59 Facts About David Albala

In 1905, Albala enrolled at the University of Vienna to study medicine.

David Albala returned to Serbia following the outbreak of the Balkan Wars in 1912 and enlisted in the Royal Serbian Army.

In late 1915, David Albala took part in the Royal Serbian Army's arduous winter retreat to the Greek island of Corfu, during which he contracted typhoid, and was evacuated to North Africa.

Pasic agreed to the proposal and David Albala embarked on a tour of the United States giving speeches, raising bonds and soliciting loans.

David Albala served as the president of the Jewish Community of Belgrade, vice-president of the Council of Jewish Communities of Yugoslavia and president of Yugoslavia's Jewish National Fund.

In 1939, David Albala departed for the United States on another mission to raise funds and lobby American officials on Yugoslavia's behalf.

David Albala died of a brain aneurysm in Washington, DC, in 1942, never having returned to Yugoslavia, which had in the interim been invaded, occupied and partitioned by the Axis powers.

David Albala Kovu was born in Belgrade, Serbia on 1 September 1886.

David Albala was one of seven children born to Avram Kovu and Lea Malamed, Sephardic Jews who had lived in the Romanian towns of Craiova and Drobeta-Turnu Severin before relocating to Serbia and settling in its capital Belgrade prior to David's birth.

Two of David Albala's brothers were adopted by families in the United States.

At the age of five, David was adopted by his maternal aunt and her husband Isak Albala, whose surname he assumed.

David Albala was an ambitious student who aspired to enroll in the University of Vienna.

David Albala received a scholarship from Potpora, a Jewish benevolent society headquartered in Belgrade.

In 1905, David Albala enrolled in the University of Vienna's Faculty of Medicine.

David Albala subsequently joined the Balkan Jewish students association of Bar Giora, and later became its president.

David Albala graduated from the University of Vienna in 1910.

David Albala was later employed as a physician aboard an ocean liner sailing from Trieste to South America.

In late 1915 and early 1916, David Albala took part in the Royal Serbian Army's winter retreat to Corfu across the mountains of Albania.

David Albala was later transferred to a hospital in Cairo, where he perfected his English-language skills by conversing with his fellow patients and the English-speaking nurses.

At Corfu, David Albala approached the Prime Minister of Serbia, Nikola Pasic, with a proposal to visit the United States and lobby Jewish Americans on the Serbian government's behalf; Pasic accepted David Albala's proposal.

In July 1917, David Albala left Corfu, and after brief stopovers in Rome and Paris, reached London in September.

David Albala arrived in the United States on 26 September 1917.

David Albala formed relationships with several prominent members of the Jewish American community, among them Louis Brandeis, an associate Supreme Court justice, as well as Felix Frankfurter, one of president Woodrow Wilson's closest advisors.

David Albala immediately drew the attention of the Royal Serbian Government to the document's significance and recommended that it consider officially endorsing it.

On 17 December 1917, Vesnic sent a letter to David Albala expressing the Royal Serbian Government's support for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.

David Albala himself considered Vesnic's letter to be the ultimate goal of his political work, both Serbian and Jewish; with its publication, he achieved three successes: he won American public opinion by exposing Serbia as tolerant, broad-minded and democratic, he received expressions of sympathy from Serbia for Jews, as well as for Serbian Jews, and he received support for the Zionist idea.

David Albala subsequently toured the United States addressing Jewish communities and raising money for war bonds.

David Albala proposed forming a Jewish Brigade made up of Jewish American volunteers, on the model of the British Army's Jewish Legion, to take part in combat operations in Palestine.

On his return to Serbia, David Albala was asked by Pasic to attend the Paris Peace Conference as an observer and expert on Jewish matters.

David Albala became prominent in the Belgrade Jewish Nationalist Society and in the Yugoslav Zionist Federation.

David Albala was the founder or co-founder of several Jewish organizations, among them the Jewish National Fund of Yugoslavia, where he served as a long-time president, the Yugoslav branch of Keren Hayesod, the Jewish Reading Room, and the theatrical association Max Nordau.

David Albala founded and co-founded several Jewish periodicals, which he edited or co-edited: The Jewish News-Letter, The Review of the Union of Jewish Religious Communities and The Newsletter of the Jewish Sephardic Religious Community.

David Albala wrote and published articles in various journals, both Jewish and non-Jewish, and even wrote two plays.

David Albala served as the vice-president of the Federation of Jewish Religious Communities of Yugoslavia.

In 1930, David Albala published an article titled Why the Jews Love Yugoslavia in the publication Jevrejski glas, in which he repeated the phrase "we love it" eleven times.

In 1935, David Albala was invited to attend its opening ceremony.

David Albala accepted the invitation and his subsequent visit marked his first and only stay in the Holy Land.

Several days after the Sixth Congress of the Union of Jewish Communities of Yugoslavia, David Albala met with Prime Minister Milan Stojadinovic, and complained to him about the rising level of anti-Semitism in the Yugoslav press.

Several weeks later, David Albala was granted an audience with prince regent Paul, who was reported to have expressed sympathy with the Jewish people.

In May 1938, David Albala held a meeting with Yugoslavia's Minister of Internal Affairs, Anton Korosec, who assured David Albala that Yugoslavia would not implement German-style race laws targeting Jews.

David Albala was the last president of the Belgrade Sephardic community before World War II.

At the Seventh Congress of the SJVOJ, held between 23 and 24 April 1939, David Albala delivered a speech in which he extolled the nascent Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine as a refuge for the Jewish people.

Since this was a confidential mission, David Albala left Yugoslavia without informing Alkalay or the other members of the committee.

David Albala arrived in New York on 23 December 1939.

David Albala sent Alkalay a letter explaining that he had departed for the United States and requesting that Alkalay devise an excuse for his absence before the committee.

David Albala thus sent Alkalay a letter of resignation, which was read aloud before the committee.

Between 1 February 1940 and 8 February 1941, David Albala sent twelve reports to Prince Paul and Yugoslavia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In stark contrast to his first mission to the United States, David Albala found that the majority of Americans favoured isolationism, a stance which made the task of lobbying on Yugoslavia's behalf all the more difficult.

David Albala wrote two reports informing the Yugoslav government-in-exile about the extermination of Jews in the NDH.

On 10 November 1941, David Albala wrote a second report, addressed to Subasic and Fotic, describing the extent of the Holocaust in Croatia.

Around the same time, David Albala sent letters to representatives of the Roman Catholic Church imploring Pope Pius XII to demand an end to the extermination of Jews in the NDH.

David Albala sent letters to Jewish representatives in Switzerland, requesting that they send aid to the Jews in the NDH.

David Albala worked so closely with the Yugoslav embassy in Washington, the scholar Krinka Vidakovic-Petrov writes, that he was practically a member of the embassy staff.

David Albala died in Washington, DC of a sudden brain aneurysm on 4 April 1942.

David Albala was said to have died of a "broken heart" upon hearing of the extent of the destruction inflicted on Yugoslavia's Jewish communities during the Holocaust.

David Albala's death spawned rumours that he had been poisoned.

David Albala's body was cremated on 6 April 1942, on the anniversary of the German bombing of Belgrade and the beginning of the Axis aggression on Yugoslavia; the ceremony took place in the presence of members of the Yugoslav embassy as well as representatives of Jewish organizations in Washington.

David Albala's death dealt a heavy blow to the diplomatic efforts of Yugoslav officials in the United States.

David Albala's widow continued to work for the Yugoslav government-in-exile's propaganda section in New York City until May 1943.