Žamila Kolonomos

Žamila Andžela Kolonomos (; June 18, 1922 – June 18, 2013) was a Sephardi Jewish partisan, writer, academic, and political activist in what is now North Macedonia.

During World War II in Vardar Macedonia, Kolonomos joined the Yugoslav communist resistance. After the war, she realised her entire family had been killed in an extermination camp. Later she became a professor at the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje and worked to preserve the identity of the country's Jewish community. Through her scholarly publications and memoirs, she played a significant role in the shaping of the Holocaust's legacy in the country.

Early life Žamila Kolonomos was born on June 18, 1922, in Monastir (now Bitola, North Macedonia) to Jewish parents. She grew up in the Jewish community in the city, where her father was a manager in the local branch of Banque Franco-Serbe (French-Serbian Bank). Her parents, Isak and Esterina Fransez Kolonomos, had five children. Her father was descended from Romaniote Jews from Ioannina in present-day Greece. The Kolonomos family had likely resided in the area during Roman and later Byzantine rule. In the early twentieth century, three brothers from the family settled in Monastir, home to an active Sephardi community. Her family was a prominent banking and trading family. The Kolonomos family was not very religious, although they celebrated the Jewish holidays. Living in a multicultural region, the family spoke Ladino, Greek, French, Serbian, and Turkish. The Bulgarian authorities implemented the Law for Protection of the Nation and other anti-Jewish regulations in the same month. alt=Žamila Kolonomos with fellow Dame Gruev partisan fighters in Macedonia. Žamila Kolonomos (center) with fighters of the Dame Gruev detachment in Macedonia during World War II. As Monastir's Jews were rounded up and deported by the Bulgarian authorities on March 11, 1943, Kolonomos and several other Jewish resisters such as Estreya Ovadya, Adela Feradji, Stela Levi and Rosa Kamhi managed to escape by hiding in a cigarette kiosk, belonging to a member of the anti-fascist resistance - . She fled the city and joined the Dame Gruev detachment of the Macedonian Partisans in the following month. However, tragedy struck again in 1963 when Kolonomos lost her 18-year-old daughter, Mira, in the Skopje earthquake. Kolonomos served as a deputy in the National Assembly of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, She also studied at the Sorbonne in this period.

She wrote and edited various articles and books on the region's history, Ladino, and the Yugoslav-Macedonian resistance during World War II.

In the 1970s, she published two collections on Sephardi Jewish language, culture, and history: Poslovice i izreke sefardskih Jevreja Bosne i Hercegovine (Proverbs and Sayings of the Sephardi Jews of Bosnia and Herzegovina), about Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Poslovice, izreke i priče sefardskih Jevreja Makedonije (Proverbs, Sayings and Tales of the Sephardi Jews of Macedonia), about Macedonia. Animal tales (including five from Skoplje and two from Monastir) are present in the latter work. She was the only Macedonian Sephardic collector of linguistic and cultural heritage of Macedonian Jews in this period.

Her 2006 memoir Monastir sin Djudios was published in English translation as Monastir Without Jews: Recollections of a Jewish Partisan in Macedonia in 2008. Subsequently, her 2007 memoir of the resistance Dviženjeto na otporot i Evreite od Makedonija was translated into English in 2013 under the title The Resistance Movement and the Jews From Macedonia. Her books were frequently published in Ladino as well as Macedonian.

Žamila Kolonomos died in Skopje on June 18, 2013, at the age of 91. Her work represents some of the only firsthand accounts of Jewish life and the Holocaust in what is now North Macedonia. A collection of her photographs, documents, medals, and other objects is held by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Selected works and honours Kolonomos produced the following works and received the following honours: Poslovice i izreke sefardskih Jevreja Bosne i Hercegovine (Proverbs and Sayings of the Sephardi Jews of Bosnia and Herzegovina), 1976 Poslovice, izreke i priče sefardskih Jevreja Makedonije (Proverbs, Sayings and Tales of the Sephardi Jews of Macedonia), 1978 Evreite vo Makedonija vo Vtorata svetska vojna, 1941–1945 (The Jews in Macedonia During the Second World War (1941–1945)), co-edited with Vera Veskoviḱ-Vangeli, 1986 Sefardski odglasi: Studii i sekavanyaza evreite od Makedoniya (Sephardic Echoes: Studies and Memories about the Jews from Macedonia), 1995 Monastir sin Djudios (Monastir without Jews), 2006 Dviženjeto na otporot i Evreite od Makedonija (The Resistance Movement and the Jews From Macedonia), 2007

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