Vrbovsko Jewish Cemetery

Vrbovsko is a town situated at the far east of the mountainous region of Gorski Kotar in the Primorje-Gorski Kotar County. For the first time the town was mentioned in 1481. At the beginning of the 16th century the area was occupied by the Turks and depopulated. Only in 1599 the Serbs from Bosnia and Dalmatia were sent to live there by the Ottoman government.

In the 18th century many other migrants came to that region from abroad. There were 1506 inhabitants in Vrbovsko in 1890; most of them were Croats and Serbs. We don’t have many facts about the Jewish community in the region. There were about 37 Jews in 1931 in the whole area. Two citizens of Vrbovsko, Antun and Katarina Šragalj, who saved the Jewish girl Lea Gostl in the WWII, were named as Righteous Among the Nations in 2018.
The Jewish cemetery exists nowadays with a few tombstones. The oldest tombstone dates back to 1924 and the latest one to 1932.