This is a photograph of Matilda Kalef wearing traditional Serbian Jewish costume. The photograph was taken in a studio, and Matilda is posing in front of props and a painted background. According to the text in Gregorian and Cyrillic letters, the studio was owned by S. Alkalaj, also presumably Jewish, based on his surname. Matilda is standing with one hand on her hip and the other resting on a fence post. She is wearing a hat with a brim and a long dress, both richly embroidered. The bodice of the dress and the sleeves are decorated with a vertical embroidery pattern, while the skirt is fully embroidered. Matilda has long, dark hair and a serious expression.
Matilda was born in Belgrade, Serbia in 1876 and died in 1942 and was the paternal grandmother of Matilda Cerge, who recorded an oral history of her family with Centropa. Matilda Cerge notes that her grandmother only wore traditional dress for the photograph; although she spent a lot of time with her grandmother, Cerge didn’t know that she owned this dress until she saw the photograph. Cerge described her grandmother as “the pillar of her family.” She was widowed with three small children at the age of 25. Two of her children died, and her surviving son, Cerge’s father, was an invalid. She took care of the family’s daily needs, rented part of the house to tenants, and ran a store. She was a wonderful cook who loved to sing Serbian and Spanish songs while she worked. The Kalef family lived in Dorcol, the Jewish section of Belgrade, for over 200 years. Cerge explained that they were a Ladino-speaking family from Spain who left following the Spanish Expulsion. Ladino was the dominant language of the Sephardi community in Belgrade until the end of the nineteenth century, with 80% of Serbian Jewry declaring Ladino as their mother tongue in the 1895 census.
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Jewish Community of Belgrade – Jews came to Belgrade, the largest city and capital of what is now Serbia, after the expulsion from Spain. The country switched back and forth between the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires. Most of the Jews were Sephardi (Jews from Spain), although there was also an Ashkenazi community in the city. In 1941, when the Germans invaded, there were 12,000 Jews living in Belgrade. At first, Jewish owned stores were confiscated and Jews were arrested and used as forced labourers. Shortly after, Jews were arrested and shot. Those who weren’t shot or who didn’t die from the hard labour and intense cold were ultimately killed in gas vans. About 90-95% of the Belgrade Jewish community was murdered during the Holocaust. After the war, a small number of survivors returned to Belgrade and Jewish institutions began to reopen. There is one synagogue in Belgrade today.
Ladino – Ladino is the Judeo-Spanish language that is spoken by Jews of Spanish descent. The basis of the language is pre-sixteenth-century Spanish with Hebrew influences. As Jews moved to other Mediterranean countries after their expulsion from Spain in 1492, languages such as Turkish, Arabic, and French began to influence Ladino. Today there are about 160,000 Ladino speakers around the world.
