Historijski pogledi (Nov 2022)
Memories of Sarajevo Jew Benjamin Samokovlija – Damjan about his participation in the National liberation and anti-fascist war in Yugoslavia (1941-1945)
Abstract
Benjamin Samokovlija (Sarajevo, 31.III.1918 - Skopje, 28.II.1996), comes from a Jewish family. On April 5, 1941 he was mobilized in the ranks of the army of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. In the second half of August 1941, Benjamin joined the ranks of the National Liberation Army and the People's Liberation Army. He took part in numerous battles in the anti-fascist war for the liberation of Yugoslavia. After the Fourth Enemy Offensive of the Supreme Headquarters of the People's Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Yugoslavia which took place in the first half of 1943, Samokovlija together with part of his partisan unit were captured by the Germans and imprisoned in Zenica. After a month in the Zenica prison, a group of 600 prisoners, including Samokovlija, were transferred to the Thessaloniki concentration camp. In October 1943, through an EAM connection, Benjamin Samokovlija managed to escape and join ELAS. He remained in the ranks of the Greek partisans until the contact with the Macedonian partisans from the First Macedonian-Kosovo Brigade on the territory of the Aegean part of Macedonia in the period between the second half of December 1943 and January 1944. He was admitted to the III Battalion and was in charge of the agitprop of the battalion, from where he was later transferred to the ranks of the II, V and X brigades, acting as a battalion commissioner and participating in the battles for the liberation of Macedonia. At the very beginning of World War II in 1941, Benjamin Samokovlija lost many of his immediate family members, including his parents and wife. As direct witnesses to the measures taken for the physical and economic destruction of the Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina by the German occupying authorities, their collaborators and the authorities of the Independent State of Croatia, his three sisters joined the People's Liberation War. His eldest sister Laura was killed in 1945. Benjamin Samokovlija is the holder of several military and state decorations. During his tenure, he ran a number of state-owned enterprises. It is particularly important to emphasize that for less than two decades he served as President of the Jewish community in the Republic of Macedonia, building strong friendly relations with other religious communities in the country.
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