I found this story truly amazing. The Muslim leadership in Albania directed its people to think of Jewish children as their own. They risked their lives to save their Jewish neighbors.
With rising anti-Muslim sentiment across the country, an untold story is raising greater awareness about the Muslim faith and the teachings of the Quran. That awareness comes from an unlikely source: a small Jewish congregation in Creve Coeur.
Temple Emanuel is premiering a groundbreaking exhibit of photos that reveals Albanian Muslims who saved 2,000 Jews during World War II.
It’s a story you’ve likely never heard. It is a story told through the faces of Albanian Muslims who risked their own lives to live by a code of faith and honor called Besa.
Wonderful article, Elena. I did not know this. It is always easier to look at what people have done wrong than what they have done right.
Another little acknowledged fact is that Mulsims were being exterminated in the 90’s in Bosnia. Ethnic cleansing was alive and well. Christians were behind most of it….Do we condemn all Christians? Of course not.
Great point Moon!
Just goes to show what a perplexing and often surprising breed we humans are. Brings to mind my Frisian-Dutch ancestors. When they were converted from Teutonic paganism to Catholicism after being defeated militarily by Charlemagne, they still insisted on being “independent” in many ways from Rome. And Rome granted concessions. Unlike most other places, the Frisians were given the right to select their own priests; and they were notorious for ignoring dictates from Rome about inflicting prescribed punishments upon apostates or heretics. And they constantly defied the bishops who had been given political and religious control over their land.
Then the Dutch, most of them, bought into the Calvinist Reformation almost lock, stock, and barrel. Sent against them by the Spanish king was the Duke of Alba, one of the most cruel military leaders in history who swore to the king that he would put all the rebellious Protestants to the knife. That battle was long and hard and vicious. And it was fought by the Dutch people. After the Spanish army had leveled Haarlem, they tried to do the same to the walled city of Alkmaar. They failed. They tried to scale the walls and were thrown back into the moat, often with flaming barrel stays around their necks — maybe the first “necklacings.” The Spanish thought they were fighting a professional army. But, when one young Spanish officer made it to the top of the wall and was then thrown back into the moat, he remarked later that, when he had looked down into the city, he saw not soldiers but common folk defenders in the garb of farmers, fishermen, and craftsmen. And then Alba and his troops fled, made to believe for certain that the allies of Alkmaar outside the city were making ready to cut all the dikes and to flood out their own homes, and crops, and livestock in order to drive the Spanish away.
Now you would think after all this that the Dutch would have become among the most religiously tolerant people on earth. Nope. The Calvinist Reformed Church became the state church of Holland. When a part of that congregation objected to the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, they were cast out and treated like heretics. And then there was my ancestral hometown. It had once been the site of a prominent Catholic abbey. That abbey was torn down, and its chapel, like similar Catholic edifices all over Holland, became the community’s Reformed Church. The remaining Catholics went underground.
There was in that town as well a small Jewish community. In the midst of all this newfound freedom from Rome and the celebration of such by the residents, the rabbi appeared respectfully before the civic and religious leaders and asked if it might be possible for he and his very small congregation to bulld just a very small synagogue so they could also taste that freedom. The answer was: absolutely not. It took more than 200 years before an actual synagogue was built in that community.
Move history forward one more time. That same Holland, under Nazi occupation, became the land of Anne Frank. All over Holland, there were Christians who risked their own lives to hide Dutch Jews away from the German Gestapo and the German SS.
We humans are, indeed, a perplexing and often surprising breed.
@Moon-howler
“Do we condemn all Christians? Of course not.”
The reason that we do not is because they did not act as Christians and the Christian ethos does not include killing. The Koran does.
Of course, in that part of the world, the Ottoman invasion is known as the “Recent Unpleasantness.” They’re fighting over land, politics, AND religion. So one cannot just call it a religious war.
And does anyone else notice that America gets blamed for killing muslims or helping Israel kill muslims, but never gets any credit for saving Muslims. Kosovo, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bngladesh, etc. We risk lives and wealth helping or rescuing them from hostile weather, earthquakes, tsunamis, non-muslims, and other muslims. And for that, we get attacked.
Cargo, I would have to pitch the OT before I am convinced that Christianity does not include killing. As long as the Christian Bible is OT and NT it is hard to make that claim. I am not sure that Revelation isn’t full of killing.
Most of us have moved on from ancient times though and do not include killing as part of our religion.
the muslims were hardly being exterminated in bosnia, the muslims were butchering serbs, serbs were butchering muslims, and they’ve been going at it since 1289, or what is it 1321, who cares. the serbs in the 90’s had the upper hand because of superior weaponry provided them by their buddies the russians.
why america got involved is beyond me (except to provide slick willie an opportunity to wage war from 20,000 feet), the europeans should’ve dealt with it, if not dissolve the whole damn nato, its obviously outlived its purpose.
america now has the distinction of being the first country to bomb sarajevo since adolf hitler, congratulations.
belgrade, my bad
and to call the serbian leadership christian is like calling tony soprano or the godfather christian. gimme a break
Know any Bosnians, e? Read anything about some of the brutal attacks on Bosnian families? The villages that were burned, the women who were raped, the stadium full of people who were slaughtered?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_War
Muslims were the victims in most cases. Good for Bill Clinton.
Serbia was culturally Christian. I don’t make it a practice to stand in judgement of how good of a Christian someone else is. In fact, it is forbidden.
I think that its perfectly ok to judge the quality of someone’s Christianity if said person is committing horrible crimes. Christ said to “Love one another.”
e,
You are grossy incorrect. I met the reporter while working as a make up artist at MSNBC. He discovered the mass graves. Why do you find it necessary to defend the indefensable?
Why did so many Jewish leaders, and holocaust survivors speak so loudly against what was happening to the Muslims and demand action if there were no atrocities happening?
Elie Wiesel was a strong voice, demanding such action http://www.pbs.org/eliewiesel/resources/millennium.html
As Jews, we should be especially sensitive and pro active when ANY group is targeted based on their race or religion.
yawn, muslims are always the victims, i don’t buy it for a second. i’m sure many serb families can relate horrors perpetrated on their families as well
The atrocities commited against Muslims in Bosnia are well documented. Elena is correct. Much of the outcry for international intervention came from Holocaust survivors. They reminded the nations about genocide and what happens if everyone sits around arguing about it.
The events in that region clearly qualified as genocide under international law.
e, are you a Bosnian denier?
re: genocide and what happens if everyone sits around arguing about it.
kind of like the situation today, so why don’t we bomb iran before the mullahs spread death and destruction around the planet with nuclear terror?
bill clinton bombed the serbs just to get monica lewinsky off the front page, don’t take my word for it, ask dick morris
@e
Dick Morris is a whore monger and a person I have zero respect for. I wouldn’t speak to him.
I know why Clinton got involved. He did the right thing. People like Eli Weisel continued to lobby for intervention. Never again means everyoneL Gypsies, Albanians, Jews, Bosnians, even Serbs.
If everyone sits around and talks about it, then everyone is dead.
Let us not pretend that the recent unfortunate and reprehensible events in the Balkans were something new This conflict between Serb Christians and Muslims has been going on for centuries. It was the Ottoman Empire which first placed the Balkans under a Muslim governmental fist. When they finally caused the center of resistance, Belgrade, to surrender, an edict was issued allowing Muslim soldiers to shoot down any Serb Christian male at will, for whatever reason they wanted. Serb Christian women and children were subjected to seizure and being sent to Asia Minor as slaves. Many of the youngest children were converted to Islam and eventually sent back to the Balkans as Ottoman soldiers to participate in the enslavement of their own people. Right there you had another “holocaust.”
The Albanians, for one, accepted Islam and became allies with the conquerors in both the persecution of Christian Serbs and the seizure of traditional Serb lands in Kosovo — which is why this latest round began with attempts by the Serbs to expell Albanians from Kosovo. This hatred is long and deep and very black, stopped only occasionally by the dictatorial power of the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the Marxist government of Marshal Tito. Communal memories are long in that place. And it still goes on. Why are NATO troops and police still in Kosovo? Because the Albanians kept trying to get at the remaining Serb ethnic communities and had taken to burning down Serb Orthodox Christian churches. The NATO troops and police are peace-keepers in a still troubled land.
I should have said “kill” instead of “shoot down.” They didn’t have guns yet. Muslim soldiers put Serbian Christian males to death by the sword whenever they felt like it.
I am incredibly disappointed that this discussion even came up on this particular positive thread. How far back in history do we go until we stop condoning tit for tat violence.
In OUR generation, there was ethnic cleansing. I CHALLENGE you both, wolverine and e, to substantiate that there was NO ethnic cleansing in Bosnia.
Here are my FACTS, funny how irritating those pesky facts can be when proving or DISproving erroneous statements.
http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0794/9407042.htm
What I am really wondering though, is why there is such resistance to allowing one to believe that muslims were targeted. If I did not know better, it would sound like it comes from a place of hate.
Plenty of Christians have targeted Jews for death and religious conversion for many many centuries, but you don’t see me, EVER, going back that far to excuse violence.
I will never understand the obsession with Clinton and his penis by Republicans. Especially considering they find themselves in trouble over their’s over and over and over again. Furthermore, e, your timing is way off. The fabricated “wag the dog” was over bombing the pharmacutical company in Pakistan. How silly, terrorists have never been in Pakistan………..
I doubt seriously that Christian women were enslaved in 1995. Things change. The Irish Catholics and Protestants have been killing each other for centuries. Whose side should we come down on? How about lets discourage killing, especially in the name of religion.
You really get put in a bind if you are descended from both Catholic and Protestant Irish. If you are also English then it even gets more fun.
The fact that Bosnians were being raped, tortured and killed in the 1990s is irrefutable. To say otherwise is to be a denier. Granted, that area has been fraught with discord for centuries as have other areas in the world. But that is no reason to continue to live as uncivilized human beings. Genocide is simple not acceptable. Anywhere.
I think we have to decide that we aren’t going to accept genocide regardless of who does it.
Elena, you must stop making such quick assumptions, Nowhere did I deny that there was ethnic cleansing in Bosnia in the 1990’s. Nor did I condone such violence. Please read more carefully. In the first sentence of #17 I deliberately used the term “reprehensible.” I was just trying to point out that the roots of this conflict go back a long, long ways;that there have been dirty hands on both sides for a long, long time; and, unfortunately, the communal memories are very bitter in that part of the world, which has long been on the razor’s edge of Muslim-Christian conflict. I do not appreciate being challenged to prove something I never said. I do also do not appreciate the implication that my comments might come from a “place of hate.” That, my friend, is nothing but an insult. If you do not study and understand the roots of a conflict, you will not be able to understand the latest round in the battle. That is not the same as condoning what happens in that latest round.
So, may I please continue with this train of thought?
In 1943, in the midst of World War II and a fierce and courageous battle by Yugoslav partisans against their Nazi occupiers, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was born under the leadership of Josip Broz Tito. He subsequently established a tightly controlled Marxist federal state in which the government apparatus was able by force and threats to put a lid on the ethnic and religious rivalries which had bedevilled the Balkans for centuries.
However, at the same time that the Soviet Union was falling and the states of Eastern Europe were regaining their independence from the Russians, Yugolslavia also started to come apart. It was officially dissolved in 1992 and separated along historical lines of ethnicity most certainly and religion to a great extent. But, in point of fact, the old ethnic rivalries had already resurfaced, even before the federal state fell. That included the autonomous province of Kosovo, which had been the heartland of Serbia long ago and which had since been the object of considerable immigration by Muslim Albanians from Albania. In terms of the newly independent state of Serbia, Kosovo, with its Serbian population outnumbered by the Albanian Muslims, was a powder keg of strong “nationalist” feelings waiting to be lit. Along with it came another powder keg, the long-standing ethno-religious differences between the Bosnian Muslims and the Orthodox Christian Serbs. Well, the powder kegs were both lit, and we all saw the bloody, horrendous results of what is called “ethnic cleansing.” Although there were cetainly geopolitical factors involved, to me it also looked a lot like the resumption of an old and bitter vendetta. The resultant atrocities confirmed my opinion on that.
Now, where I personally lay a big part of the blame for all this is on the United Nations, the United States (Bush I and Clinton), and the NATO European allies. If they had paid better attention to history, in my opinion, they might have been able to see this coming and found a way to put a stop to it long before the blood started flowing so copiously. But, no, they sort of put it under the radar and on the back shelf until it could no longer be ignored. Thus, so typical of those who fail to pay adequate attention to history, the rescuers managed to come to the scene a day late and a dollar short. They also failed to put the pressure big time on Russia, which became a critical interferer in the whole sad scene by supporting and bolstering the Serbs.
Well, as the old adage goes, those who ignore history live to repeat it. That is the sum total of my postings on this subject.
i acknowledge the fact that ethnic cleansing occurred in bosnia. i also acknowledge the fact that the case can be made that european settlers in the new world committed ethnic cleansing of native americans. but let’s not rewrite history and portray the muslims as innocents when in fact if given the chance they would have, with great relish, perpetrated the same atrocities on their adversaries if provided the opportunity. it just happened that their patron the ottoman empire collapsed like the sick man of europe that it was, the same muslim ottoman empire that perpetrated the first mass genocide in the modern era when they wiped out a million or two christian armenians.
i also know what side my bread is buttered on, and it’s only because of the serbs and others (including john smith, incidentally) who fought the invaders that european civilization as we know it survived. it is easy for us today, basking in the waning rays of pax america, to cast judgement.
while yes there were isolated acts of kindness during the holocaust, both in albania and in other parts of europe, we do ourselves a disfavor by ignoring, or glossing over, the indifference to, or active participation in the holocaust by many europeans. we live in a world governed by the aggressive use of force, and we ignore that maxim at our peril. every jew with a 22 would’ve stopped the nazis’ plans cold.
the greatest reservoir of genocidal bloodlust on the planet today emanates from the muslim world, with cartoons on gazan tv or in egytptian newspapers that would make the editors of Der Sturmer blush. we ignore that maxim at our peril, too.
e,
How many friends do you have that are muslim? I don’t deny there are issues within the muslim culture, geez, the UAE just codified wife beating. However, that is not all muslims and it is not all muslim nations. I refuse to go back to the ottoman empire to judge present circumstances. Do I still bear a grudge against ALL europeans for the holocaust, ummm….NO. I live in the present world, and if people continue to hold onto grudges and payback mentality, we cannot evolve as human beings.
Once again, this thread was promoting positive stories about Muslims and I resent the fact that poster here chose THIS thread to somehow denegrate muslims or suggest that the recent ethnic cleansing was the “usual” in that part of the world. MY point was the Albanian Muslims risked their lives to save Jews and its too bad that, as human beings, we all move toward evolving into that kind of love for one another.
Maybe we need some feel good stories out there about Muslims. Imagine if you were a ‘good Muslim’–you know, the type each of us thinks of when we think of our Muslim friends. How must it feel to practice a religion that, to you, is a good and peaceful religion and others have bastardized?
How must it feel to see others taking something that is a comfort and blessing to you and turn it into something nasty, dirty and full of hate. Those people also get blamed for what the bad guys do. Unfortunately, not everyone is free to speak out against that which they feel is wrong.
Try speaking out and see where it gets you. In some places, it gets you dead. In other places it gets you ridiculed, mocked, bullied and ostracized. Sometimes its just easier to keep quiet. Religious zealots of all stripes are capable of meting out this kind of vengence.
Thanks for a feel good story, Elena. Unfortunately, the uplifting stories usually get shuffled below the fold. It isn’t often we see good things about Muslims because the extremists generally capture all the press, at least in western media.
Elena, I certainly had no intention of downplaying the role of individual Albanians in saving the lives of Jews from the Nazi Holocaust. It was a noteworthy thing and certainly merits the plaudits given to it. However, I posit that you have to include historical context to make it understood.
Let us begin with the fact that I doubt that there were ever 2000 Jews in Albania proper. The official 1930 census gave a population of 204 Jews, mostly Sephardic descendants of those who fled from Portugal and Spain in the 15th Century. When the Italians took over Albania in 1941, they rejected Hitler’s “Final Solution”, allowing the Jews to blend into the Albanian population in an anticipation of the Holocaust in Europe. After the Italians blew their attempted further conquests in the Balkans and in Greece, the Germans took over in Albania from 1941 to 1944. The German SS itself had set a final list of only about 200 Albanian Jews to be detained and eliminated.. The Germans, however, apparently ran into a big problem of trying to separate the Jews from the Albanian populace. That’s because of the people in your video link to be sure.
That is precisely where Albanian Muslims as individuals came in. Albanian had long been a different and unique country. It had always been one of the few places where anti-semitism was not found to exist to any noticeable degree. The American ambassador to Tirana had that opinion as part of a report he wrote for Washington in the 1930’s. Albanian Muslims had a long history of religious tolerance; and the always small Jewish population existed there in peace and harmony for centuries. You could say that the Albanians over those centuries put most of the rest of Europe to shame with regard to tolerance.
Moreover, it can be a bit misleading to say that the Albanian effort to save the Jews from the Nazis can be pointed to purely as an example of “good Muslims.” The Albanians were “different” and special in some ways and always have been. Apart from the Koran, they operated under a very particular personal code called the “Kanun”, of which “besa” or one’s personal word of honor was an intrical part. The Kanun had been developed to control the family feuds which often developed in that rather remote and somewhat isolated mountain country. It was something purely Albanian added to the Koran. In my opinion, therefore, it was largely a combination of the uniquenmess of the Albanian Muslim outlook with regard to tolerance; the dictates of the “Kanun” and its code of honor, and a hatred for the Nazis which saved the Jews of Albania, not just an adherence to some aspect of the Muslim religion. Indeed, those Albanians per se have merited a place of honor in history for their actions simply on humanitarian grounds.
Now, where would controversy come into this? During the Italian occupation of Albania and in view of the Italian rejection of the “Final Solution,” German and Austrian Jews began to move down to the Balkans. Some came to Albania, but a number of them settled in nearby Kosovo, then a part of Serbia but heavily occupied by Albanian immigrants. When the Germans conquered Serbia, Serbian Jews moved in the same direction. What the Germans did was take Kosovo and certain other parts of the Balkans and add them to Albania to make a “Greater Albania” governed techically out of Tirana, the Albanian capital. And it was in Greater Albania where the SS did most of its dirty work, rounding up the Jews for extermination in Belgrade and for the transport of some to certain death in Bergen-Belsen. In the Kosovo region of Greater Albania, the Jews, like those elsewhere, were required to wear the now familiar Star of David.
And , from what I have seen, the Albanian Muslims in Kosovo sometimes helped the Germans with the Jewish question. In point of fact, it was Albanian Muslim volunteers in Kosovo who made up the infamous 21st SS Division or the “Skanderberg” and other SS units, military groups originally intended to operate against Tito and other Balkan partisans but, having proven to be rather inept, were also used to round up Jews. They participated, for instance, in the arrest of almost 300 Jews at Berat, all of whom were sent to certain death in the North. Where the controversy comes in is what the Albanian leadership in Tirana knew about that and when they knew it. This is the same leadership said to have sent that “secret message” to take in the Jewish children. Some historians wonder if that same leadership might have been complicit in the actions in Kosovo, citing some central government activity relating to formation of Albanian units in the SS. Others appear to believe that the Albanian leadership was simply impotent in the face of the German occupation and that the “secret message” may have been the true indicator of where their hearts lay. The post-war Marxist regime of Enver Hoxha closed the books for the next half century, and the true story of the saving of Jews by Muslims only came out after the fall of communism in Europe.
So, there are really two stories here. What happened to the Jews in Albania proper is one thing, and what happened to the Jews in Greater Albania seems to be another. Kosovo was genuinely a part of the Nazi-fed Holocaust. Many of its victims were the German, Austria, and Serbian Jews who had fled there for safety early in the war. Incidentally, most sources state that the Jewish population of Albania proper after World War II was only about 100 more than at the beginning, which would put the figure at about 300-350, not the 2000 indicated in the opening thread. However, it is also posited that Albanian is one of the few countries in Europe where there were more Jews after the war than before the war. But you have to exclude Kosovo from that because that province was soon taken over by Tito. After the fall of Albanian communism in 1991, almost all the remaining Jews in Albania migrated to Israel. The latest figures all show only about 15 Jews left in Albania proper today.
So, no argument from me that the Albanian Muslims who saved Albanian Jews did a very good thing and deserve the belated plaudits, including some awards handed out recently by the ADL. In 100% agreement there. But was that good deed a “Muslim” thing or an “Albanian” thing? I would wish that the contemporary jihadists might take a long look at the “Kunan” and the “besa” and the history of religious tolerance among the Albanians and try to emulate it.