Jaša Almuli

Jaša Almuli (; 25 August 1918 – 26 September 2013) was a Serbian Jewish journalist, author and Holocaust researcher. A Holocaust survivor and former member of the Yugoslav Partisans, he began his career at the Yugoslav news agency Tanjug and later held senior editorial and correspondent posts at Borba, serving as a foreign correspondent in Brazil, Washington and London. He was president of the Jewish Community of Belgrade from 1989 to 1992.

From the late 1980s, he played a leading role in the documentation of survivor testimony relating to the Holocaust in Serbia and the former Yugoslavia. He served as project director of the Belgrade affiliate of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies and later as project coordinator for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Former Yugoslavia Documentation Project. Between 1989 and 1997 he recorded and organised extensive collections of survivor interviews preserved in the archives of the Fortunoff Archive and the USHMM. His published works based on survivor testimony were described in scholarly reviews as well-documented contributions to the study of the Holocaust in Serbia and the Balkans.

In 1992 he settled permanently in London, where he continued his research and writing until his death in 2013.

Early life and education Almuli was born in Bucharest, Romania, on 25 August 1918 to a Serbian Sephardic family. His mother was at that time a refugee in Bucharest during the last stages of the First World War. His father, Isak-Žak Almuli, was a Belgrade merchant originally from Šabac and was sometimes known as Žarko. His mother was Sofija ( Cohen). The family traced its origins in Serbia to the sixteenth century, following the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. After the First World War, his mother served as vice-president of the Jewish Women’s Society.

Almuli completed primary school near the Cathedral Church in Belgrade and attended the Second Male Gymnasium in Belgrade. From 1936 to 1941, he studied technology at the Faculty of Technology in Belgrade. His older brother Mončelo, a reserve cavalry lieutenant, was arrested and taken to a camp for prisoners of war in Osnabrück. In the autumn of 1941, Almuli's photograph was displayed at the Grand Anti-Masonic Exhibition, an antisemitic exhibition in Belgrade.

From 1952 to 1956, Almuli was a Tanjug correspondent in Brazil and later worked at the information centre of the Yugoslav embassy. After returning from Brazil, he was a foreign-policy commentator for the newspaper Borba from 1956 to 1959. He was again posted to Brazil in 1959, reporting for both Tanjug and Borba, and returned to Belgrade in 1963, where he resumed leadership of Tanjug’s Foreign News Broadcast Service. He was also among the founders of the Crisis Headquarters of the Jewish Community of Belgrade and the Federation of Jewish Communities of Yugoslavia established in 1991.

Holocaust documentation and scholarship Following his retirement from journalism, Almuli devoted himself to documenting the Holocaust. After meeting Geoffrey Hartman at the 1988 "Remembering for the Future" conference in Oxford, he helped establish a Belgrade affiliate of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies and was appointed project director. Between 1989 and 1992 he recorded 37 video testimonies; after a suspension caused by international sanctions, a further 41 were recorded between 1995 and 1997. Almuli conducted the overwhelming majority of these interviews himself and coordinated the identification of interviewees, local logistics and archival transfer. The documentary material includes accounts of arrests and executions in the Banjica concentration camp, as well as testimonies describing the indifferent collaborationist Nedić gendarmerie and threats from the Belgrade police. A 1996 newsletter of the Fortunoff Video Archive reported that he had completed 37 testimonies in Yugoslavia prior to the outbreak of war and a further 16 in Belgrade after the cessation of hostilities, and noted that he recorded 25 interviews in Thessaloniki in 1993 and 16 in Athens in 1994. This work also included interviews conducted in Corfu in 1996, some in Italian.

Historian Jovan Byford notes that the Belgrade interviews were shaped both by the institutional frameworks of the American archives and by the political and historiographical context of Serbia in the late 1980s and 1990s, particularly debates concerning Jasenovac. He observes that Almuli approached the interviews primarily as juridical and historical testimony, emphasising factual reconstruction and documentation of crimes.

Almuli's interviews were later cited in scholarly studies of the Holocaust in Greece, while his 1989 Politika series and subsequent testimony projects were referenced in English-language scholarship on Yugoslav Jewry, including Voices of Yugoslav Jewry (1999) and the edited volume Bringing the Dark Past to Light.

In addition to his documentation work, Almuli participated in public and historiographical debates concerning the interpretation of the Holocaust in Serbia, particularly the role of the collaborationist government of Milan Nedić. In letters published in Patterns of Prejudice and other international periodicals in 1994, he argued that while Nedić’s administration collaborated with the German occupation authorities, the organisation and execution of the mass murder of Jews in occupied Serbia were undertaken by German authorities. He also described the destruction of Jews in Serbia and Greece as comparatively neglected in broader Holocaust historiography.

In the following years he remained publicly active, contributing to international discussions on wartime responsibility and historical interpretation. He continued documenting survivor testimony and writing on questions of Holocaust memory and historiography.

Almuli published the letters of Holocaust victim Hilda Dajč in his anthology (2005), bringing wider attention to her correspondence from the Sajmište concentration camp. The letters were later reproduced in his book (2010).

Later life and death In 1992, during the Bosnian War, Almuli returned permanently to London to be close to two of his children. He continued to serve as honorary president of the Belgrade Holocaust survivors' organisation.

Drawing on survivor testimonies and archival research, Almuli published several books on the persecution of Jews in Serbia and the former Yugoslavia, including Stradanje i spasavanje srpskih Jevreja (2010) (The Persecution and Rescue of Serbian Jews) and Ostali su živi (Those Who Survived) (2013).

In 1999, he was interviewed by The Guardian during the NATO bombing of Serbia. In the article he questioned Western accounts of Serbian conduct in the conflict, described some allegations as NATO propaganda, and criticised Western portrayals of Serbia. The article also mentioned his longstanding liberal communist views. He had been a member of the association since 1949 and was recognised for his decades-long career in journalism, foreign correspondence and Holocaust documentation.

Awards Almuli was awarded the Yugoslav Order of Labour, First Class.

Selected works