In the process of researching a novel, Michele Levy familiarized herself with the story of Balkan Jewry, and in particular with the history of the synagogue in the Croatian capital of Zagreb:
Jews lived in the Balkans from at least the 1st century CE; waves of Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews came to the area—some as traders, many to flee persecution farther west. Synagogue ruins and graves along the Adriatic coast place Jews of the late Roman empire in Croatia nearly 2,000 years ago. Evidence shows, too, that Byzantine oppression caused some Jews to relocate even farther east, to the kingdom of Bulgaria. With the Crusades [and the pursuant anti-Semitic persecutions], many Jews from northern Europe spread southeast to avoid pogroms, and from 1492 the Spanish [expulsion] spawned Sephardi migration to the Ottoman empire. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with political anti-Semitism on the rise in the Hapsburg empire, many Ashkenazi Jews again looked eastward for safety.
A radical change for Jews came in 1299, when the Ottoman Turks conquered Byzantium and launched their vast empire. While classifying Jews, along with Catholics, Roma, and Orthodox Serbs, as raya, second-class citizens, the Ottomans safeguarded their minorities. This assured Jews better treatment than they had experienced under Byzantium or in the West. With Muslims, they were exempt from the devshirme, the “child tax,” which every four or five years conscripted young Christian boys, mostly Serbs, brought them back to Istanbul, educated them, and made from them a military and bureaucratic force.
The story of Zagreb’s synagogue embodies the fate of many Balkan Jews from post-World War II to the present. Completed in 1867, the synagogue became the first important building erected in Kaptol, Zagreb’s “lower town.” Hailed as a model of Moorish revival architecture, it drew many public officials and citizens to its opening and soon became a source of civic pride.
The synagogue was destroyed during World War II, when the Croatian government sided with the Nazis, and since then local Jews have struggled to mark its former location with a memorial.
Read more on Jewish Book Council: https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/pb-daily/a-brief-history-of-balkan-jews-and-the-story-of-the-synagogue-of-zagreb