ‘just’ write an article about Moris or Sarajevo; we wanted [the audience] to see what we saw and hear what we heard,” Brian Kirschen, professor of Ladino at Binghamton University, who worked on the documentary with author Susanna Zaraysky, told JTA. “This resulted in a grassroots initiative to create the documentary.”
In the film, Albahari takes the researchers and their viewers on a tour through what was Jewish Sarajevo, giving glimpses of the thriving Ladino speaking community in which he was raised and explaining how ithe language would save him many times, when the Nazis and their Croat allies, the Ustaša, came to shatter it.
“In sharing your story of survival during the Holocaust, you opened doors that remained closed for decades,” Kirschen said in a memorial post on Facebook. “Some of your stories were even new to members of your family, but each survivor has their own timeline. While you experienced great pain during your life, from your story, we also learn about moments of kindness and heroism. Through your story, you also taught us about the power of language.”
Albahari wasn’t yet a teenager when, in 1941, Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy invaded Yugoslavia. The Nazis occupied the eastern portion of the country, including what is now Serbia, while they raised up a Croat fascist party, known as the Ustaša, to administer the newly formed “Independent State of Croatia” — often known by its Serbo-Croatian initials, NDH — in the western regions that included the modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Ustaša collaborated in the Nazis’ genocidal plans for Europe’s Jewish and Roma comunities, and they had genocidal designs of their own for the Orthodox Serb communities living in the NDH.
To that end they established the Jasenovac concentration camp, which would become known as the Auschwitz of the Balkans. By the war’s end it had become the third largest concentration camp in Europe, and behind its walls the overwhelming majority of Sarajevo’s Jews — at least 10,000 — were massacred. Including Serbs, Jews, Roma and political dissidents of Croat or Muslim Bosniak background, as many as 100,000 people were killed in Jasenovac.
Albahari was 11 years old when the Ustaša came to deport him and his large family to Jasenovac. A former teacher working as an Ustaša guard in the town of Drvar, where the train stopped, warned Albahari’s father, David, about their destination, and he was able to help his son escape from the train.
The teacher helped guide the young Moris to an Italian soldier named Lino Marchione who was secretly helping Jews.
This was the first case when Albahari’s Ladino came in handy. Ladino is largely based on medieval Spanish, with a mixture of Hebrew, Aramaic, Turkish and other languages mixed in. For speakers of Serbo-Croatian, a Slavic language, it’s entirely incomprehensible. But for a speaker of another Romance language such as Italian, it’s not such a stretch to understand, and Moris was able to converse with his Italian savior.
With his family gone, he was taken in by a Serb family, and changed his name to Milan Adamovic to hide his Jewish identity. Still, by 1942, it became clear that neither as Adamovic nor Albahari would he be safe in the town. So he fled to the mountains.
“If there was [a battle] I took clothes from a dead soldier to wear, I lived like a wolf in the mountains, you know. Visiting villages [asking for something] to give me for eating, it was a terrible time,” Albahari recalled in “Saved By Language.”
He would only feel safe in villages under the control of partisan forces. Yugoslavia was the only country in Europe to be liberated from Nazi rule by its own grassroots resistance.
During his time in the mountains, Albahari joined up with a partisan unit aligned with the movement of Josip Broz Tito, who would lead Communist Yugoslavia after the war. By the war’s end, Tito’s partisans numbered over 80,000 and included more than 6,000 Jews, many in prominent positions, such as Moša Pijade, who would go on to serve as vice president of the Yugoslav parliament after the war.
Moris was out on patrol as a partisan when he came upon a group of American and British paratroopers. They raised their weapons at him, thinking he was an enemy. Moris tried to communicate, but he spoke no English.
When he asked the soldiers if they spoke German or Italian, they shook their heads. When he asked about Spanish, one perked up: a Hispanic-American soldier by the name of David Garijo.
In Ladino, Alabahari was able to explain that he was not an enemy but could lead them to a nearby partisan camp where they would be safe.
“Ladino saved my life in the war,” Albahari recalled in the documentary.
At the partisan camp, Morris received even bigger news: The family that he had assumed had all perished after he left the train were in fact alive. The former school teacher and Ustaša guard who had warned his father had met them at the next train junction to help them escape. Furthermore, around half of the Jews in the train car were able to escape using the same hole Moris used during his initial escape.
Ultimately the family all survived the war, unlike so many other Jews of Sarajevo.
“Where is Samuel, where is Dudo, where is Gedala? They never came back,” Albahari lamented, listing missing neighbors while walking through Sarajevo’s old Jewish neighborhood in the documentary. “Maybe we are happy because we are alive after the Second World War, but also unlikely because every day we must cry for these dead people.”
When Moris returned to Sarajevo, it was an entirely different place from the bustling Jewish community he had once known.
Gone was the sound of Ladino in the streets and alleyways of Bascarsija, the market district where so many of Sarajevo’s Jews had once lived. Gone were the synagogues — only one of the many synagogues that had existed before WWII still functions. Gone was the robust Jewish life that was once a central part of Sarajevo.
Moris was still only 14 by the war’s end, so he returned to school and ultimately graduated at the top of his class. He became a pilot and later director of the Sarajevo Airport.
In this new world, Ladino was spoken, if at all, only in the home.
“Always, when I hear Spanish, I hear my father and mother, and all the synagogues, prayers in Ladino and rabbis who spoke Ladino. But that is in the past,” Albahari says in “Saved by Language.”
Eliezer Papo, who is a generation younger than Albahari, recalled that in his youth Ladino had long been reduced to a language of secrets.
“Mostly, Ladino was used when the elders didn’t want youngsters to understand,” Papo said.
Only later, in the 1980s, did community members realize what was being lost and begin to gather to maintain their language, recount what Jewish Sarajevo had been like and share their wartime stories of survival.
“He never took his story to the places of revenge, but he took it and his life experience to a place of ‘Never again,’ not just ‘Never again for Jews’, but never again for anybody,” said Papo.
Like many Sarajevans, World War II would not be the last major conflict Albahari would see. Less than 40 years later, war would once again come to Sarajevo with the break-up of Yugoslavia.
From 1992-1995 the city remained under constant siege by Bosnian Serb forces looking to break away from what would become Bosnia and Herzegovina. Moris joined with other Jews of Sarajevo in working to provide aid to their fellow Sarajevans during the harsh period.
Sarajevo’s synagogue was turned into a shelter and a soup kitchen. The community ran a network of underground pharmacies and a message service allowing Sarajevans to get word to family and friends outside of the city during what became the longest siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare.
“Moris was an inspirational persona to many members of Jewish community and La Benevolencija,” Vlado Anderle, the current president of that local Jewish humanitarian organization told JTA. “He was a man with such inviting spirit and energy.”
When the dust settled on the breakup of Yugoslavia, and the new Bosnian state rose from its ashes, Moris found himself once again in a new role.
During the communist era in Yugoslavia, religious activity was discouraged. Sarajevo’s Jews emphasized the ethnic character of Jewish culture rather than the religious one. In the new Bosnia and Herzegovina, that was no longer true. So the community worked to reconnect with their religious identity as well.
“Everybody looked up to the people who had Jewish upbringing before the Second World War,” Papo recalled. “This doesn’t mean that they were rabbis. Just that they knew it better than anyone else.”
Moris, whose formal Jewish education ended in his preteen years, was appointed president of the community’s religious committee.
As such it often fell on him to represent Judaism to the Bosnian society at large, often in a very creative way, according to Papo, who in addition to being a scholar of Ladino is ordained as a rabbi and serves the Sarajevo community as a rabbi-at-large from Israel.
In one case, while being interviewed on a major Bosnian television station, Moris was asked why Jews cover their head with a kippah or other hat during prayer. Moris’ response, or rather creative interpretation, as Papo called it, was made up on the spot.
Moris’ interpretation began with the ancient temple in Jerusalem where Jews once had to fully immerse in a ritual bath before entering.
“Since the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed it was reduced to washing the uncovered parts of the body only, before entering a synagogue, similarly to Muslims: the feet, the head, the hands…” Papo recalled him saying. But in Europe, as Moris’ answer went, they began to cover more and more of their body. “In Europe they started wearing shoes, so the feet were not uncovered anymore, and then they started wearing a hat, not to have to wash their head… you know it’s Europe, one could catch a cold if going out with wet hair…”
“A few months later, I came to Sarajevo, and found that everyone has heard this explanation and is talking about it, not just people in the community, but in the street,” Papo said. “And you know, I let it pass, I couldn’t correct them, it was just so beautiful. That was his genius.”
“Identity is all about telling stories. And Moris was one of the great storytellers of the community,” Papo added. And through his stories he expressed an identity which was “made of the same contradictions that Sephardic Judaism is made of, that Sarajevo is made of, that Bosnia and Herzegovina is made and that Yugoslavia was and is made of and that the Balkans are made of.”
Albahari is survived by his wife and a son.
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Board of Peace Publishes Roadmap for Gaza Peace Plan
Palestinians walk among piles of rubble and damaged buildings in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, Nov. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
The US-led Board of Peace has unveiled an ambitious roadmap aimed at bringing the Gaza war to an end, dismantling Hamas’s military capabilities, and replacing its rule with a new governance structure backed by international oversight and Palestinian technocrats.
The plan, presented by the Board of Peace’s director-general and high representative for Gaza, Nickolay Mladenov, marks the most comprehensive effort yet to convert a fragile ceasefire into a durable post-war agreement, one that requires Hamas’s disarmament as a necessary component for any political or economic future for the enclave.
Calling Hamas’s refusal to lay down its arms and relinquish control the “principal obstacle” to implementation, Mladenov told the UN Security Council in New York on Thursday that “reconstruction financing [for Gaza] will not follow where weapons have not been laid down. No investment, no movement, no horizon.”
US President Donald Trump set up the Board of Peace to oversee his plan to end the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, a conflict started by the Palestinian terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across the Jewish state. The UN has recognized the board, although several countries opted not to join despite being invited to do so.
After Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in October, Israeli forces partially withdrew and now control at least 53 percent of Gazan territory, with Hamas ruling the rest of the Palestinian enclave and the vast majority of its residents. Talks to further the peace plan have stalled since then, with Hamas tightening its control over its part of Gaza, largely through a brutal crackdown, and working to rebuild its military capabilities.
“The risk is that the deteriorating status quo becomes permanent – a divided Gaza, Hamas holding military and administrative control over 2 million people across less than half the territory,” Mladenov told the Security Council.
His proposal calls for a strict sequencing of steps that conditions reconstruction and political transition on Hamas giving up its weapons and military infrastructure.
According to Mladenov’s presentation and supporters of the plan, rebuilding efforts cannot credibly proceed while an armed terrorist organization retaining control over territory, borders, and civilian life. Earlier this month, for example, Hamas members blocked international efforts to begin reconstruction work in Rafah, a city in southern Gaza, threatening contractors who were set to enter an area under Israeli control in coordination with Israeli and American forces to begin reconstruction work funded by the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Mladenov contended that efforts to rebuild the infrastructure of Gaza will commence when “commitments to stop internal killings, prohibit reprisals, ban armed demonstrations, and end displays of armed force.”
“The faster implementation progresses, the faster Gaza can begin rebuilding homes, schools, hospitals, infrastructure, and economic life at scale,” he said.
Under the roadmap, Hamas would be required to surrender its heavy weapons, dismantle its tunnel networks, and withdraw from any governing role in Gaza. Security responsibilities would gradually shift toward vetted local Palestinian forces supported by international partners, in what is designed as a phased transition rather than an immediate power vacuum. Israeli officials and supporters of the framework have emphasized that this sequencing is essential to prevent a repeat of past cycles in which reconstruction and governance reforms were ultimately overtaken by renewed militarization.
The governance model outlined by the Board of Peace envisions Gaza being administered through a hybrid structure combining a Palestinian technocratic committee responsible for day-to-day civil affairs with an international supervisory body tasked with overseeing reconstruction funding, security benchmarks, and implementation of the broader transition plan. The aim, according to officials involved in the effort, is to bypass Hamas entirely while also avoiding a return to full Israeli administrative control, instead placing long-term coordination under an internationally backed framework.
Reconstruction itself would be tightly tied to compliance with security conditions, meaning that large-scale rebuilding of housing, infrastructure, and utilities would only accelerate once demilitarization milestones are met. The board has also been pressing donor countries to follow through on approximately $17 billion in pledged reconstruction funding, warning that only a small portion of those commitments has been disbursed so far, leaving early recovery efforts stalled despite widespread international promises.
That funding gap has emerged as one of the central obstacles to implementation. While donor states signaled major financial support during earlier conferences, officials say the lack of actual disbursement has left the plan underpowered at a critical moment, effectively freezing reconstruction on paper while humanitarian needs continue to persist on the ground.
Hamas, for its part, has rejected the framework’s core premise, insisting that disarmament cannot be separated from a full Israeli withdrawal and broader political guarantees. The group has accused international mediators of advancing a process that ignores what it describes as unresolved core issues of sovereignty and ceasefire enforcement, deepening the diplomatic deadlock that has defined previous attempts to stabilize Gaza.
Israel has said it will not withdraw its forces any further until Hamas, which openly seeks the Jewish state’s destruction, disarms.
Despite the ceasefire framework that underpins the Board of Peace initiative, the situation on the ground remains fragile, with sporadic violence, unresolved security disputes, and widespread displacement continuing to strain civilian life. Humanitarian conditions remain severe, and reconstruction has yet to meaningfully begin at scale, reinforcing the sense that the political framework and the realities in Gaza are still far apart.
In statements to the UN Security Council, Mladenov warned that intermittent violence in Gaza risks “unraveling” the unstable ceasefire.
“There is no third option,” he stressed. “There never was, and the people of Gaza should not be made to wait while some pretend there is.”
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Giuliani Says Mamdani Has ‘Hatred’ for Jews for Declining to Attend Israel Day Parade in New York City
Former Donald Trump lawyer and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani arrives at US federal court in New York City, US, Nov. 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has lambasted the city’s current mayor, Zohran Mamdani, for the latter’s decision not to attend the annual Israel Day parade, which is set to take place later this month.
“Mamdani’s decision to snub the Israel Day Parade demonstrates his deep disdain and hatred of the Jewish community,” Giuliani, a Republican, told the New York Post on Wednesday. “When you combine this with his failure to attend the investiture of the new Catholic Archbishop [Ronald Hicks], a pattern emerges, revealing a man on a mission to tear down the foundations of Western civilization.”
Mamdani, a far-left democratic socialist, has made fierce anti-Israel activism a cornerstone of his political career, leading many Jewish leaders and other critics to accuse him of antisemitism.
“Have New Yorkers awakened to the fact that they made a disastrous decision in November 2025 by electing this man?” added Giuliani, who served as New York City’s mayor from 1994 through 2001.
Mamdani confirmed earlier this month that he will skip this year’s Israel Day Parade. However, the avowed anti-Zionist first indicated that he would not attend the event in October 2025, the month before his election. At the time, he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he looked forward “to joining — and hosting — many community events celebrating Jewish life in New York and the rich Jewish history and culture of our city,” but not including the parade.
“While I will not be attending the Israel Day Parade, my lack of attendance should not be mistaken for a refusal to provide security or the necessary permits for its safety,” Mamdani said last year. “I’ve been very clear: I believe in equal rights for all people — everywhere. That principle guides me consistently.”
Mamdani is reportedly the first mayor of New York City to skip the Israel Day Parade, which has been held annually since 1964. The parade takes place along Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue and is set this year for May 31 under the theme, “Proud Americans, Proud Zionists.”
For what is believed to be the first time in history, a Muslim group will march in the parade. Supporters of the nonprofit American Muslim & Multifaith Women’s Empowerment Council will participate and be led by Anila Ali, the organization’s board chair and president.
As a supporter of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, Mamdani has been highly critical of the country and has refused to recognize it as a Jewish state. New York City is home to the world’s largest population of Jews outside of Israel.
“Since the very first Israel Parade in 1964, every single sitting mayor of New York City has joined in the festive celebrations. New York has historically been proud of its deep relationship with Israel. Not joining the parade is an affront to the history of New York City,” Moshe Davis – former executive director of the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism, a body formed by Mamdani’s predecessor, Mayor Eric Adams – told Fox News Digital.
Adams told the news outlet that the Israel Day Parade “is a testament to one of New York City’s most important relationships.”
“From health care to technology to innovation, Israel and New York City are partners in building a better future,” he explained. “I want every New Yorker to join the Parade on Fifth Avenue because celebrating this bond isn’t just for the Jewish community; it’s for our entire city.”
Last week, Mamdani posted a video on social media in honor of “Nakba Day.” The word “nakba” is Arabic for “catastrophe” and used by Palestinians to describe Israel’s founding and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Arabs during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence.
Many Arabs left for varied reasons, including that they were encouraged by Arab leaders to flee their homes to make way for the invading armies to destroy the nascent Jewish state. At the same time, about 850,000 Jews were forced to flee or expelled from Middle Eastern and North African countries in the 20th century, primarily in the aftermath of Israel’s declaring independence.
Several pro-Israel Jewish groups found the video posted by Mamdani offensive, and as a result, some Jewish leaders decided not to attend a pre-Shavuot event Mamdani hosted at Gracie Mansion in honor of Jewish Heritage Month.
The UJA Federation of New York and the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, both of which are organizing the Israel Day Parade, declined to attend the gathering. They told the New York Post they made the decision because the event’s host is a mayor who “denies the core pillar of our heritage, the State of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people.” At the event, Mamdani announced that his administration will allocate $26 million annually to expand efforts made by the city’s Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes.
Since Mamdani assumed office, Jews have been targeted in the majority of all hate crimes committed in New York City, continuing a troubling trend of rising antisemitism following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
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Vermont Police Investigate Anti-Israel Vandalism of Jewish-Owned Store as Possible Hate Crime
Graffiti is seen on the windows of DG Bodyworks in Cavendish on Wednesday, May 20, 2026. The Vermont State Police has partially redacted profanity that appears on the window to the right. Photo: Vermont State Police
A Jewish woman’s store in Vermont was vandalized early Wednesday morning with anti-Israel graffiti in an incident that police are investigating as a possible hate crime.
“Free Palestine” and “F–k Israel” were spray-painted on the windows of DG Bodyworks, where Israeli flags were on display.
Vermont State Police said they are investigating the vandalism in the Windsor County town of Cavendish as a possible hate crime and will inform the Attorney General’s Office of the incident. Officers who responded to the crime scene reviewed security footage and saw an individual vandalizing the store with purple spray paint during the early hours of Wednesday morning. Police released a photo of the suspect, a white male who wore a cap and covered his face while spray-painting the messages.
Shop owner Denise Gebroe said that her store was targeted because she is Jewish and that while she was “shaken” to discover the graffiti, “I am OK and will not be broken.”
“This was an act of intimidation directed at me because I am Jewish,” she added, in a statement shared with The Algemeiner by Vermont Friends of Israel. “I made Vermont my home because I love it here, but it does not feel the same as it once did. Incidents like this are happening more than many people realize, and most go unreported. I fear for the future of the Jewish community here, and Jewish friends of mine have already left.”
In a statement given to The Algemeiner, Mark Treinkman, president of Vermont Friends of Israel, also called the vandalism an anti-Jewish hate crime and said such an incident “is the predictable consequence of a political campaign in Vermont that demonizes Israel and pressures local communities to treat Jews and Zionists as equivalent to Nazis.” He referenced an Apartheid Free Community campaign active in Vermont, promoted by the Palestine Solidarity Coalition, that is marketed locally as “grassroots activism.”
“When anti-Zionist activists tell people that Jews with deep spiritual, cultural, and familial ties to Israel are ‘baby killers’ and ‘genocide supporters,’ it sends a dangerous signal that intimidation against them is understandable, deserved, or even justified,” Treinkman noted. “History teaches us where this goes. First come campaigns of dehumanization, slogans, pledges, and public shaming. Now a Jewish woman’s storefront has been vandalized in rural Vermont.”
“Synagogues in Vermont have been sent death threats. Swastikas are found on Vermont school walls,” he added, referring to threatening letters sent to several local synagogues and antisemitism graffiti discovered at an elementary school last year. “Jewish students are bullied. What comes next if this is not confronted?”