David Albala: The Forging of a Double Loyalty

Who Was David Albala?

David Albala (b. Belgrade 1886; d. Washington 1942) was an outstanding representative of the Serbian and Yugoslav Jewish community. His parents, Lea Malamed and Avram Kovu, were Sephardim who lived for a while in Rumania (Craiowa and Turnu Severin) and then in Serbia (Belgrade). David was born in Belgrade and was one of seven siblings in the fairly poor Kovu family. When both parents died, the children were transferred to the care of seven different families.¹ Five-year-old David was adopted by his maternal aunt and her husband Isak Albala, whose last name he assumed and kept to the end of his life. The Albala family lived in Dorćol, the Sephardic quarter of Belgrade, where he completed his secondary education in the Prva beogradska gimnazija. “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.”² Although his adopted parents were far from wealthy, David was an ambitious student who dreamed of studying medicine at one of the best higher educational institutions in the region—the University of Vienna. He received a fellowship from Potpora, a benevolent Belgrade-Jewish organization supporting students abroad, and several well-to-do members of the Jewish community in Belgrade, to study in Vienna. He graduated from the Medical School at the University of Vienna in 1910.³ Albala was one of a number of Jewish students from the Balkan region, such as Serbia and Bosnia, who returned from Vienna to become members of the Serbian (later Yugoslav), Jewish intellectual elite.⁴ For these students, Vienna was one of the most prestigious educational and cultural centers in Europe of that time. In addition, it was a place where Sephardic students from the Balkans with a long heritage of Oriental culture established close contacts with Central European Ashkenazi Jews whose culture and historical experiences were quite different. Lastly, Vienna was the cradle of modern Zionism, an ideology that would start making a major impact on European Jews at the beginning of the 20th century. Albala came back to Belgrade to fulfill his service in the Serbian army and afterward assumed a fairly lucrative post as a medical doctor on a transoceanic ship line sailing between Trieste and Latin America.⁵

Upon hearing that the First Balkan War had broken out (1912), Albala quit his job and returned to Serbia to join the army. Following the end of the Balkan Wars, he was demobilized and posted as doctor in Bitolj, located in the just-liberated territory of Macedonia, or South Serbia as it was called at that time. Six months later he would again fight as a Serbian soldier in the Great War. In 1915, the most difficult time for Serbia, he crossed the Albanian mountains with the retreating Serbian army. During that difficult march Albala contracted typhoid and was sent, together with other ailing soldiers, to Volos in Greece and Bizerta in Tunisia in order to recover. From there he was transferred back to Corfu, where the Serbian army and government were stationed. From there the Serbian “army that cannot die”⁶ would later resume military operations and effect a brilliant breakthrough of the Salonika Front, which enabled the subsequent liberation of Serbia in 1918. Albala, however, did not participate in these operations because he had volunteered to carry out a diplomatic rather than military task.

The Context of Albala’s First Mission to the US⁷

During the extremely difficult passage of the Serbian army across Albania, effected in the winter and without a minimum of supplies, the army was depleted: a great number of soldiers died of cold and hunger and continued dying in Corfu.⁸ Had the Russian emperor Nikolai II not presented an ultimatum to the Allies, they would not have provided transportation, food, or medical aid to the Serbian army after the “Albanian Calvary.” However, in 1917 Russia was caught in the turmoil of the February Revolution, resulting in the Czar’s abdication and...