MILORAD EKMEČIĆ - ACADEMICIAN AND SENATOR

BIJELJINA, OCTOBER 3 /SRNA/ - One of the greatest Serbian historians, Milorad Ekmečić /1928–2015/, a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts /SANU/ and the Republika Srpska Senate, was born on October 4, 1928.

During the Second World War, Ekmečić lost 78 members of his family in the massacre in Prebilovci, where his father Ilija, his uncle, and other family members were killed by Ustaše, their neighbours, who carried out genocide against the Serb people in the Independent State of Croatia.

Those killed in Prebilovci were canonized by the Serbian Orthodox Church in 2015 as the Holy New Martyrs of Prebilovci.

Ekmečić enrolled in the study of general history at the University of Zagreb, where he graduated in 1952. That same year, he was appointed an assistant at the newly established Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo.

Ekmečić spent a year conducting research in archives in Zagreb, Belgrade, Zadar, and Vienna.

At the University of Zagreb, he defended his doctoral dissertation, The Uprising in Bosnia 1875–1878, which has so far been published in three editions, and an incomplete German translation has also been published.

After completing a specialization at Princeton, Ekmečić continued working at the Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo until the outbreak of the civil war in 1992.

In May of that year, he and his family were arrested by the Muslim Green Berets and, after being mistreated, released to house arrest.

Ekmečić managed to secretly flee to the territory of Republika Srpska and later make his way to Serbia.

After that, from September 1992 until his retirement on October 1, 1994, he was a full professor at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade.

Ekmečić became a corresponding member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts /SANU/ in 1978 and was promoted to full membership in 1992.

He was also a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Republika Srpska from 1996 and a member of the Republika Srpska Senate in its second convocation from 2009.

Milorad Ekmečić died in 2015.