The conflict between Serbs and Croats is also pitting Jew against Jew.

The bloody conflict between Serbs and Croats has carved a fault line that threatens to divide Yugoslavia's 6,000 Jews.

"There used to be only two types of Jews in Yugoslavia - Ashkenazim and Sephardim," says Yasha Binenfeld, 47, a member of the Jewish community council in Zagreb, capital of Croatia. "Now, unfortunately, we have two other kinds - Serbian and Croatian Jews."

Since Croatia declared independence in June, it has come under attack from the national army, which is composed 70 percent of Serbs. Croatian cities have suffered severe damage. Though mutual loathing between Serbs and Croats goes back centuries, Jews of the two republics have always got along well. But the civil war has brought a dramatic rise in tensions between Serbian and Croatian Jews, as they identify more and more with the republics in which they live. There are a handful of Jewish combatants in both armies. In Osijek, Darko Fisher, president of the Jewish community, knew of at least one young Jewish man fighting with the Croatian armed forces who was wounded in Vukovar in November.

Jewish Agency figures indicate that close to 200 Jews have made aliyah since the fighting erupted in June, compared to virtually none in the preceding several years. Another 70 are studying in Israel.

The new arrivals, as well as Agency sources throughout the former Yugoslavia, insist the Jews are staying out of the internecine rivalry, according to Gad Ben-Ari, Jewish Agency spokesman. "Jews, who on the whole are very well integrated both socially, politically and economically, are trying hard not to get involved," says Ben-Ari. "They tell us they are the only real Yugoslavs left."

Yet interviews conducted in December by The Jerusalem Report with Jews and non-Jewish politicians in Serbia and Croatia uncovered these points of contention:

Some Serbian Jews have become increasingly vocal in their public anti-Croatian utterances and have seized at any opportunity to condemn Croatia as an anti-Semitic police state. Croatian Jewish leaders charge that their Serbian counterparts failed to offer any tangible assistance when Zagreb's Jews were subjected last August to terrorist attacks. (Sources close to an ongoing investigation suggest the perpetrators were right-wing Croatian groups.)

Croatian Jews assert that Jews in both republics should strive to distance themselves from the conflict and feel that Serbian Jews are too conspicuously identified with the Serbian cause.

Israel's acceptance of Yugoslavia's impending resumption of diplomatic relations (which means, in effect, with Serbia, because of that republic's central role in the federal government) has called the Jewish state's even-handedness into question and put Croatian Jews on the defensive. Serbian Jews like Klara Mandic, head of the Serbian-Jewish Friendship Society, publicly express the belief that Croatia has targeted Jews for nasty treatment, and her comments have caused much dismay among Croatian Jews.

Little has changed since 1941, she says, when the fascist-nationalist Ustashi regime in what was a Nazi puppet state undertook the extermination of Croatian Jews and ethnic Serbs with a zeal that astounded even the Nazis. "They are all Ustashi," she declares, echoing a sentiment heard constantly in Belgrade, capital of both Yugoslavia and Serbia, where Ustashi' and Croatian' have become virtually synonymous.

The hard-line right-wing regime of 68-year-old president Franjo Tudjman in Zagreb strenuously rejects suggestions that Croatia is inherently fascist and anti-Semitic. The denials are spurred by the need for international support. But the regime's case is undermined by several well-documented and unusually venomous utterances about Jews and Israel issued by Tudjman immediately prior to his election some 18 months ago. In his 1988 book, "Wastelands Historical Truths," Tudjman asserts that estimates of six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust were based on "emotional, biased testimony and exaggerated data" and that "the Jewish people soon afterward became so brutal and conducted a genocidal policy toward the Palestinians that they can rightly be defined as Judeo-Nazis." The new state has adopted symbols that hark back to the Hitlerite regime, and Croatian expatriates, some of whom were war criminals, have been made welcome.

Slobodan Milosevic, Serbia's prime minister and Tudjman's arch-enemy, says, "I don't believe Jews living in Croatia can be very happy with everything they see. The historical situation in Croatia was very negative as far as Jews are concerned."

But Jewish leaders in Zagreb vehemently deny they face greater anti-Semitism than do Jews elsewhere in Europe. "Tudjman's problem," says Zlatko Binenfeld, 70-year-old father of the Jewish council's Yasha and a former colonel in the Yugoslav National Army, "is that he either wrote or said a number of things that are problematic. Now that he is prime minister, he can't escape himself."

As for Tudjman, he angers quickly when questioned on these issues. "Enough. It is a well-known fact that some of my best friends are Jews," he thundered when this reporter confronted him with allegations of anti-Semitism in an interview at the temporary presidential headquarters. Yasha Binenfeld acknowledges that the community has had problems with Tudjman, but he shrugs these off: "It's too much to ask that when a Jew wakes up in the morning, three Christians will stand by his bed saying My dear Jew, how much we love you!' I am as suspicious of people who claim they are wildly in love with Jews as of people who hate us."

Former Foreign Ministry director and retired ambassador Alexander Demajo, 68, head of the Jewish community's Holocaust memorial commission, said in a conversation at his home in Belgrade that he suspects that the 2,400 or so Jews of Zagreb face unremitting pressure to deny their vulnerability. "They are using Jews very actively to present to the world a nice, democratic face.

"From the formal point of view, I can't say that Tudjman's regime is openly fascistic or anti-Semitic. I just can't understand how Jews there could have bought into the government's propaganda unless they were hypnotized." Talk like this enrages Croatian Jews, who continue to maintain a vigorous Jewish lifestyle even in the midst of a war being fought in their backyards, especially since some Serbian Jews, like Mandic, have been unusually outspoken in their support for the Serbian cause.

Jews, like many in beseiged Zagreb, tend not to leave their homes at night, fearing armed bands of Croatian irregulars and Serbian terrorists. But Sabbath eve services are held at the temporary Jewish community headquarters supplied by the municipality after bomb attacks damaged the old one. On one Friday in December, there were 10 congregants and, in an adjacent room, 15 school children and several counselors in their early 20s singing Hanukkah songs and lighting candles. There were no signs of panic or fear.

Zlatko Binenfeld dismisses as absurd charges that Croatia is a reincarnation of the fascist police state it was during World War II. "I am very offended by what I hear from our Jewish friends in Belgrade and elsewhere," he says. "I cannot imagine that someone in Israel or Belgrade believes that I could support a regime like the one which killed 180 members of my and my wife's families."

Croatian Jewish leaders say they were astounded that their Serbian counterparts did not send an emissary to check their situation after the bombing of their community center last summer. Jews, unlike Serbs or Croatians, tend to be able to enter and leave both republics freely from neighboring Austria, and some have acted as intermediaries in prisoner exchanges. Serbian Jews say that the Croatian community asked them to limit contacts with them until the end of hostilities, but the Croatians deny this.

Attempts by Croatian authorities to avoid the anti-Semitic label have resulted in one token political appointment: Croatia's deputy foreign minister, Misha Montillio, is a Jew. He is also, say some Croatian Jews, incompetent and underhanded. Reflecting opinion in the Jewish community, Yasha Binenfeld says he "couldn't be trusted to escort a goose across the street without losing the goose."

Montillio is widely faulted for having bungled an attempt to have Tudjman received in Israel. Critics contend he sought in one clumsy leap to achieve what took the Serbs three years of painstaking efforts vis-a-vis Israel. "The man is a blot on the entire Jewish community," says the elder Binenfeld. "Yes," adds his son, "but when we asked that he be removed, a friend in the defense ministry told me, What, and risk being called anti-Semitic - are you crazy?'"

Croatia's lack of relations with Israel have become a sore point both for the republic's leaders and for the Jewish community. A month ago, Yugoslavia announced its intent to reestablish diplomatic ties with Israel, severed after the Six-Day War. The decision was a consequence of careful public-relations work by Klara Mandic's Serbian-Jewish Friendship Society. Mandic, who is very fond of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, arranged numerous exchanges of Israeli and Yugoslavian politicians and businessmen as well as the twinning of some 14 Serbian and Israeli cities.

In Croatia, however, neither Mandic's pro-Serbian stance nor her efforts to foster Serbian-Israeli relations have gone down well. "I will kill that stupid bitch with my own hands," said one Jewish-Croatian leader, who blames Mandic's anti-Croatian utterances with having inspired the attack against the community center. "I'm not worried about Tudjman, but who will protect us from Klara Mandic?"

Related reporting: “The Last Yugoslavs” — Hadassah, May 1992 (surviving pages 16–17).