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Bojan Aleksov
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Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I am indebted to Imre Rochlitz (1925–2012), who inspired this research, and to whose memory, this book is dedicated. I began my study of Jewish refugees in earnest only after Imre’s death, but in Budapest, the place of his birth, when the Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS) at the Central European University (CEU), then led by Professor Nadia Al-Bagdadi and Éva Gönczi, and the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung awarded their generous fellowship to me in 2016/2017. The great intellectual surroundings of the CEU, and its Raoul Wallenberg guesthouse overlooking the city, provided the perfect launching point, despite the freezing Budapest winter. I was deeply grateful to CEU professors Jasmina Lukić, Marsha Siefert, Alfred Rieber and Michael Miller, who all shared their opinions and advice on how to proceed.

In parallel, I embarked on collecting sources, archival and narrative, and exploring databases of oral history. Here, I want to acknowledge in particular the assistance of the staff of the Archive of Yugoslavia in Belgrade, the Croatian State Archive in Zagreb, Archive of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo, archives in Sremska Mitrovica, Split, Rijeka, and Brčko, and the archival collection of the Jewish Communities of Yugoslavia (now Serbia) in Belgrade, where Branka Džidić offered warmest welcome. Tonko Barčot of the Korčula Archive was most helpful in sharing whatever information and documentation was available for the chapter on Korčula. Finally, in London, I surveyed the National Archives and British Library, but I spent most time in the Wiener Holocaust Library, with its superb holdings and friendly atmosphere. Special thanks to their Reader Service Librarian, Sonia Bacca, who seriously cared about the researchers. In the Wiener Library I could also access other precious databases of interviews and memoirs of survivors (Yad Vashem, Leo Baeck, USHMM and USC Shoah Foundation, among the others listed in the bibliography), without which this book would not be possible.

In particular, I am grateful to Boris and Vicko Marelić for their hospitality, cooperation and inspiration in Korčula. In Croatia, I also got further help from Mateo Bratanić from the island of Hvar, historians Sanja Simper and Zoran Jeličić in Rijeka, and Ivo Goldstein, Renata Jambrešić Kirin, Gabi Abramac, Julija Koš, and Ljiljana Dobrovšak in Zagreb. In Belgrade, I owe thanks to Milovan Pisarri, Slobodan Marković, Danilo Šarenac, Krinka Vidaković Petrov, and most of all to Olga Manojlović Pintar. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, I am grateful to colleagues Husnija Kamberović and Sonja Dujmović in Sarajevo, Vladan Vukliš in Banja Luka, and Tamara Vijoglavin Mančić in Brčko. Further gratitude goes to historians in Israel, Mirjam Rajner, Yitzchak Kerem, and Olga Ungar. In Austria, I got information from Hans Haider. In Italy, I was offered helping hands by Marco Abram, Eric Gobetti, Alessandro Sette, Enrico Acciai, and Professor Alberto Basciani.

My student Lim Ying Xuan generously helped with transcribing some of the interviews. Also, I should stress that all my students throughout the previous years acted as constant inspiration and motivation. My colleagues at the University College London School of Slavonic and East European Studies (UCL SSEES), especially professors Wendy Bracewell and Alena Ledeneva, as well as Thomas Lorman and Jakub Benes, raised some key questions, and offered much needed guidance with theoretical issues and implications about equally important factual detail. Librarians at the SSEES library deserve equal praise for their commitment and assistance. Fellow historians, professors Robert Gildea, Renée Poznanski, Roderick Bailey, Yaacov Falkov, and all other colleagues from the project on Transnational Resistance, who are too many to mention, have played the key part in my growing interest and understanding of the topic. Parts of the last chapter on resistance in this book were first published in the collective volume that came out of this project under the title Fighters across frontiers: Transnational resistance in Europe, 1936–48 with Manchester University Press. Being invited to present at the conference on The Second World War in Southeastern Europe organised by the Topography of Terror Foundation Berlin in 2017 put me in contact with several war and violence scholars from all over Europe, which benefited this book. Thanks to professor Onur Yildirim who invited me, I shared some early thoughts about my research at a conference A Century of Human Displacement and Dispossession: Europe and the Middle East 1919–2019 at the American University in Beirut in May 2019, where I learnt the most about refugees and exile. In addition, over the last years, I have had long discussions, email exchanges, and talks over coffee with many other friends and colleagues who inspired, supported, and pushed me with ideas, opinions, explanations, and corrections. Starting with my partner Cristiano Ragni, and naming Noëmie Duhaut, Đorđe Balmazović, Oto Luthar, Anna Hajkova, Francois Guesnet, Carl Bethke, Rory Yeomans, Ed Naylor, Eliot Tretter, Nevena Ivanović, Emil Kerenji, Florian Bieber, Stefan Halikowski-Smith, Loukianos Hassiotis, Cecilie Endresen, Gezim Krasniqi, and Raul Carstocea, I apologise to all those I fail to mention.

Furthermore, I was invited by professors Renate Hansen-Kokorus and Olaf Terpitz to present a chapter on Korčula at the conference on the Jewish Literatures and Cultures in Southeastern Europe at the University of Graz. Subsequently, and benefiting from their feedback, parts of it featured in the volume published with Böhlau Verlag. Professor Jolanta Sujecka from the University of Warsaw also invited me to present my project at its early stage, which she followed through, promoting it in her edited volume on the Balkan Jews and Minority Issue in South-eastern Europe. Other people from all over the world, including professors Ingeborg Fialová and Eduard Mühle, Stephen Shapiro, Mischa Gabowitsch, Joseph Rochlitz, Claude Cahn, Gwen Walker, the late Jakov Jaša Almuli, and Martina Bitunjac shared advice, sources, and texts, for which I owe sincere gratitude. Michael Neal carefully assisted the editing process. Finally, I profited from the guidance and feedback of Brill’s Balkan Studies Library editor Zoran Milutinović and anonymous reviewers. Needless to say, all interpretations of historical events in this book, including all possible mistakes, are mine.

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