Demography
About half of the Jews live in Sarajevo and the balance in Mostar, Zenica, Tuzla, Doboj, and Banja Luka. Two-thirds of the community have left since the outbreak of conflict in the former Yugoslavia, but recently the tendency toward emigration has slackened. Some 90% of the community is Sephardi. However, only older people still speak Ladino.

History
On the eve of the Shoah, the Jewish population numbered some 14,000. In 1941 Bosnia was incorporated into the Croat state. When the Germans entered Sarajevo, together with a local Bosnian Muslim mob, they destroyed the Sephardi synagogue. Bosnian Jewry was decimated by a combination of German, Ustashe (Croat Fascist), and Bosnian Muslim forces. The Mufti of Jerusalem (Haj Amin-al Husseini) was active in enlisting recruits to a Bosnian Muslim S.S. unit and in encouraging local authorities to organize the deportation and extermination of Bosnian Jewry.

After the war, the Jewish community was reconstituted, and many of the survivors returned. As was the case elsewhere in Yugoslavia, the rate of intermarriage was high, but most Jews retained a sense of Jewish identity. After the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1990, Jews in Bosnia shared the fate of their non-Jewish neighbors, and many elected to flee the country.

Community
Since 1945 there has been a united Jewish community (Sephardi and Ashkenazi). The Federation of Jewish Communities of Bosnia and Herzegovina is responsible for both religious and secular life. La Benevolencija, a Jewish humanitarian association formed 100 years ago, is active in promoting the general welfare of the population, irrespective of religion or nationality.