Albania: the Country That Actually Saved Jews During the Holocaust
Albania: The Country That Actually Saved Jews During the Holocaust Stephen D. Kulla Gratz College Situated on the Balkan Peninsula in Southeast Europe, with its coastline facing the Adriatic Sea to the northwest and the Ionian Sea to the southwest along the Mediterranean Sea, sits the country of Albania. Albanians are generally recognized as the oldest inhabitants of Southeast Europe, and are descendants of the Illyrians, the core pre-Hellenic population that 1 extended as far as Greece and Italy. Albania is a relatively small county of 11,000 square miles with a present population of just under three million people; yet within the mountains and hills that run in different directions across the length and breadth of the country lies a little-known 2 story of preeminent heroism. Despite being a predominantly Muslim nation and the only majority Muslim nation in Europe at the time, Albania is the only European country able to 3 arguably claim that every Jew within its borders was spared from death during the Holocaust. 4 The assertion, while not completely accurate, is even more compelling because the result was unequivocally not due to an organized effort, nor by a governmental decree. It was, however, surely not accidental. Despite being occupied by Italy and then Germany during World War II and being ruled at different times by two very distinctive forms of government, Albania not only 5 protected its meager Jewish population, but offered refuge to Jews from wherever they came. The explanation for this occurrence is greatly summed up in one word: Besa, an honor code 6 unique to Albania, which simply and concisely means “to keep the promise.” On the eve of World War II, Albania remained an impoverished feudal kingdom, largely inaccessible, lacking railways, telephone lines and electric power beyond the capital of Tirana.
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