The Sarajevo Haggadah survived three separate persecutions through cross-communal protection.

Evidence

The Sarajevo Haggadah, with its exquisite Hebrew calligraphy and colored illustration, had been created in fourteenth-century Spain. Jewish refugees from the Inquisition in Spain had brought it to Bosnia. During World War II the Sarajevo Haggadah had been preserved by a Muslim curator who hid it from Nazi soldiers. In 1992, it was saved at great personal risk by a team of Bosnian museum workers that included a Muslim, an Orthodox Serb, and a Catholic. The Haggadah has thus survived three historic persecutions: the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, the Holocaust, and what has been called “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia. — Michael A. Sells, The Bridge Betrayed, 57

Categorization

• CANDY: A single artifact rescued successively by a Muslim curator and then a Muslim-Orthodox-Catholic team is a memorable, shareable little story.
• SHARE: Send to anyone interested in Balkan interreligious history or book history — the Haggadah’s rescue chain (Muslim from Nazis, then tri-confessional team) is exactly the kind of detail they’d savor.
• XREF: Powerful counterpoint to the memory-destruction theme elsewhere; echoes the Stolen Book of the Astolat pattern of single artifacts embodying civilizational continuity.