Alternate names: Niš [Serb], Nisch [Ger], Niş [Turk], Naissos [Grk], Naissus [Lat], Nissa, Nish, Nich. Serbian: Ниш. 43°19' N, 21°54' E, in SE Serbia, 125 miles SE of Beograd.

• Encyclopedia of Jewish Life (2001), p. 894: "Nis".
• Pinkas HaKehilot, Yugoslavia (1988), p. 196: "Nis"

Niš'  1924 Moderne synagogue is a protected historical monument andart gallery. See photo [January 2009]

Jewish cemetery: Located on the northwestern outskirts of the city at Cairska 28/2 near the former cattle market, the probably 17th century cemetery contains the remains of up to and possible more than 1,000 Jews, primarily Sephardim from Niš and nearby Prokuplje, a resting place of about 1,100 Jews of Niš who perished in WWII. The Sephardic gravestones are either shaped like sarcophagi above the below ground burial or are horizontal stone slabs. Many have stylized decorations, often Kabbalah symbols. Widespread deterioration and desecration in the site shows the oldest gravestones to date from the 18th century. Taken over by the Communist authorities in 1948 and closed to new burials after 1965, the site was neglected for decades. Part of the cemetery for many yearswas an illegal gypsy settlement of 120 homes built with gravestones for house foundations, paving, and even furniture. Opposite is an illegally built four-metre wall that destroyed a large number of tombstones. Since 2004, the Federation of Jewish Communities in Yugoslavia (now Serbia), the City Assembly of Niš, and private donors have been working to restore the site. Jasna Ciric, president of the Niš Jewish community, managed to get thirty soldiers to restore the cemetery and clear tons of debris from the site. The Niš authorities now provide improved sanitation for the gypsy settlement, now walled off from the cleared area of the cemetery. [January 2009]

2004 Desecration: "a devastated 17th-century cemetery used as a garbage dump, polluted by locally produced industrial waste, and in which gravestones had been dug up and used by local Roma, or Gypsies, for the repair of their houses and as household objects. A Roma family had moved into the prayer room at the site, and commenced to use the sarcophagus of a local rabbi, Rahamim Naftalija Gedalia, as a patio table and laundry-drying stand, according to a report in the Serbian daily Politika...a pigsty now sits in one part of the cemetery, and added, "most shattering of all, I found newly dug up graves and witnessed that the bones of the Jewish martyrs were scattered in mud and human waste... " photos.  [January 2010]

Holocaust Memorial on Bubanj Hill

Three large 1963 sculptures by Ivan Sabolic look like raised fists that commemorate the site where more than 10,000 people, including over 1,100 Jews from Niš and surrounding areas, were executed during WWII. [January 2009]