SARAJEVO, May 13 (FENA) – Mediacentar Sarajevo and Hagada Association presented on Tuesday at the Bosnian Cultural Center the results of the project “Reviving Jewish Culture in the Western Balkans: Heritage, Creativity and Future,” through which significant segments of Jewish periodicals and the cultural heritage of Bosnia and Herzegovina were digitized and researched, with the involvement of young artists and experts in the fields of culture and tourism.

Mediacentar Sarajevo Operations Manager Bojana Mrkić said that Mediacentar has been engaged in the digitization and preservation of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s cultural heritage for nearly three decades through the activities of the Infobiro Digital Archive. She recalled that publications of cultural societies such as Preporod, Prosvjeta, Napredak and La Benevolencija had already been digitized 16 years ago.

She stated that such initiatives led to the project of digitizing the Sarajevo magazine ‘Jevrejski glas’, which was published between the two world wars and, as she emphasized, offers valuable insight not only into the history of the Jewish community but also into the social and cultural life of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the first half of the 20th century.

“Through the analysis of the content, we were able to learn a great deal about life at the time, from advertisements as testimonies of an era to cultural events, theatre performances, opera singers’ appearances, and even a women’s jazz band in 1929,” Mrkić told FENA.

She added that Mediacentar does not view digitization merely as a technical process, but also as a matter of cultural diversity and social inclusion, aimed at protecting physical materials from deterioration while making them more accessible to researchers and younger generations.

The project also involved young artists from Sarajevo and Belgrade, who developed creative solutions inspired by the content of Jevrejski glas, the symbols of the Sarajevo Haggadah and Jewish culture.

Artist Ilda Halilčević said the project enabled her to gain a deeper understanding of Jewish culture and identity, and that her focus was on bringing archival materials closer to the public through a contemporary artistic approach.

She presented the concept “They Lived Here,” which includes five digital illustrations dedicated to Sephardic women from different historical periods.

“The idea was to use illustrations and interventions in public spaces to raise the question of who the women were that lived and worked here, but whose stories are almost invisible today,” Halilčević said.

President of the Hagada Association Eli Tauber emphasized that one of the project’s key goals was to facilitate easier access to digitized materials for researchers, journalists, and scholars.

He explained that the scanned content is now also available in text form, enabling easier searches and use of materials in academic and research work.

“We found a great deal of material related to Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia that was interesting even to me, although I earned my master’s degree on Jewish press in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Tauber said.

He added that students and young artists gave the project a new dimension through illustrations and proposals for the contemporary use of Jewish periodicals and cultural heritage, which could motivate younger generations to engage more in researching cultural heritage.

International tourism expert Azra Džigal assessed that preserving and promoting Sephardic heritage is also extremely important for the cultural tourism of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

She stressed that, in addition to the Sarajevo Haggadah, the Jewish Cemetery in Sarajevo is particularly significant, as it is the second-largest Jewish cemetery in Europe, yet still not adequately valorized as a cultural and tourist site.

“Jewish heritage is an integral part of the history of Sarajevo and Bosnia and Herzegovina and can be an important segment of the tourism offer, together with the Ladino language, gastronomy, synagogues, and other elements of Sephardic culture,” Džigal told FENA.

Following the presentation of the project results, a discussion was held on the preservation and interpretation of cultural heritage in a contemporary context.

The project was implemented in cooperation with the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, with the support of UNESCO and the European Union, within the regional initiative “Culture and Creativity for the Western Balkans.”