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 Bar Giora, and later became its president. He graduated from the University of Vienna in 1910.
