Albania as a spare homeland to Jews
After several fundamental works on the Albanian history and culture, such as Mitologji në eposin e kreshnikëve [Mythology in the epics of frontier warriors], Kodikët e Shqipërisë në Kujtesën e Botës [The codices of Albania in the World’s Memory]; after his studies about the work of Ismail Kadare as an Albanian literary phenomenon of universal values: Pengu i moskuptimit [The qualms of non-understanding], Për prozën e Kadaresë [On the prose of Kadare], Letërsia në totalitarizëm dhe ‘Dossier K’. [Literature in totalitarism and ‘Dossier K.’], with a version of the last one being published and republished in French by the Odile Jacob Publishing House under the title Le dossier Kadaré; la vérité des souterrains [Paris 2006, 2013], Shaban Sinani authored in 2009 a monographic study - Jews in Albania: their presence and salvation, which triggered extraordinary interest among local and foreign readers.
During the five years that have elapsed since then, the author has taken his research work further, especially by exploring foreign archives, and he now comes forth with a new title published simultaneously in Albanian and English: Albanians and Jews: the protection and salvation. His new take on the subject is firmly based on an extensive update with fresh facts and documentary evidence that are interpreted and presented to a level of expertise that definitely promotes prof. dr. Shaban Sinani to the status of a top authority. The well inclined among local and foreign researchers will find him convenient to refer to, as much as the contesters will find him hard to disregard or argue with. Although as a natural sequel to the first edition this book incorporates a large part of its core factual matter, it is nonetheless an entirely new contribution to the main flow of research and studies conducted about the salvation of Jews in Albania before and during World War II.
Relying on new sources, unavailable five years ago, this book expands the scope of the question by dealing not solely with the protection of Jews in proper Albania, but with their relations with the Albanian nation in general, which has so far been one of the most complex failings prevailing in the relevant local and foreign research work. This necessitated structural changes, the addition of new chapters, the thematic range expansion of chapters retained from the first edition, the verification and certification of previously disputed evidence and assertions, as well as the confirmation of substantial truths. Albanians and Jews: the protection and salvation, while on one hand further extols the Albanian stand toward the Jewish question in keeping with the historical truth, on the other hand does liberate it from the flood of folkloric myths and interpretations that have lately disregarded history in favor of legend.
The aforementioned works by this author deal with some of the top values that do credit to Albania and the Albanian nation. This has earned them the status of international reference books. Being junctures that connect the Albanian culture and civilization to the world culture, they serve as a factor for regaining a dimension that has been underestimated. This book is largely built on archival treasures that for a long time had either been locked up or neglected.
Discovering such values has been no easy feat. It has taken researcher Shaban Sinani more than 20 toilsome years to trace, verify, analyze and interpret enigmas such as the existence in the 1930-s of an international project for turning Albania into a second homeland to Jews, i.e. right before Europe would be swept over by the Nazi anti-Semitic plague, which remains to this day one of the least known aspects of research work on the Holocaust [Shoah].
Same as The codices of Albania in the World’s Memory, Albanians and Jews:the protection and salvation is a scientific monograph about the globally renowned virtues of the Albanian nation as specifically manifested in welcoming and protecting Jews before and during the Second World War. Both of these works by Sinani, the distinguished Albanologist, make the Albanian people feel reassessed; their culture and virtues have already been internationally certified: in the codices case, by UNESCO and, in the case of Jews, by Yad Vashem [Israel], the Memorial Museum of Holocaust [USA] and the American Congress.
Unlike the interpretations offered until lately, based mostly on romantic motives, based on what have been considered exceptional Albanian virtues [Besa, honor, hospitality, etc.], along with the distortions and reluctance to tell the truth about the unique reception and protection that the Albanians extended to Jews during the Second World War, the author, prof. Shaban Sinani has succeeded in accomplishing a thematic study that may be rightfully considered exhaustive; the question is ultimately transformed from narrative to factuality. This, therefore, constitutes the main merit and criteria for which the author of this study has to be both taken into account and lauded.
In Albanian and Jews: the protection and salvation, the author has included tens of illustrations to back up his arguments with facsimiles of original documents, photos and testimonials, as well as hundreds of references to local and foreign authors that have dealt with the subject. Most of the documents and testimonials are presented to the public for the first time; same as new facts altogether, stands and viewpoints about the presence and salvation of Jews in the Albanian territories are voiced for the first time. For the first time sources are not one-sided: only Albanian or only foreign ones. The author has ensured the cooperation of all available specialized Holocaust institutions and colleagues and sources related to the subject naturally complement, verify and certify one-another.
The subject is examined in historical depth, beginning from the Albanians’ first contacts with Jews and identifying a Hebraic stratum in the Albanian culture [Chapter one: the Hebraic cultural presence in the Albanian tradition]; to then continue with the stand toward Jews during the monarchic era; following with the stand maintained by the occupying armies and the Albanian quisling governments, down to the stand that communists held toward Jews. The retrogressive revelation of the Hebraic cultural presence in the Illyrian-Albanian space also serves the purpose of added proof to the Albanian autochthonic continuity in the region by way of traces and testimonies that have left their mark in the ancient Hellenic, Roman and Hebraic cultures.
The facts and insights offered by the author have been previously unarticulated or misarticulated, as for instance, regarding the role of H. Bernstein [of Jewish descent], ambassador of the USA to Albania in the 1930s and a key promoter of the international initiative, with the direct involvement of the High Commissioner for Refugees in the League of Nations, for installing in Albania a whole entity of European Jews already facing the beastly Nazi threat of mass extermination. Regardless of how well or poorly informed a reader may be about the subject, he will be intrigued at the rich cast of characters. They come out live from authentic records, from the fields of politics, diplomacy, culture, religion, and from diverse ethnic backgrounds that turn tiny Albania into an international stage filled not only with Albanian and Jewish actors: Sabbatai Zevi, leader of the messianic Jewish movement in the medieval Ottoman Empire; Albert Einstein, the Nobelist physicist; King Ahmet Zog of Albania and his aide-de-camp Mehmet Konitza; Hermann Neubacher, Hitler’s travelling ambassador to the Balkans; Francesco Jakomoni, the Italian Viceroy to Albania; Dom Shtjefën Kurti, Archbishop Fan Noli, Lasgush Poradeci, Gjergj Fishta - renowned men of religion and letters; Norbert Jokl, a central figure of Albanology; Bedri Pejani, a complex figure associated with the formation of Skanderbeg SS Division in Kosovo; Arsllan Rezniqi, Righteous Among the Nations as the savior of 400 Jews in Kosovo; Spiro Lito, the medical doctor, a true Albanian Oskar Schindler, that challenged the Nazis and saved the Jews by hospitalizing them as his patients, and the list of characters could go on and on.
One of the author’s greatest merits is his meticulous examination and definite clarification of the fate of Jews in Kosovo about whom, unlike the Jews of old Albania, there have been claims, mostly out of ill-motivation or ignorance, that they were turned over to the Nazis by Kosovar collaborationists of the Skanderbeg SS Division. Sinani breaks up the entire case starting with the lay-out of the differences in the political-military conditions existing in Albania and Kosovo during the wartime, drawing the logical conclusion that the Mitrovica Agreement, which the Germans reached with their Italian ally, practically gave the former free access and control over Kosovo. He then connects the potential consequences of such access to the differences between the German and Italian policy toward Jews, to logically conclude that, to Jews, Kosovo meant danger, and Albania meant safety. But Sinani digs much deeper.
In looking for the truth, he scrutinizes every official record, verifies every list name-by-name, checks out and compares figures and dates, follows the deportees from departure point to destination. Not only has his incredibly voluminous research proven all allegations to be both biased and unbiased, but the end results have also forced many researchers to altogether change or modify their position with regard to the stand of Kosovar Albanians toward Jews. If not for anything else, Shaban Sinani should be credited for perceiving this issue not as a matter of an individual researcher’s pride and worth, but as one concerning the pride and worth of the entire Albanian nation. The help and protection that the Albanians offered to Jews during the Second World War remains indeed a rare act of humanity and Shaban Sinani has fiercely fought to defend this glorious page in his nation’s history.
According to Sinani, what played a decisive role in the Albanians’ historical stand towards Jews was their ethno-type, which is to be accounted for not only by their well-known inter-religious tolerance, but also by their protective behavior toward foreigners, especially when under adverse circumstances. This crucial element is emphasized by Sinani to simply prove that one and the same nation cannot be abusively measured by applying two different yardsticks.
In this new study, same as in previous works by this author, the reader will meet a researcher well qualified in disciplines such cultural anthropology, ethnology, linguistics and folkloristic, which give him an advantage by aggregately shedding fuller light on the argument. These qualities, combined with the argumentative style and the researcher’s passion to follow truth through to the end, will certainly make the book an interesting and pleasant read. This monograph is an extraordinary accomplishment, one of manifold values to the Albanian culture and the image of Albania.
Compared to the first Albanian edition of 2009, Albanian and Jews: the protection and salvation comes more complete in terms of almost every essential component: new issues are added, previously unknown sources and records are served, affirmations that needed further elaboration on facts and evidence are corrected and relativized; illustrations, too, have been added and refreshed. Part of the previously published material has opened way to new testimonies that add to the overall credibility of the subject matter presented.
In line with the practice for such publications, proper names of historical individuals cited in this study, whether of Jewish or other foreign pertinence, are formally rendered following their Albanian transcription as found in archival records, which may not correspond to their exact pronunciation in the source language.
Last, as the publisher, I feel it to be my obligation, primarily to the reader, but also to the author, to briefly comment on a phenomenon that occurred following Shaban Sinani’s publication of the true story on the rescue of Jews in Albania during the Second World War. Due to the sensitivity of the subject and the existing global debate on the Holocaust, after the publication in 2009 of Jews in Albania: their presence and salvation, a whole train of local and foreign writers, researchers, journalists, film makers, etc., retook the subject to hastily refer to the Albanian Jew-saving wonder or enigma. Unfortunately, a good part of them would abuse, or rather miscopy or mistranslate in other languages the facts, numbers, documents or whole parts of the original book and would take them to the market as discoveries of their own.
Thus, individuals who had never walked into any archives room, out of ignorance, went so far as to present as archival proof even charts and statistical sheets that actually exist only in the author’s work lab and in his printed book. Furthermore, some of the miscreants are still dressing and selling the borrowed facts and numbers under such interpretations or sense that is entirely folkloric, amateurish or romantic. Such motivation runs opposite to the historical truth and the research standards of the original book; it consequently undermines the credibility and the real merits of the Albanian behavior toward foreigners, in this case, toward Jews.
Now, along with congratulating you for having this enlightening book in your hands and just before you start reading it, I would like to bring fresh in your memory what the former American ambassador to Albania, John L. Withers II, had to say on Remembrance Day, 27 January 2010:
Albania’s role in rescuing Jews from the horrors of the Holocaust is not nearly as well known, as it should be. It is something which all Albanians can be proud of … Albania can always do more to tell the world its remarkable story of preventing the persecution of Jews in its land. Some Albanians have been doing just that. Professor Shaban Sinani, for example. His numerous works document that even in the darkest years of the Holocaust, in Albania there was a coming together of all political beliefs and religious denominations - anti-fascists and pro-fascists, communists and nationalists, Muslims and Christians, believers and non-believers - to ensure that no harm would come to any Jew sheltered in Albania.
Author: Shaban Sinani
Albanians and Jews: the protection and salvation
A monographic study
Translated by: Arben P. Latifi
Translation editor: Hamlet Bezhani
Reviewed by: Pëllumb Xhufi, Tirana
Ardian Ndreca, Rome
Editor: Naim Zoto
Front cover by: Endri Hobdari
Front cover: Motifs from Life’s Tree [Menorah], a 5th century mosaic at the basilica-synagogue of the city of Saranda [Onhesmios,
Anchiasmos]. [Photo: UNESCO, M.-P. Raynaud]
Back cover: The Star of David on a monumental stone found in an ancient wall in Istog, Kosovo. [Photo: Isa Mulaj]
Published by: Naimi - Publishing House & Literary Services
www.botimenaimi.com
Copyright: The Author
No partial or complete reproduction of the text, documents, and illustrations of this book allowed without the author’s prior written consent.
ISBN: 978-9928-109-66-8
Price: 20 euro
After several fundamental works on the Albanian history and culture, such as Mitologji në eposin e kreshnikëve [Mythology in the epics of frontier warriors], Kodikët e Shqipërisë në Kujtesën e Botës [The codices of Albania in the World’s Memory]; after his studies about the work of Ismail Kadare as an Albanian literary phenomenon of universal values: Pengu i moskuptimit [The qualms of non-understanding], Për prozën e Kadaresë [On the prose of Kadare], Letërsia në totalitarizëm dhe ‘Dossier K’. [Literature in totalitarism and ‘Dossier K.’], with a version of the last one being published and republished in French by the Odile Jacob Publishing House under the title Le dossier Kadaré; la vérité des souterrains [Paris 2006, 2013], Shaban Sinani authored in 2009 a monographic study - Jews in Albania: their presence and salvation, which triggered extraordinary interest among local and foreign readers.
During the five years that have elapsed since then, the author has taken his research work further, especially by exploring foreign archives, and he now comes forth with a new title published simultaneously in Albanian and English: Albanians and Jews: the protection and salvation. His new take on the subject is firmly based on an extensive update with fresh facts and documentary evidence that are interpreted and presented to a level of expertise that definitely promotes prof. dr. Shaban Sinani to the status of a top authority. The well inclined among local and foreign researchers will find him convenient to refer to, as much as the contesters will find him hard to disregard or argue with. Although as a natural sequel to the first edition this book incorporates a large part of its core factual matter, it is nonetheless an entirely new contribution to the main flow of research and studies conducted about the salvation of Jews in Albania before and during World War II.
Relying on new sources, unavailable five years ago, this book expands the scope of the question by dealing not solely with the protection of Jews in proper Albania, but with their relations with the Albanian nation in general, which has so far been one of the most complex failings prevailing in the relevant local and foreign research work. This necessitated structural changes, the addition of new chapters, the thematic range expansion of chapters retained from the first edition, the verification and certification of previously disputed evidence and assertions, as well as the confirmation of substantial truths. Albanians and Jews: the protection and salvation, while on one hand further extols the Albanian stand toward the Jewish question in keeping with the historical truth, on the other hand does liberate it from the flood of folkloric myths and interpretations that have lately disregarded history in favor of legend.
The aforementioned works by this author deal with some of the top values that do credit to Albania and the Albanian nation. This has earned them the status of international reference books. Being junctures that connect the Albanian culture and civilization to the world culture, they serve as a factor for regaining a dimension that has been underestimated. This book is largely built on archival treasures that for a long time had either been locked up or neglected.
Discovering such values has been no easy feat. It has taken researcher Shaban Sinani more than 20 toilsome years to trace, verify, analyze and interpret enigmas such as the existence in the 1930-s of an international project for turning Albania into a second homeland to Jews, i.e. right before Europe would be swept over by the Nazi anti-Semitic plague, which remains to this day one of the least known aspects of research work on the Holocaust [Shoah].
Same as The codices of Albania in the World’s Memory, Albanians and Jews:the protection and salvation is a scientific monograph about the globally renowned virtues of the Albanian nation as specifically manifested in welcoming and protecting Jews before and during the Second World War. Both of these works by Sinani, the distinguished Albanologist, make the Albanian people feel reassessed; their culture and virtues have already been internationally certified: in the codices case, by UNESCO and, in the case of Jews, by Yad Vashem [Israel], the Memorial Museum of Holocaust [USA] and the American Congress.
Unlike the interpretations offered until lately, based mostly on romantic motives, based on what have been considered exceptional Albanian virtues [Besa, honor, hospitality, etc.], along with the distortions and reluctance to tell the truth about the unique reception and protection that the Albanians extended to Jews during the Second World War, the author, prof. Shaban Sinani has succeeded in accomplishing a thematic study that may be rightfully considered exhaustive; the question is ultimately transformed from narrative to factuality. This, therefore, constitutes the main merit and criteria for which the author of this study has to be both taken into account and lauded.
In Albanian and Jews: the protection and salvation, the author has included tens of illustrations to back up his arguments with facsimiles of original documents, photos and testimonials, as well as hundreds of references to local and foreign authors that have dealt with the subject. Most of the documents and testimonials are presented to the public for the first time; same as new facts altogether, stands and viewpoints about the presence and salvation of Jews in the Albanian territories are voiced for the first time. For the first time sources are not one-sided: only Albanian or only foreign ones. The author has ensured the cooperation of all available specialized Holocaust institutions and colleagues and sources related to the subject naturally complement, verify and certify one-another.
The subject is examined in historical depth, beginning from the Albanians’ first contacts with Jews and identifying a Hebraic stratum in the Albanian culture [Chapter one: the Hebraic cultural presence in the Albanian tradition]; to then continue with the stand toward Jews during the monarchic era; following with the stand maintained by the occupying armies and the Albanian quisling governments, down to the stand that communists held toward Jews. The retrogressive revelation of the Hebraic cultural presence in the Illyrian-Albanian space also serves the purpose of added proof to the Albanian autochthonic continuity in the region by way of traces and testimonies that have left their mark in the ancient Hellenic, Roman and Hebraic cultures.
The facts and insights offered by the author have been previously unarticulated or misarticulated, as for instance, regarding the role of H. Bernstein [of Jewish descent], ambassador of the USA to Albania in the 1930s and a key promoter of the international initiative, with the direct involvement of the High Commissioner for Refugees in the League of Nations, for installing in Albania a whole entity of European Jews already facing the beastly Nazi threat of mass extermination. Regardless of how well or poorly informed a reader may be about the subject, he will be intrigued at the rich cast of characters. They come out live from authentic records, from the fields of politics, diplomacy, culture, religion, and from diverse ethnic backgrounds that turn tiny Albania into an international stage filled not only with Albanian and Jewish actors: Sabbatai Zevi, leader of the messianic Jewish movement in the medieval Ottoman Empire; Albert Einstein, the Nobelist physicist; King Ahmet Zog of Albania and his aide-de-camp Mehmet Konitza; Hermann Neubacher, Hitler’s travelling ambassador to the Balkans; Francesco Jakomoni, the Italian Viceroy to Albania; Dom Shtjefën Kurti, Archbishop Fan Noli, Lasgush Poradeci, Gjergj Fishta - renowned men of religion and letters; Norbert Jokl, a central figure of Albanology; Bedri Pejani, a complex figure associated with the formation of Skanderbeg SS Division in Kosovo; Arsllan Rezniqi, Righteous Among the Nations as the savior of 400 Jews in Kosovo; Spiro Lito, the medical doctor, a true Albanian Oskar Schindler, that challenged the Nazis and saved the Jews by hospitalizing them as his patients, and the list of characters could go on and on.
One of the author’s greatest merits is his meticulous examination and definite clarification of the fate of Jews in Kosovo about whom, unlike the Jews of old Albania, there have been claims, mostly out of ill-motivation or ignorance, that they were turned over to the Nazis by Kosovar collaborationists of the Skanderbeg SS Division. Sinani breaks up the entire case starting with the lay-out of the differences in the political-military conditions existing in Albania and Kosovo during the wartime, drawing the logical conclusion that the Mitrovica Agreement, which the Germans reached with their Italian ally, practically gave the former free access and control over Kosovo. He then connects the potential consequences of such access to the differences between the German and Italian policy toward Jews, to logically conclude that, to Jews, Kosovo meant danger, and Albania meant safety. But Sinani digs much deeper.
In looking for the truth, he scrutinizes every official record, verifies every list name-by-name, checks out and compares figures and dates, follows the deportees from departure point to destination. Not only has his incredibly voluminous research proven all allegations to be both biased and unbiased, but the end results have also forced many researchers to altogether change or modify their position with regard to the stand of Kosovar Albanians toward Jews. If not for anything else, Shaban Sinani should be credited for perceiving this issue not as a matter of an individual researcher’s pride and worth, but as one concerning the pride and worth of the entire Albanian nation. The help and protection that the Albanians offered to Jews during the Second World War remains indeed a rare act of humanity and Shaban Sinani has fiercely fought to defend this glorious page in his nation’s history.
According to Sinani, what played a decisive role in the Albanians’ historical stand towards Jews was their ethno-type, which is to be accounted for not only by their well-known inter-religious tolerance, but also by their protective behavior toward foreigners, especially when under adverse circumstances. This crucial element is emphasized by Sinani to simply prove that one and the same nation cannot be abusively measured by applying two different yardsticks.
In this new study, same as in previous works by this author, the reader will meet a researcher well qualified in disciplines such cultural anthropology, ethnology, linguistics and folkloristic, which give him an advantage by aggregately shedding fuller light on the argument. These qualities, combined with the argumentative style and the researcher’s passion to follow truth through to the end, will certainly make the book an interesting and pleasant read. This monograph is an extraordinary accomplishment, one of manifold values to the Albanian culture and the image of Albania.
Compared to the first Albanian edition of 2009, Albanian and Jews: the protection and salvation comes more complete in terms of almost every essential component: new issues are added, previously unknown sources and records are served, affirmations that needed further elaboration on facts and evidence are corrected and relativized; illustrations, too, have been added and refreshed. Part of the previously published material has opened way to new testimonies that add to the overall credibility of the subject matter presented.
In line with the practice for such publications, proper names of historical individuals cited in this study, whether of Jewish or other foreign pertinence, are formally rendered following their Albanian transcription as found in archival records, which may not correspond to their exact pronunciation in the source language.
Last, as the publisher, I feel it to be my obligation, primarily to the reader, but also to the author, to briefly comment on a phenomenon that occurred following Shaban Sinani’s publication of the true story on the rescue of Jews in Albania during the Second World War. Due to the sensitivity of the subject and the existing global debate on the Holocaust, after the publication in 2009 of Jews in Albania: their presence and salvation, a whole train of local and foreign writers, researchers, journalists, film makers, etc., retook the subject to hastily refer to the Albanian Jew-saving wonder or enigma. Unfortunately, a good part of them would abuse, or rather miscopy or mistranslate in other languages the facts, numbers, documents or whole parts of the original book and would take them to the market as discoveries of their own.
Thus, individuals who had never walked into any archives room, out of ignorance, went so far as to present as archival proof even charts and statistical sheets that actually exist only in the author’s work lab and in his printed book. Furthermore, some of the miscreants are still dressing and selling the borrowed facts and numbers under such interpretations or sense that is entirely folkloric, amateurish or romantic. Such motivation runs opposite to the historical truth and the research standards of the original book; it consequently undermines the credibility and the real merits of the Albanian behavior toward foreigners, in this case, toward Jews.
Now, along with congratulating you for having this enlightening book in your hands and just before you start reading it, I would like to bring fresh in your memory what the former American ambassador to Albania, John L. Withers II, had to say on Remembrance Day, 27 January 2010:
Albania’s role in rescuing Jews from the horrors of the Holocaust is not nearly as well known, as it should be. It is something which all Albanians can be proud of … Albania can always do more to tell the world its remarkable story of preventing the persecution of Jews in its land. Some Albanians have been doing just that. Professor Shaban Sinani, for example. His numerous works document that even in the darkest years of the Holocaust, in Albania there was a coming together of all political beliefs and religious denominations - anti-fascists and pro-fascists, communists and nationalists, Muslims and Christians, believers and non-believers - to ensure that no harm would come to any Jew sheltered in Albania.
Author: Shaban Sinani
Albanians and Jews: the protection and salvation
A monographic study
Translated by: Arben P. Latifi
Translation editor: Hamlet Bezhani
Reviewed by: Pëllumb Xhufi, Tirana
Ardian Ndreca, Rome
Editor: Naim Zoto
Front cover by: Endri Hobdari
Front cover: Motifs from Life’s Tree [Menorah], a 5th century mosaic at the basilica-synagogue of the city of Saranda [Onhesmios,
Anchiasmos]. [Photo: UNESCO, M.-P. Raynaud]
Back cover: The Star of David on a monumental stone found in an ancient wall in Istog, Kosovo. [Photo: Isa Mulaj]
Published by: Naimi - Publishing House & Literary Services
www.botimenaimi.com
Copyright: The Author
No partial or complete reproduction of the text, documents, and illustrations of this book allowed without the author’s prior written consent.
ISBN: 978-9928-109-66-8
Price: 20 euro
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