מקור השם אלקלעי

Olga Alkalaj (1907-1942), lawyer and partisan, born in Belgrade, Serbia. She adhered to the Communist movement while attending the high school and then she joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPY) in 1923 while she was a student at the Law School of the University of Belgrade. During the 1930s she was active in Women’s Movement in Belgrade and a member of the Commission for Work with Women at the Provincial Committee of the KPY for Serbia. She became secretary of the Communist party of the Fifth District of the city of Belgrade and a member of the editorial office of the newspaper Žena danas (“Today’s Woman”). At the same time, as a lawyer she defended fellow members of the illegal Communist party in court.

After Yugoslavia was invaded by Nazi Germany and its allies in 1941, Alkalaj continued her activities under false identities. In September 1941 she was appointed a member of the Provisional Local Committee of the Yugoslav Communist Party in Belgrade. She was arrested by the Gestapo in November 1941 and tortured in order to obtain information on other members of the Yugoslav resistance. Since she did not disclose any details, she was transferred to the Banjica camp and the to Sajmište concentration camp for Jews. Because of the severe injures suffered during interrogation in Banjica, she was hospitalized in the Jewish hospital. The Communist party organized her escape, but Alkalaj refused to be rescued since her escape would trigger reprisals against the other patients in the hospital. On March 15, 1942, she was taken from the hospital in a Gaswagen (a truck equipped as a mobile gas chamber) and along with other Jews she was murdered by gassing in Jajinci.