David Albala (born David Kovu; 1 September 1886 – 4 April 1942) was a Serbian military officer, physician, diplomat and Jewish community leader.
In 1905, Albala enrolled at the University of Vienna to study medicine. He returned to Serbia following the outbreak of the Balkan Wars in 1912 and enlisted in the Royal Serbian Army. In late 1915, 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 subsequently evacuated to North Africa. Upon recovering, Albala returned to Corfu, where he proposed to Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pašić that he travel to United States to lobby on Serbia's behalf. Pašić agreed to the proposal and Albala embarked on a tour of the United States giving speeches, raising bonds and soliciting loans. On 27 December 1917, the head of the Serbian delegation to the United States, Milenko Vesnić, sent Albala a letter in which he affirmed Serbia's support for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. Serbia thus became the first country to endorse the Balfour Declaration.
In the immediate post-war period, Albala served as one of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes' representatives at the Paris Peace Conference in Versailles. Following a dispute with Pašić and his People's Radical Party, Albala reoriented his focus towards civic activism. He 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 1935, he visited the Holy Land for the first and only time to attend the dedication of a memorial forest in Jerusalem planted in honour of Yugoslavia's King Alexander, who had been assassinated the previous year.
As the 1930s progressed, Albala became increasingly concerned about the precarious position of Jews in Central and Eastern Europe, but his concerns were ignored by many other prominent Yugoslav Jews. In 1939, Albala departed for the United States on another mission to raise funds and lobby American officials on Yugoslavia's behalf. He died of a brain aneurysm in Washington, D.C., in 1942, never having returned to Yugoslavia, which had in the interim been invaded, occupied and partitioned by the Axis powers.
Early life
David Kovu was born in Belgrade, Serbia on 1 September 1886. He 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. The family was relatively impoverished. Following the deaths of both of their parents, the Kovu children were placed in the care of seven different families. Two of 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. Isak traced his heritage to a noble family in first-century Judea. One of his distant ancestors was the 12th-century Spanish Jewish astronomer Abraham ibn Daud. Albala and his adopted family lived in Belgrade's Jewish quarter, Dorćol.
Albala completed his primary education in Belgrade. He later attended the First Belgrade Gymnasium. Albala's wife, Paulina, who wrote her husband's biography, stated: "These schools provided David and his generation with something more than just knowledge: this was the unique and intensive feeling of patriotism, a special love for Belgrade, and the ideals Belgrade stood for." In 1903, Albala founded Gideon, Belgrade' first Jewish youth association. Albala was an ambitious student who aspired to enroll in the University of Vienna. He received a scholarship from Potpora, a Jewish benevolent society headquartered in Belgrade. Further financial support was provided by several prominent members of Belgrade's Jewish community. In 1905, Albala enrolled in the University of Vienna's Faculty of Medicine. The University of Vienna facilitated contact and cultural exchange between Sephardim from the Balkans and Ashkenazim from Central Europe. While studying medicine, Albala first became introduced to Zionism. He subsequently joined the Balkan Jewish students association of Bar Giora, and later became its president. He graduated from the University of Vienna in 1910.
Upon his return to Serbia, Albala was conscripted into the Royal Serbian Army. During this time, he found himself attending synagogue less often. Asked by his adopted father about this change, Albala asserted, "But I am a devoted Zionist." The father replied, "Ah, my son, one must be a Jew as well as a Zionist," which influenced Albala's behaviour thereafter. Albala was later employed as a physician aboard an ocean liner sailing from Trieste to South America. Upon hearing of the outbreak of the Balkan Wars in October 1912, Albala tendered his resignation and returned to Serbia to enlist. For the duration of the Balkan Wars, Albala served in a Royal Serbian Army field hospital, during which he contracted typhus and cholera. In the post-war period, Albala was demobilized and assigned as a physician in the town of Monastir (modern-day Bitola, North Macedonia). His superiors quickly took note of his charisma and affinity for language. In November 1913, Albala and the chief rabbi of Belgrade, Isak Alkalaj, were enlisted by the Royal Serbian Government to travel through the territories recently wrested from the Ottoman Empire and deliver pro-Serbian speeches to the Jews living there.
World War I
In late 1915 and early 1916, Albala took part in the Royal Serbian Army's winter retreat to Corfu across the mountains of Albania. During the retreat, Albala contracted typhoid, and was evacuated together with other ailing soldiers to the Greek port of Volos, and then to the town of Bizerte, in French Tunisia. He 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. Upon recovery, he returned to Corfu, where Serbia had established its government-in-exile.
First mission to the United States As a consequence of the Russian Revolution, the Russian Empire – one of Serbia's principal allies – was no longer able to offer its support. Worsening matters further, the other Allied countries were hesitant to provide further aid to the Royal Serbian Army on the Salonika front. The Royal Serbian Government decided to turn to the United States, a neutral country at the time, for financial assistance. A mission headed by Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović two years earlier to garner support for the Serbian war effort had been unsuccessful. The Royal Serbian Army needed to replenish its depleted ranks, but for much of the war, it was illegal for Serbian representatives to recruit volunteers on American soil because most Serbian Americans were still subjects of Austria-Hungary, a country the United States was not formally at war with.
The Serbian government's lobbying efforts centred around two organizations, the Serbian National Defence and the Yugoslav Committee. The latter was intended to attract the support of Croats and Slovenes for the creation of a unified South Slavic state after the war. In January 1917, Serbia established a diplomatic legation in Washington, D.C. Shortly thereafter, the Serbian War Mission was established, headed by Milenko Vesnić. At Corfu, Albala approached the Prime Minister of Serbia, Nikola Pašić, with a proposal to visit the United States and lobby Jewish Americans on the Serbian government's behalf; Pašić accepted Albala's proposal. In July 1917, Albala left Corfu, and after brief stopovers in Rome and Paris, reached London in September. He arrived in the United States on 26 September 1917.
Albala's tour of the United States was financed by several Jewish organizations. He 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. These connections gave Albala access to several senior Wilson administration officials, such as Secretary of State Robert Lansing and his counselor Frank Polk.
Balfour Declaration In November 1917, the Parliament of the United Kingdom adopted the Balfour Declaration, which called for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. 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, Vesnić sent a letter to Albala expressing the Royal Serbian Government's support for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. The letter, written in English, was soon published in all major American newspapers, it read as follows:
Serbia thus became the first country to openly endorse the Balfour Declaration. Unlike the Balfour Declaration, which called for the establishment of a Jewish "national home" in Palestine, Vesnić's letter unambiguously called for the establishment of a state that would become an integral member of the international community, as demonstrated by the use of the term "free Israel" in its latter half. Vesnić's letter also marked the first time that Israel was mentioned in any official government document as the name of the future Jewish state. Albala himself considered Vesnić'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.
Albala subsequently toured the United States addressing Jewish communities and raising money for war bonds. After the head of the Serbian legation, Ljubomir Mihailović, failed to secure a loan from the United States, Albala appealed to Brandeis, who persuaded Wilson to approve a loan of $1 million ($ in ) to Serbia. 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. The brigade was eventually formed in March 1918, in a ceremonial parade, the 1st Jewish Brigade was led by US Major Weiss and David Albala down New York's Fifth Avenue, before setting out for Palestine.
Interwar period Immediate post-war years (1918–1929) It is also stated that Albala stood in the United States until November 1918. On his return to Serbia, Albala was asked by Pašić to attend the Paris Peace Conference as an observer and expert on Jewish matters. In the immediate post-war period, Albala was briefly associated with Pašić's People's Radical Party, but soon withdrew from the political scene altogether to focus on his medical career and civic activism.
Albala became prominent in the Belgrade Jewish Nationalist Society and in the Yugoslav Zionist Federation. He 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. He 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. Albala wrote and published articles in various journals, both Jewish and non-Jewish, and even wrote two plays. Albala also served as the vice-president of the Federation of Jewish Religious Communities of Yugoslavia.
Prelude to World War II (1930–1939)