When the Axis powers conquered and divided Yugoslavia, in the spring of , Sarajevo did not fare well. The Sarajevo pinkas , a complete record of the Jewish community from its earliest days, was confiscated and sent to Prague, never to be recovered.
Deportations followed. Jews, Gypsies, and Serb resisters turned frantically to sympathetic Muslim or Croat neighbors to hide them. Fear of denunciation spread through the city, penetrating every workplace, even the imposing neo-Renaissance halls of the Bosnian National Museum. A handsome, dapper man with a neatly trimmed mustache, he wore well-tailored three-piece suits complemented by a fez.
It is used at the table during the Passover Seder. Wine stains on the parchments of the Sarajevo Haggadah testify that this book, though lavishly designed, was read at such family feasts. And there were more than a hundred thousand Yiddish and Hebrew books. The Sarajevo Haggadah could easily have been one of them. The director was reluctant. So the two men hurried to the basement, where the Haggadah was kept in a safe whose combination only the director knew.
He took the book from a protective box and handed it to Korkut. Korkut lifted his coat and tucked the small codex, which measured about six by nine inches, into the waistband of his trousers.
He smoothed his jacket, making sure that no bulges broke the line of his suit, and the two men made their way back upstairs to face the General. The man so determined to protect a Jewish book was the scion of a prosperous, highly regarded family of Muslim alims , or intellectuals, famous for producing judges of Islamic law.
