The Jewish community in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia was virtually decimated during the Holocaust, with 85 percent of its members having perished during the German occupation. Nitza Gonen’s documentary, The Forgotten Ones, now available on the Izzy streaming platform, is billed as the first film to document this tragedy.

The narrator, identified only as Stella, was a resident of Sarajevo who immigrated to Israel with her family at the age of eleven. In this impassioned film, she visits her former homeland and interviews survivors and historians.

She begins on a personal note. Her great grandfather, Ahmed Sadik Sarlop, was a Muslim businessman from Salonica, Greece, who immigrated to Sarajevo. Due to his dealings with Jews, he spoke Ladino. During the Holocaust, he hid several Jews in his home. Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum and memorial in Jerusalem, has recognized him as a Righteous Gentile.

Stella does not delve into her Muslim and Jewish family connections. The absence of this material is a missed opportunity to add substance to a film that tends to be short on granular details.

She does, however, give viewers a brief lesson in modern Yugoslavian history.

Yugoslavia, a confederation of Balkan provinces, won its independence after World War I. Its Jewish population was about 80,000 on the eve of World War II. Today, some 6,000 Jews live in the territories that comprised Yugoslavia before its dissolution.

On March 25, 1941, Yugoslavia joined the Axis powers after signing a friendship pact with Germany. Two days later, Yugoslavia pulled out of it, enraging German Chancellor Adolf Hitler. On April 13,  Germany, in league with Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria, invaded and occupied Yugoslavia.........

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