The long search is on for Lena Kaldor (or Caldor)

A chance meeting with the owner of a tourist shop in Dubrovnik, Croatia, may hopefully lead to the discovery of her lost relative, Lena Kaldor, who settled in South Africa from the Adriatic port some years ago.

On a visit to Croatia in June, Capetonians Kent and Sharon Karro bought some gifts in a tourist shop in Dubrovnik’s old city. Later that evening, Sharon realised she’d left her camera in the shop under a pile of T-shirts.

They rushed back but the shop was closed, so they left a note under the door with their contact details. Hearing nothing, they went back the next day, to be told that the young girl who had been working there the previous night had taken the camera home with her – having closed the shop early to come and look for them.

While they awaited her return, they got into conversation with the owner, Dubravka Obradovic, who asked them about South Africa and whether they were Jewish. When the Karros asked her if she was Jewish, she hesitatingly said, “sort of” – her maternal grandmother had been Jewish.

She also mentioned that a relative, Lena Kaldor, who today could be in her 90s, had come to this country – she wasn’t sure where or when, but she had a feeling that it was to Cape Town – and she was very keen to reestablish contact.

According to a tourist pamphlet on the city harbour available at the Jewish museum, “a large number” of Jews passed through Dubrovnik on their way to the Ottoman Empire after their expulsion from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492.

However, some Sephardic families decided to stay, constituting the first Jewish community in the “important commercial centre connecting Western countries with the interior of the Balkan Peninsula and the Ottoman Empire.

“Jews fitted very quickly into this well-developed and complex commercial network, becoming one of the most important links in the economic development of the city,” it reads.

Dona Gracia Mendez, alias Beatrice de Luna, one of the richest and most powerful women in the 16th century Mediterranean area, was one of the “many distinctive Jews” associated with the city.

The Dubrovnik government also appointed several Jews as their representatives abroad at that time. In 1546, it allocated a street with four houses to the Jews, allowing them to live within the city walls – the forerunner of the Dubrovnik Ghetto.

The second floor of one of the houses was converted into a synagogue in 1652. In the 19th century, Ashkenazi Jews migrated to the city and mixed Sephardic-Ashkenazi rituals were practised there from that time.

But despite their centurieslong presence in the city and their economic and social success, the Dubrovnik Jews faced several judicial trials and expulsions over the years. And then in 1942, the Italian fascists, who had taken over the city the previous year, established concentration camps where the city’s Jews were interned.

Today there are 45 Jews left in the city, with, as Sharon describes it, “a most beautiful little Sephardic shul” that, since 2003, has served as Croatia’s first Jewish museum.

She says that a lot of Israelis are buying property in Croatia. “There is not much Jewish life there but there are plenty of Israelis – we heard Hebrew all over the place.”

Note:

If anybody knows of Lena Kaldor (or Caldor), contact Sharon Karro at karro(at)telkom.sa.net or the shop-owner’s daughter Martina Obradovic on martina.obradovic(at)yahoo.com.

Caldor’s maiden name may have been Bardin and she may have had family by the name of Binkowski.

By MOIRA SCHNEIDER (CAPE TOWN) for SA Jewish Report Vol 14 Num 31 (20-27 August 2010)