Sarajevo Jewish humanitarian society, La Benevolencija, also provided aid to thousands of besieged Sarajevo residents, supplying food, medicine, and postal and radio communications. Ceresnjes told a local paper that the nonsectarian relief effort was partly a gesture of gratitude to local Muslims who had hidden Jews during the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia. As a student of Balkan history, Ceresnjes said he had anticipated the war a full year before it broke out, and had organized the Jewish community of Sarajevo to stockpile supplies, make sure everyone had passports, make plans to evacuate the children and the elderly, and find places for the evacuees in Israel and Europe. After the war started, Ceresnjes and La Benevolencija assisted the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in the evacuation of 2,500 Sarajevo residents, only one-third of whom were Jewish. There were 11 evacuations in all, three by air early on in the war, and eight by bus convoy after the airport had been closed to civilian traffic. While other convoys were stopped, the Ceresnjes convoys all got through, as field staff from the Joint negotiated to cease fires to ensure a safe transfer. In recognition of his wartime humanitarian efforts, Ceresnjes was awarded the French Légion d'honneur in October 1994. He published his wartime memoirs in a 35-page monograph, Caught in the winds of war: Jews in the former Yugoslavia, in 1999. Work in Israel Ceresnjes made aliyah to Israel in 1996. In 1997 he joined the Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as an architect-researcher. He is permanently engaged in the documentation of the Jewish architectural cultural heritage in the former Yugoslavia and other Eastern European countries, along with the mapping of Holocaust memorials and monuments. He also assists the United States Congressional Commission for Protecting and Preserving American Property Abroad, which was founded in 1985 to survey Jewish cemeteries, memorials and monuments, with a primary focus on Eastern Europe. References External links Bosnian Jewry: A small community meets a unique challenge during the 1990s war – Interview with Ivan Ceresnjes The Destruction of the Memory of Jewish Presence in Eastern Europe; a Case Study: Former Yugoslavia – Interview with Ivan Ceresnjes Documenting Synagogues in Germany Bosnia and Herzegovina emigrants to Israel Bosnia and Herzegovina Sephardi Jews Architects from Sarajevo Chevaliers of the Légion d'honneur Israeli architects Israeli people of Bosnia and Herzegovina-Jewish descent Academic staff of the Hebrew