Ana Šomlo

Ana Šomlo was born in 1935 in Negotin, Serbia to Miroslav Šomlo and Budimka Šomlo (née Smederevac). She spent her early childhood in Negotin. Her father was interned twice, in 1941 and 1942, in a camp near Zaječar. Ana lived until 1943, together with her sister, with relatives from Vršac, after which she returned to Negotin. Due to the anti-Semitic measures of the German authorities, she fled with her father and sister to Malajnica, and then to the Homolje mountains, where they hid until the end of the Second World War. After the war, her family left Negotin and moved to Vršac. From 1946 to 1948, she lived in Pančevo, where her father worked on the design and construction of the bridge that connects Belgrade with the city. After the bridge was completed, the family moved to Novi Sad.[2]

Šomlo studied philology and oriental literature at the University of Belgrade. After being awarded a scholarship from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, she enrolled in postgraduate studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1957, where she remained for two years to improve her knowledge of Hebrew and Arabic.

During her stay in Israel, she began writing political news articles and after returning to Belgrade, she was employed by the magazine Duga. She was transferred in 1960 as a reporter to the newly established Belgrade Television. In addition to her work in television, she wrote, translated, and taught Hebrew.[2] She worked an editor of the magazines ТВ – Ревију and РТВ – Теорија и пракса.[3]

As an expert in Hebrew and Israeli literature, Šomlo has made a great contribution in the field of translation from Hebrew into Serbian. She has published a large number of literary translations and has dedicated many years to compiling dictionaries and encyclopedic work. She also compiled the "Hebrew-Serbo-Croatian/Serbo-Croatian-Hebrew Dictionary" and published the textbook "Learn Hebrew Yourself". As a translator from Hebrew, and in Hebrew, she made a significant contribution to strengthening Serbian-Hebrew cultural and literary ties and the promotion of Israeli literature in the world, for which she was awarded the "Kalat Haor" award in 2005.[4] She is a contributor to several encyclopedias: in Prosveta's "Encyclopedia" (Belgrade, 1969) she wrote articles on Israeli literature. In "Encyclopaedia Judaica" (Keter, Jerusalem 1974), she wrote about writers of Jewish origin from the Balkans. In the "Croatian General Lexicon" (Miroslav Krleža Lexicographic Institute, 1996) she has written about contemporary Israeli writers.

Šomlo has also engaged in literary creation, publishing several novels and collections of short stories. For her collection of stories Поново у Јерусалиму ("Back in Jerusalem"), she received an award from the Israeli Ministry of Immigration in 1996. Perhaps the most interesting literary achievement of Ana Šomlo is her book 'Миленина писма Кафки ("Milena's Letters to Kafka"), which was published in 1988.