Dr. Žak Konfino was a Serbian physician and writer, publishing a dozen books and short stories throughout his career. He studied medicine first in

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

(1910–1914) and

Bern Bern (), or Berne (), ; ; ; . is the ''de facto'' Capital city, capital of Switzerland, referred to as the "federal city".; ; ; . According to the Swiss constitution, the Swiss Confederation intentionally has no "capital", but Bern has gov ...

(1916–1918). His ancestors were expelled from Spain in the fifteenth century and lived as

Sephardic Sephardic Jews, also known as Sephardi Jews or Sephardim, and rarely as Iberian Peninsular Jews, are a Jewish diaspora population associated with the historic Jewish communities of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and their descendant ...

Jews in

Istanbul Istanbul is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, largest city in Turkey, constituting the country's economic, cultural, and historical heart. With Demographics of Istanbul, a population over , it is home to 18% of the Demographics ...

and

Thessaloniki Thessaloniki (; ), also known as Thessalonica (), Saloniki, Salonika, or Salonica (), is the second-largest city in Greece (with slightly over one million inhabitants in its Thessaloniki metropolitan area, metropolitan area) and the capital cit ...

. In the late 18th and early 19th century they settled in Leskovac. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, he served as a medical assistant in Valjevo and Leskovac and ended up with the Serbian army in Albania. In his home town of Leskovac he spent from 1920-1936 as a doctor and then moved to Belgrade, where he opened a private practice as a specialist in the treatment of asthma and radiology. Konfin got the first

X-ray An X-ray (also known in many languages as Röntgen radiation) is a form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than those of ultraviolet rays and longer than those of gamma rays. Roughly, X-rays have a wavelength ran ...

machine in 1924 in Leskovac. World War II he spent in captivity in Italy. After World War II he returned to Belgrade and worked in Major military hospital. Konfino wrote stories, humorous, travel, and published them first in "Leskovac Journal" and then the "Jewish life" "the South", "Politics", " Serbian literary Gazette , ""NIN", the "Medical Gazette", "Hedgehog" and others. Books have been translated into Albanian, Czech, English, Hungarian, German, Polish, Portuguese, Slovak, Turkish ... and he translated from German and Italian, and understands French and Portuguese. Žak Konfino first appears in literature only in his forties, and humorous stories.

Sources

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Konfino, Zak Serbian radiologists 1892 births 1975 deaths Serbian Sephardi Jews Serbian writers 20th-century Serbian people Yugoslav writers Yugoslav physicians 20th-century Sephardi Jews 20th-century Serbian Jews