Evreiskaia obshchina (g. Zagreb)

Jews from Hungary settled in Zagreb in the mid-fourteenth century. An Ashkenazi community was in existence until the expulsion of Jews from the city in the mid-fifteenth century. Jews once again received the right to live in Zagreb in the 1780s. In 1806, twenty Ashkenazi families from Central Europe established a new Jewish community in the city. Religious reform carried out by the Zagreb synagogue in 1841 forced a small group of Orthodox to separate from the main community and establish their own prayer house. In 1867, a large Reform (Neologue) synagogue was opened in Zagreb. In 1939, Jews living in Zagreb numbered 9,467. Of these, 8,712 were Ashkenazi Reform, 625 were Sephardim, and 130 were Ashkenazi Orthodox. The Jewish religious community of Zagreb was governed by a 45-member council headed by a president, vice president, secretary, and treasurer. Among its presidents were Josip Siebenschein, who held this office during the periods 1873-83 and 1891-1906, and his son Robert Siebenschein (1912-20). The first Zionist victory in a community presidential election occurred in 1920. The Zionist leader Hugo Kon was president of the community from that year until 1935. The position of chief rabbi from 1887 to 1923 was held by Hosea Jacobi (Hermann Jacoby), who was succeeded by Gavro Schwarz. Starting in the second half of the nineteenth century, the Zagreb Jewish community sponsored a four-year elementary school, at which secular as well as Jewish subjects were taught in Serbo-Croatian. In the interwar period, the community's annual budget, which went mainly to social and philanthropic projects, averaged 2.5 million dinars.