The National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo is dishonoring itself and disrespecting Jews by politicizing the Sarajevo Haggadah, a mid-14th-century illuminated manuscript created in northern Spain that is among the most noted illustrated Jewish books in history, the American Jewish Committee stated.
The museum said on Aug. 1 that it decided “to donate the income from the sale of the publication Sarajevo Haggadah: Art and History, as well as the income from tickets to see the Sarajevo Haggadah, for helping Palestine.”
“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,” it stated.
“At a time when we cannot justify ourselves with a lack of information, every averting our eyes, every feigned neutrality in the face of everyday examples of killing, starvation and forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of civilians, primarily women and children, is an expression of acceptance and complicity in the genocide that we are all witnessing in real time,” it said.
The AJC said that the Haggadah is “a symbol of Jewish resilience” that “survived the Inquisition, exile and the Holocaust.”
“Now in Bosnia’s National Museum, its legacy is being tarnished by the museum’s decision to politicize the exhibit’s proceeds,” the AJC said. “By its recent actions, the museum disgraces itself and disrespects the generations of Jews who read from this Haggadah at their seder tables.”
