TIRANA, Albania – The Balkan country of Albania holds a profound historical honor that only emerged to international audiences relatively recently. Albania is one of the only countries in Europe that had a higher Jewish population after World War II than before it.
During the Holocaust, Albanians worked together to save almost all of its small native Jewish population of 200 as well as the roughly 400 Jews who came as refugees from Austria, Germany and the various Balkan countries occupied by the Nazis.
Albanians housed Jews and facilitated their mobility, in full sight of neighbors who by all accounts turned a blind eye and turned not a single Jew nor neighbor into the authorities.
Various government agencies issued fake documents to Jewish Albanians, as well as refugees coming into the country, to facilitate their invisibility from the Nazis, even though the nation was still under Italian control at the time.
In total, more than 2,000 Jews were saved because of Albanian protection during the nation’s defiance of the Nazis.
This history is relatively recent in its emergence due to an oppressive Communist regime that isolated Albania from the rest of the world for over 40 years. Albania opened up in the early 1990s, after which Yad Vashem, the Holocaust research institute, verified Albanian accounts of what occurred in that nation during the war.
Albania suffered through a complete economic collapse in 1997 and though corruption continues to stagnate its economy, a culture of loyalty remains deeply entrenched in Albanian society.
The concept of besa, encoded in Albania’s ancient social law called the kanun, requires that Albanians take others, especially travelers, into their homes and ensure their safety in times of need.
Shirley Cloyes DioGuardi, an organizer of a New York event focused on describing Albania’s account of World War II, writes,besa “involves uncompromising protection of a guest, even at the point of forfeiting one’s own life.”
She further postulates that Albania’s religious history made it uniquely suited to aiding Jews during the Holocaust.
Albania historically was a Catholic and Orthodox nation until forced conversions during Ottoman rule in the 15th century changed the country’s religious demographic. Modern Albania consists of a Muslim majority, but due to its history of forced conversion and its Communist regime’s secularism, the country remains an overwhelmingly tolerant society in regards to religion.
Akim Alickaj, a Kosovar Albanian whose father helped to rescue Jews during the war, explains Albanian religious tolerance in this historical context. “We knew our enemies wanted to use religion to divide and conquer us, but we knew we had the same blood…Religion changes, but nation and blood can’t be changed,” she states.
Only two other nations in Europe were able to save much of their Jewish population.
Germany ordered Denmark’s 7,800 Jews to be deported in 1943, but people from around the country banded together and transported over 7,000 Jews to Sweden, a neutral nation during World War II.
Nazi-allied Bulgaria was responsible for turning over more than 11,000 Jews from Macedonia and what was then called Thrace (an area including the current borders of Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey) to be sent to death camps. However, when the nation was ordered to deport their own Jewish population, priests and members of Parliament lobbied leaders to refuse, which ended up saving the lives of roughly 48,000 Bulgarian Jews.
Other countries fared worse. Poland lost 90% of its Jewish population, 88% of German Jews were killed and only 23% of Greece’s Jews survived the Final Solution.
Albania’s history during the Holocaust, according to Ferit Hoxha, Albania’s ambassador to the UN, proves “although we were closed under one of the fiercest Communist regimes, this nation’s people are noble and as able to deliver with courage as anyone else in Europe.”
– Kaylie Cordingley
Sources: New York Times, The Jewish Chronicle, Yad Vashem
Photo: Naij