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The Holocaust in Albania

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A map of Albania during the Second World War, with territory annexed to the country shown in light yellow.

The Holocaust in Albania consisted of war crimes committed against Jews in Albania by German, Italian and collaborationist forces while the country was under Italian and German occupation during the Second World War. Throughout the war, nearly 2,000 Jews sought refuge in Albania. Most of these Jewish refugees were treated well by the local Albanian population, despite the fact that the country was occupied first by Fascist Italy, and then by Nazi Germany. The 500 Jews who lived in Albanian-dominated Kosovo did not share this experience, though, and many were killed. Overall, it is estimated that approximately 600 Jews were killed in Axis-occupied Albania and Kosovo during the war. As 1,800 Jews were living in Albania at the end of the war, it is estimated that the country emerged from the Second World War with a population of Jews eleven times greater than at the beginning.

In 1995, the Republic of Albania was declared Righteous Among the Nations for the role that the Albanian people played in saving Jewish refugees in the country during the Second World War. As of 2011, 69 Albanians have been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations.

Background

According to the census of 1930, 24 Jews lived in Albania.[1] In 1937, the Jewish community in Albania, which then numbered nearly 300, was granted official recognition in the country. With the rise of Nazism, a number of German and Austrian Jews took refuge in Albania, and the Albanian embassy in Berlin continued to issue visas to Jews until the end of 1938, at a time when no other European country was willing to do so.[1] Prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, most Albanians had never had contact with Jews because of the small number of them in the country. As a result, antisemitism was less widespread in Albania than in other countries.[2] Before the war, most Albanian Jews lived in the town of Korçë, in southeastern Albania.[3] The Jewish community in Kosovo, part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, numbered approximately 500.[4]

On 7 April 1939, the Kingdom of Italy invaded Albania and deposed the country's monarch, King Zog I. Afterwards, the Italians re-established the Albanian state as a protectorate of the Kingdom of Italy.[5] As the war progressed, the Italians transformed the Albanian Kingdom into Greater Albania, a protectorate of Italy that included most of Kosovo and a portion of western Macedonia which was detached from Yugoslavia after the Axis powers invaded in 1941.[4]

The Holocaust

After the invasion of Yugoslavia, the Jewish community in Albania grew as Jews from Macedonia and northern Serbia, as well as Jewish refugees from Germany, Austria and Poland, came to Kosovo and settled in the towns of Pristina, Prizren and Uroševac. As these towns were under Italian administration, the Jews who arrived there were safe from the Germans. However, the Italians did arrest approximately 150 refugees and transferred them to the town of Berat in Albania, where they were given a chance to work to earn money.[4] Subsequently, a number of Albanian Jews were deported to Italy. However, Italian authorities and the Albanian populace generally treated the refugees well,[6] and as many as 2,000 Jews fled to Albania to seek refuge during the war.[7][8] The local population was very protective of these refugees, and many of them were transported to Albanian ports on the Adriatic from where they could travel to Italy. Other Jews hid in remote mountain villages, while some joined resistance movements across the country.[9] The Albanian people's treatment of Jews was in accordance with traditional Albanian customs of hospitality and [besa] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) ("word of honour").[8] Despite this, instances of cruelty towards Jews did occur in Albania during the war, and on several occasions Jews being smuggled into the country were killed by Albanians who seized their jewellery and money.[9]

When German forces occupied Albania in September 1943, they demanded that Albanian authorities provide them with lists of Jews to be deported.[10] However, local authorities did not comply and even provided Jewish families with forged documents.[7] The situation in Albanian-dominated Kosovo was rather different however, and 400 Jews from the town of Pristina were deported and taken to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp after the region was seized by the Germans. Approximately 300 of these were killed.[10] The men responsible for turning over these Jews to the Germans were members of the 21st Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Skanderbeg (1st Albanian), a group of Kosovo Albanians who supported Nazi ideology and called their division Skanderbeg after Albanian national hero George Kastrioti Skanderbeg.[11] In general, the Kosovo Albanians were less hospitable to Jews than their counterparts in Albania, and in many cases they enthusiastically supported the Germans. Claims have been made that Kosovo Albanians protected Jews after German forces took over territories that Italian authorities had controlled during the war, but the protection that Jews received in Kosovo in the early years of the war was due more to the Italian authorities than to the local Albanian population.[9] Overall, approximately 600 Jews were killed in Albania, Kosovo and other Albanian-controlled territories during the war.[10] However, a somewhat greater number, as well as several hundred refugees, hid and survived with the assistance of the local Albanian population.[6]

Aftermath

It is estimated that there were 1,800 Jews in Albania at the end of the Second World War.[12] Overall, there were eleven times more Jews living in the country at the end of the war than at the beginning.[13] Most Jews left Albania after the war. 300 Albanian Jews remained until the early 1990s, when most of them immigrated to Israel. Most of the 60 remaining Jews in the country left in 1997, after an outbreak of political violence in Albania. On 2 February 1995, the Republic of Albania was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C..[14] As of 2011, 69 Albanians have been recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations for their role in helping Jews in Albania survive the Holocaust.[10]

See Also

References

  1. ^ a b Elsie 2010, p. 218.
  2. ^ Mojzes 2011, pp. 93–94.
  3. ^ Gilbert 2009, p. 222.
  4. ^ a b c Mojzes 2011, p. 93.
  5. ^ Fischer 1999, pp. 21–57.
  6. ^ a b Laqueur & Baumel 2001, p. 1.
  7. ^ a b Deutsche Welle & 27 December 2012.
  8. ^ a b Voice of America & 7 December 2010.
  9. ^ a b c Mojzes 2011, p. 94.
  10. ^ a b c d Green & 2 April 2013.
  11. ^ Jacobs 2009, p. 162.
  12. ^ Fischer 1999, p. 187.
  13. ^ Elsie 2010, p. 219.
  14. ^ Ehrlich 2009, p. 945.

Books

  • Elsie, Robert (2010). Historical Dictionary of Albania. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, Inc. ISBN 978-0-8108-7380-3. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Ehrlich, Mark Avrum (2009). Encyclopedia of the Jewish Diaspora: Origins, Experiences, and Culture, Volume 1. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-85109-874-3. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Fischer, Bernd Jürgen (1999). Albania at War, 1939-1945. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue Research Foundation. ISBN 1-55753-141-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Gilbert, Martin (2009). The Routledge Atlas of the Holocaust. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-48481-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Jacobs, Steven L. (2009). Confronting Genocide: Judaism, Christianity, Islam. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books. ISBN 978-0-7391-3590-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Laqueur, Walter Ze'ev; Baumel, Judith Tydor (2001). The Holocaust Encyclopedia. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-08432-0. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Mojzes, Paul (2011). Balkan Genocides: Holocaust and Ethnic Cleansing in the 20th Century. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-4422-0665-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Web

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