MILORAD EKMEČIĆ - ACADEMICIAN AND SENATOR

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

During World War II, Ekmečić lost 78 members of his family in the Prebilovci massacre, where his father, Ilija, his uncle, and other relatives were killed by neighbors who were members of the Ustashe units, perpetrators of genocide against the Serbian 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 General History at the University of Zagreb, where he graduated in 1952, and in the same year was appointed as an assistant at the newly established Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo.

Ekmečić spent a year conducting research in the archives of 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 seen 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, were released into house arrest.

Ekmečić managed to secretly escape to the territory of Republika Srpska and later cross into 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.

In 1978, Ekmečić became an external member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts /SANU/ and was promoted to full member in 1992.

He was also an external member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Republika Srpska from 1996, and a member of the Senate of Republika Srpska in its second term from 2009.

Milorad Ekmečić passed away in 2015.