The public notice, splashed across the Sarajevo institution’s website with a large Palestinian flag and signed by the museum’s acting director, Mirsad Sijarić, declared:
“In this way, the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina provides support to the people of Palestine who suffer systematic, calculated and cold-blooded terror, directly by the state of Israel, and indirectly by all those who support and/or justify it in its shameless actions.”
The museum accused Israel of “killing, starvation and forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of civilians, primarily women and children.” It said that “feigned neutrality” is “complicity in the genocide that we are all witnessing in real time.”
It also said that “as an institution that deals with the protection of cultural-historical and natural heritage,” it is obligated to warn that through the demolition of religious and historical locations, “the targeted erasure of the cultural and religious identity, primarily of the Muslims and Christians of Palestine, is taking place.”
The Sarajevo Haggadah, originating from northern Spain and dating from the 14th century, is one of the oldest and most renowned illuminated Jewish manuscripts.
It was taken out of Spain either during or before the Jews’ expulsion in 1492, made its way to Italy, and from there, to Sarajevo, possibly via Salonika, which is how many Jewish refugees from Spain made their way to Sarajevo, according to Tel Aviv’s Anu‒Museum of the Jewish People.
In 1894, the manuscript was sold to the newly established Bosnian National Museum, then under Austro-Hungarian rule.
The Haggadah is a Jewish text read during the Passover seder, a ritual meal families hold annually that commemorates the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt.
