Anthony V. Seferovitch

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Antonije Vladimir Seferović is transliterated Anthony V. Seferovitch (Serbian Cyrillic: Антоније Владимир Сеферовић; Odessa, Imperial Russia, 7 March 1871 - Percé, Gaspésie–Îles-de-la-Madeleine, Canada, 1953) was a Serbian captain (military), diplomat and lawyer who is best remembered as general consul of the Kingdom of Montenegro in New York City, from 1915 to 1917, and in Montreal as general consul of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and Kingdom of Yugoslavia, from 1918 until 1931, the year he superannuated.[1]He aquired a reputation as a lawyer, less by practice in the courts than in a consultative capacity. He strenuously opposed America's neutrality in the Great War and action was taken by the authorities of the U.S. Department of Justice against him (and others) on "charges of infraction of the neutrality laws of the United States".[2]It was for that and many other reasons that he moved from the United States and came to live in the Dominion of Canada where he remained for the rest of his life.

He was an avid painter in his spare time.[3] [4]

Biography

Antonije Vladimir Seferovitch was born in Odessa, then part of Imperial Russia on 7 March 1871 to Serbian couple from Boka Kotorska in Montenegro.[5] Anthony received the best Russian academic education at a prestigious Naval Academy at the time[6].

His parent left Odessa for their native Montenegro when Anthony's father was recalled and superannuated. Anthony went on to pursue his graduate studies at the University of Paris, where he graduated in 1896 with a Ph.D in jurisprudence. Upon graduation, he joined the Montenegrin civil service and was sent abroad, to North America.[7] With the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Montenegro) he was elevated to the post of consul, but soon he would take greater responsibilities as general consul of the Kingdom of Serbia. In 1914 he was stationed in New York awaiting to be posted but continued to keep in touch with his compatriots in both New York and Chicago when he was arrested there for allegedly recruiting American citizens for the European war. In less than a half a year, he was officially named general consul when Kingdom of Montenegro on 13 October 1915 opened in New York City at 112 West Fortieth Street [8]the first Consulate which the country has ever had in the United States. There was an opening ceremony at the consulate with a prayer in Russian for the success of the arms of the Allies at the time.[9]Although the United States of America did not enter the war until the fourth year of the conflict.

For the next three years Seferovitch took a very important part in the confused political changes in Montenegro, and probably more than any other diplomat represented the wishes of the Serbian government-in-exile at a critical time of Austro-Hungarian occupation of Serbia and Bulgarian occupation of Serbia (World War I).

While in New York, Anthony Seferovitch joined the newly-formed, Chicago-based Serbian National Defense Council in 1914 and the already existing Sloga, a fraternal organization that provided insurance and protection to its members, both organizations were then under the presidency of Serbian-American physicist Michael Pupin. From New York, Seferovitch travelled to Chicago in 1915 to recruit Serbian-Americans for the Montenegrin army which got him into trouble with the Federal Grand Jury[10]for allegedly violating the neutrality laws of the United States.[5] Seferovitch was also the taget of a scathing article written by a pro-German lobbyist and propagandist George Sylvester Viereck.

It was the intervention of Russian ambassador George Bakhmeteff [11]and Michael Pupin that got Seferovitch released after he was arrested in New York.[6]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 greeted Čedomilj Mijatović and Emmeline Pankhurst, who came from the United Kingdom to visit the United States and raise money and urge the US government to support Great Britain and its Canadian and other allies. During their conversation, at the consulate, Helen Losanitch Frothingham suggested that both Mijatović and Pankhurst should visit Canada also. Both Seferovitch and Mabel Grouitch, the wife of the Serbian embassador to Switzerland, endorsed Losanitch's suggestion and a tour through Canada was arranged (27 February to 21 March 1916). A year later America finally joined the Triple Entente.

Dominion of Canada

Long before the establishment of a consulate in Montreal in 1918, Michael Pupin jurisdiction included Dominion of Canada. When Canada invoked the War Measures Act[12]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 Serbian National Defense Council 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.

Antonije Seferovitch 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.

Upon Seferovitch's arrival in Montreal, he began immediately and actively corresponding with the Canadian government officials in order to advocate and intervene on behalf of so-called enemy aliens and internees who fell victim to a draconian 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[13], who was forced to identify himself regularly at the police station throughout the war years. Seferovitch pressed the Canadian government to include Serbs among the friendly aliens and be exempt from monthly reporting. Seferovitch 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.

By 1918 Seferovitch had met most of the leading Serbian activists, namely Božidar M. Markovich of Toronto and Špiro Hutalarovich of Winnipeg. That year he also met other Austrian-born Serbs in Regina who on their own initiated actions, through Serbian-born court interpreter and Canadian army Lieutenant Bud Protich and 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 Canadian 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, Seferovitch wrote to Canada's undersecretary of state for Foreign Affairs Joseph Pope[14]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." [5]

Then, on 2 January 1919, the general secretary of the Serbian National Defense Council Božidar M. Markovich was instructed by Seferovitch to visit the large Kapuskasing internment camp, where many forgotten Serbs were incarcerated because they were born in territories (Old Serbia and Macedonia) under Turkish occupation[15]. Thanks to Seferovitch's resourcefulness, many Serb and other Slav and non-Slav internees [16]including Greeks (born in (Turkey, part of the Central Powers), Slovaks, Czechs, Slovenes, Croatians, Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Romanians, Hungarians, Italians (from Trieste, Udine like the Friuli Venezia Giulia region, being part of the Austria-Hungary 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.[5]

In Montreal Anthony Seferovitch married Elizabeth Agnes Hammond, B.A. (1896) and M.A. (1900) who headed the McGill University in 1905. During her 1906-1907 presidency she was Mrs. Wilson Irwin and when she was president in 1929-1930 she was Mrs. A. V. Seferovitch.

In 1925 A. V. Seferovitch wrote "The Blame for the Sarajevo Murder Plot", a defense against the charge that Serbian Government was criminally responsible for precipitating the world war, which appeared in the December issue of Current History, published by the University of California Press. [17]

In 1928 Seferovitch was in corrspondence with Oscar D. Skelton pleading for more Canadian intervention to identify Canada's fund raisers for Bulgarian irredentism|Bulgarian irredentists and particularly IMRO's revolutionary activities perpetrated against the Serbs in Old Serbia and North Macedonia. He named Mara Buneva who was already known to the world for shooting a Serbian official Velimir Prelić in the back in broad daylight in downtown Skopje, Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Prelić died a couple of days later in hospital.[18]He succeeded in exposing Bulgarian irredentism in territories of Old Serbia and North Macedonia to the Canadian government.

While in Montreal, he was also acting consul general for Greece[19].

Anthony Seferovitch lived in Montreal until 1930s when he officially retired (1931) as consul general, replaced by Nikola Perazić, and then later moved to Toronto with his wife. Seferovitch died in 1953 at the age of 82[20]. His wife, Elizabeth Agnes Hammond-Seferovitch, born in 1874, died in 1973 at the age of 98. Both were buried in Percé, Quebec[21].

References

  1. ↑ ""Consulate Elevated"". The Gazette. February 18, 1936. p. 3 – via newspapers.com.
  2. ↑ Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States. U.S. Government Printing Office. 1928.
  3. ↑ "Captain AV SEFEROVITCH (Montenegrin-American-Canadian) O/B Seascape Painting | #2045562605". Worthpoint.
  4. ↑ "Art - A. V. SEFEROVITCH (XX- Russian, Canadian) - Sep 16, 2017 | Pridham's Auctions & Appraisals in Quebec". LiveAuctioneers.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Hinther, Rhonda L.; Mochoruk, Jim (February 28, 2020). Civilian Internment in Canada: Histories and Legacies. Univ. of Manitoba Press. ISBN 9780887555916 – via Google Books.
  6. ↑ Jugoslovenski dobrovoljci 1914-1918: Srbija, Južna Amerika, Severna Amerika, Australija, Francuska, Italija, Solunski front : Sbornik dokumenata. Jovan Popović. 1980.
  7. ↑ Srpsko useljeništvo u Americi. 1916.
  8. ↑ New York City Directory. 1916.
  9. ↑ "MONTENEGRO OPENS A CONSULATE HERE; Capt. A. V. Seferovitch Is Nation's First Consul in the U.S., at 112 West 40th Street. FLAGS OF THE ALLIES FLY Diplomats from Washington Present When Russian Priest Conducts Opening Ceremony". The New York Times. October 13, 1915.
  10. ↑ State, United States Department of (August 26, 1928). "Foreign Relations of the United States". U.S. Government Printing Office – via Google Books.
  11. ↑ "Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1915, Supplement, The World War - Office of the Historian". history.state.gov.
  12. ↑ "War Measures Act | The Canadian Encyclopedia". www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca.
  13. ↑ "Luigi Von Kunits - Back To North America". www.liquisearch.com.
  14. ↑ Civilian Internment in Canada: Histories and Legacies. Univ. of Manitoba Press. 28 February 2020. ISBN 9780887555916.
  15. ↑ Civilian Internment in Canada: Histories and Legacies. Univ. of Manitoba Press. 28 February 2020. ISBN 9780887555930.
  16. ↑ "Remember Canada's internment camps". winnipegsun.
  17. ↑ SEFEROVITCH, ANTHONY V. (1925). "The Blame for the Sarajevo Murder Plot". Current History. 23 (3): 383–386. doi:10.1525/curh.1925.23.3.383. JSTOR 45330343. S2CID 248838764 – via JSTOR.
  18. ↑ Sojourners and Settlers: The Macedonian Community in Toronto to 1940. University of Toronto Press. January 1995. ISBN 9780802072405.
  19. ↑ Commercial Intelligence Journal. July 1929.
  20. ↑ "CPT Antony Vladimir Seferovitch (1871-1953) - Find..." www.findagrave.com.
  21. ↑ "Elizabeth Agnes Hammond Seferovitch (1874-1973) -..." www.findagrave.com.

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