This photograph, taken in Subotica, Yugoslavia in 1971, shows Dora Rozenberg and her friends preparing matzah rolls for the community Passover Seder. Eight older women are standing in the kitchen of the Jewish community centre in front of a large table with a very big tray of rolls. The women, some wearing aprons, look very serious as they pose for the photograph.
In Dora’s oral history she explains that the people who returned to Subotica after surviving the Holocaust enjoyed getting together at the community centre. They continued observing aspects of Jewish holidays, even while Yugoslavia was a communist country that did not allow the practice of religion. Dora was a founder of the Subotica Women’s Section which held lectures and other community events. About life under President Josip Tito Dora says:
"Our section was very active. We held lectures, but during Tito’s time it was not very popular so we had to publicise them very discreetly. I can't say we were afraid, but simply the things we celebrated were not popular. The communist party was a god but we believed in the real God."
Dora Rozenberg told the story of her life to Centropa. She grew up in Subotica, Serbia (previously in Yugoslavia), where there were two Jewish communities: Orthodox and Neolog. She recalled that her family lived in a big home and had a housekeeper. They were not very religious: they observed Shabbat and the Jewish festivals but did not keep kosher. Dora went to a Jewish school from the age of six and later to a non-Jewish high school. Her friends were mostly Jews, and she was a member of the Hashomer Hatzair Zionist youth movement were she learned Hebrew, Jewish history, and Judaism. Dora married a dentist in 1940 in a civic wedding, followed by a religious wedding in the privacy of her home because of the growing anti-Semitism at the time. In the ensuing years she experienced anti-Jewish laws, the imprisonment of her husband, and deportation to the ghetto. In 1944 she was sent, with other family members, to the Bergen Belsen concentration camp, where she managed to survive until the end of the war. Dora was reunited with her husband at the end of the war, but other family members, including her father, did not survive. While some of Dora’s family moved to Israel, she tried to return to her previous life. Despite the difficulties of life in Yugoslavia after the war, Dora taught her daughter about Judaism and attempted to observe Jewish tradition.
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Jewish Community of Subotica – Subotica, Serbia (previously Yugoslavia) is currently home to 250 Jews. The Jewish community of Subotica was established in the middle of the eighteenth century. In 1901, a synagogue was built, followed by other communal institutions, which served the 6,000 Jews who lived in Subotica before the Holocaust. During World War II, Jewish lands and businesses were confiscated, men were sent to forced labour, and in April 1944, the remaining Jews of Subotica were arrested, moved into the ghetto, and deported to Auschwitz where the majority were murdered. After the war, 800 survivors moved to Israel, while a small community remained. The synagogue has been renovated and reopened.
Passover (Pesach) – Pesach, one of the three pilgrimage festivals, celebrates the freedom of the Israelites from Egypt that is described in the biblical book of Exodus. A main feature of the Pesach celebration is the Seder which is conducted in the home. The text of the Seder, as written in the Haggadah, tells the story of the Exodus with the aid of symbolic foods, songs, and discussion. As a reminder of the rushed manner in which the Israelites left Egypt, matzah (unleavened bread) is eaten during Pesach and chametz (leavened bread) is removed from the home. It is traditional to clean one’s house prior to Pesach and to perform a ceremony to remove and nullify any chametz that is in one’s possession.
