Antun Vladimir Seferovitch

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Antonije Vladimir Seferović his name is transliterated Antun Vladimir Seferovitch (Odessa, Imperial Russia, 1871- New York City, New York, United States of America, 1953) was a Serbian diplomat, best remembered as general consul of the Kingdom of Serbia, Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and Kingdom of Yugoslavia in Montreal from 1918 to 1931.

Career

United States

Prior to the Montreal posting he was Kingdom of Montenegro's consul general in New York between 1915 and 1917,and briefly worked for the Romanian government before taking the Montreal post of the consul general.Later,

While in New York, Seferović joined the newly-formed Srpska Narodna Odbrana in 1914 and the already existing Federation of United Serbs (FUS), a fraternal organization that provided insurance and protection to its members, both organizations were then under the presidency of Serbian-American physicist Mihajlo Pupin. From New York, Seferović travelled to Chicago in 1915 to recruit Serbian-Americans for the Montenegrin army which got him into trouble with the Federal Grand Jury for allegedly violating the neutrality laws of the United States.It was Pupin's intervention that got Seferović released after he was arrested in New York.At the time, Pupin served as Serbia's honorary consul in the United States from 1912 to 1915, with full consular powers, and then as consul general from 1915 to 1920.

In early 1916 Seferović met Čedomilj Mijatović, who came to visit the United States and Canada and raise money and urge the US government to support Britain and its Canadian and other allies. A year later, the US entered the war.

Canada

Long before the establishment of a consulate in Montreal in 1918, Pupin's jurisdiction included Canada. When Canada invoked the War Measures Act and the news of the internment of Serbs in Canada came to the attention of Pupin in 1915 from members of FUS lodges located in Hamilton, London, Niagara Falls, Prince Rupert, Britannia Beach, and Rossland,he asked Cecil Spring Rice to send representatives to the Canadian internment camps and advocate the release of Serbian internees. In Canada, the Srpska Narodna Odbrana u Kanadi (Serbian National Defense League of Canada) came into existence in Toronto on 17 July 1916 on Pupin's initiative and the hard organizational work of Serbian-Canadian Božidar M. Markovich (1890-1970). In time, it became Serbian National Defense Council or SND for short. Soon chapters appeared in Montreal, Toronto, Niagara Falls, Hamilton, Welland, Windsor, Thorold, Port Colborne, Fort William, Winnipeg, Regina, Vancouver, Princetown, Rocks, Drumheller, Phoenix, Tramsville (a mining town in British Columbia), Anyox, Prince Rupert, Kenaston, etc. Its membership soared incrementally to 400 in 1918.

Antun (Ante) Seferović took the cue from Michael Pupin that advocacy is best served in the capacity of diplomacy rather than as the head of an organization. In 1918 he was named Serbia's consul general in Montreal at the same time when Čedomilj Mijatović arrived to visit Canada and the United States.

Upon Seferović's arrival in Montreal, he began immediately and actively corresponding with the Canadian government in order to advocate and intervene on behalf of so-called enemy aliens and internees who fell victim to a War Measures Act simply because they were either born or possessed citizenship of an empire currently waging a war against the Dominion of Canada and allied countries. On one of his trips to Toronto, he became aware of Luigi von Kunits's plight, who was forced to identify himself regularly at the police station throughout the war years. Seferović pressed the Canadian government to include Serbs among the friendly aliens who were exempt from monthly reporting.Seferović managed to get members of the Serbian National Defense Council (Srpska Narodna Odbrana) exempted from carrying parole cards and from registering as enemy aliens. He personally endorsed and registered all membership certificates as personal identity documents belonging to the Serbian National Defense Council as evidence of loyalty to Canada.

In 1918 Seferović meet Austrian-born Serbs in Regina who on their own initiated actions, through Serbian-born court interpreter and Canadian army Lieutenant Budimir Protich and their Member of Parliament Walter Davey Cowan sought to have the "enemy aliens" classification removed ipso facto. The effectiveness of this initiative and extent of Protich-Cowan's activism is confirmed by the correspondence of May 1918 between Saskatchewan Premier William Melville Martin, and Commissioner of the Royal North-West Mounted Police Aylesworth Bowen Perry regarding the reporting of Serbs as enemy aliens. The Royal North-West Mounted Police instructed Austrian-born Serbs residing in Regina and area to obtain SND certificates as confirmation of their identity and loyalty.

On 16 September 1918, Seferović wrote to Canada's undersecretary of state for Foreign Affairs Joseph Pope to argue that "only those that are members of of the SND should be in the future exempt from all formalities and be considered loyal subjects and placed under special protection and control of its consulate."

Thanks to Seferović's resourcefulness, many Serb and other Slav and non-Slav internees (including Slovaks, Czechs, Slovenes, Croats, Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Romanians, Hungarians, Italians (Trieste being part of the Austrian Empire during the Great War) were released from internment camps across Canada. His unrelenting efforts prompted the Directorate of the Internment Operations Office in Ottawa to forward lists of unpaid balances to the diplomatic representatives of other affected communities, for example, the Polish Consulate in Montreal, who were instructed to identify their own nationals who landed in internment camps across Canada.

References

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