The Albanian Role in the Holocaust

In the Associated Press story “Albanian family honored for helping Jews”, Marcus Franklin rehashed and regurgitated the Albanian propaganda claim that Albanians “rescued” Jews during the Holocaust and played no role in the Holocaust. This is a total falsification, distortion, and manipulation of the Albanian role in the Holocaust.

The Holocaust Chronicle, researched by prominent Holocaust historians and scholars, documents that 10 to 12 Jews from Albania proper were sent to the Nazi death camp at Bergen-Belsen. This research disproves the Albanian propaganda claim that 100% of Albanian Jews were “rescued” during the Holocaust. Moreover, Harvey Sarner reported that the Ardel family, an Albanian Jewish family, was killed by the Nazis in Albania proper, although he qualified this by saying they were killed because they were partisans, not because they were Jews.

Two factors explain why Albanian Jews were “rescued” in Albania proper. First, the Italian occupation authorities did not support the Final Solution in Albania and did not implement it. Albanian Jews were allowed to disperse within the population and to lose their Jewish identity. Second, there were only 33 known Jewish families in Albania proper before the war. The Wannsee Conference listed only 200 Jews in Albania. Italian non-enforcement of the Final Solution and the minuscule Jewish population, dispersed in the rural areas, explains why so few Jews were sent to the death camps.

But the Albanian government did make a major effort to exterminate all the Jews of Albania proper.

In a July, 1944 report by US intelligence, the OSS, on Albania entitled “Political and Internal Conditions”, it was reported that Xhafer Deva, Rexhep Mitrovic[a] and Midhat Frasheri are with the Germans. … Anti-Semitic measures are being adopted now. A captured SS document revealed that Deva had been responsible for the deportation of Jews, Communists and partisans to extermination camps as well as for punitive raids by the SS Skanderbeg Division. The small mountain territory had few Jews, so relatively few were captured and killed. This proves that the Albanian government instituted anti-Semitic measures and did deport Albanian Jews to the death camps.

Christopher Simpson, in Blowback: America’s Recruitment of Nazis and its Effects on the Cold War, noted that relatively few Jews were captured and killed but not for lack of trying by the Balli Kombetar organization and the Albanian SS which had orchestrated a series of anti-semitic purges that rounded up about 800 people, the majority of whom were deported and murdered. There was no “lack of trying” by the Albanian government. Anna Kohen recites only selective instances when Albanian Jews escaped capture and deportation. The Albanian government, however, did try to round up and deport and to kill every single Albanian Jew.

The Albanian government and Albanian authorities took an active part in the extermination of Albanian Jews: In June, 1943 the Albanian police chief suggested the jailing of certain Jews:

“According to our investigation the Jews listed below are dangerous because they are propaganderizing [sic] against the Axis (Rome-Berlin) and they want to organize and hold meetings. We think these people should be taken away from here as soon as possible to one of the concentration fields, because their staying here could be dangerous to the regime”.

Sarner conceded that the Albanian government and the Albanian people did play a major role in the Holocaust and Final Solution: In April, 1944, the Germans shipped 400 Jews from the annexed territories to Bergen-Belsen; 100 survived the war.

The way the Albanian propagandists get around this problem is by arguing that Kosovo-Metohija and Western Macedonia were not a part of a Greater Albania. This is absolute nonsense and rubbish. From 1941 to 1944, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini created a Greater Albania that was made up of Kosovo and Western Macedonia. Kosovo was regarded as the “New Albania” and “the annexed territories”, but Kosovo was part of Hitler’s Greater Albania nonetheless. This Albanian self-delusion is a rhetorical and nonsensical propaganda trick. Yes, Albanian Nazis did round up and murder hundreds of Kosovo Jews who were gassed at Bergen-Belsen. Yes, Kosovo was part of a Greater or Ethnic or Natural Albania. But, no, Albanians “rescued” 100% of the Jews in Albania. This is mindless and duplicitous. Many of the key political leaders who ran Albania proper were Kosovo Albanian Muslims. Both Kosovo and Albania proper were under the control and authority of the same people. This is a meaningless and specious argument. It is misleading and falsifies the actual history of Albania during the Holocaust.

The 21st Albanian Nazi SS Division Skanderbeg played a key role in the Holocaust. This Nazi SS Division was made up of Albanians from Albania proper and Kosovo. The first operation of Skanderbeg in Kosovo-Metohija was the raid on Kosovo Jews in Pristina on May 14,1944. The Albanian SS troops raided apartments and homes belonging to Kosovo Jews and looted their possessions, and rounded them up for deportation to the death camps. Kosovo Jews were then placed in makeshift jails. The 21st SS Division Skanderbeg apprehended 281 Kosovo Jews, which included men, women, and children. From May to June 1944, the Nazi SS Division Skanderbeg apprehended a total of 519 Kosovo Jews and Serbs.

During the initial German occupation of Pristina in 1941 before it was turned over to Italian administration, the property of Kosovo Jews was seized and they were conscripted for forced labor. In Kosovska Mitrovica, Jewish shops and stores were closed down and Kosovo Jews were ordered to wear a yellow band to identify themselves as Jews.

Albanians collaborated with the Nazis in exterminating the Jews. The seizure of Jewish property was organized and conducted by the Gestapo and members of the Albanian Committee. On May 20, 1941, Dzafer Deva, the leader of the Mitrovica district, ordered the seizure of Jewish property. Jewish businesses had been put under the supervision of members of the Albanian Committee.

The seizure of Jewish businesses and property was conducted by Albanians: Mamut Perijuc, Ramiz Mulic and Osman Ibrahimovic, who worked in conjuction with the German Gestapo. Ibrahimovic was the head of the commission overseeing Jewish property. This Albanian leader ordered the demolition of the Jewish synagogue and the destruction of papers and documents in the Jewish archive. In Pristina, the seizure of Jewish property and anti-Jewish measures were undertaken by the Kosovar Albanian regime placed in control and by members of the Albanian Kosovo Committee, Maljus Kosova, president of the Committee, Dzemal beg Ismail Kanli, head of the police, Rasid Memedali, and Rifat Sukri Ramadan. Albanians were collaborating with the Germans in expropriating the property of Jews.

Yugoslav Jewish survivors put the responsibility on the Kosovar Albanian Committee for inciting the first and second internments of Kosovo Jews. In the Jewish historical archives of Yugoslavia, the role of the 21st SS Division in the Holocaust and in the genocide of Kosovo Jews and Serbs is described as follows:

”From May 25 to July 2, 1944 the Division ‘Skanderbeg’ apprehended 510 Jews, Serbs… They were put in jails, while 249 were sent as forced laborers to the Reich.”

The Albanian Nazi SS Skanderbeg Division played a hitherto unacknowledged role in the Holocaust. It was made up of ethnic Albanians from Albanian proper and from Kosovo, the New Albania. Why doesn’t Sarner and Anna Kohen mention the Skanderbeg SS Division? It they revealed its existence, their propaganda argument would collapse and their claims would be laughable. So what do they do? They meticulously cover up and censor any mention of the Albanian Nazi SS Division Skanderbeg. And for good reason as it turns out. In Kosovo: A Short History, even noted Albanian propagandist, shill, and apologist Noel Malcolm conceded that in the Djakovica region of Kosovo-Metohija, the Albanian Nazi SS Skanderbeg Division engaged in ”the round-up and deportation of 281 Jews” to the concentration-extermination camps in May 1944. According to Malcolm, ”they took part in the most shameful episode in Kosovo’s wartime history.” But these Nazis who murdered Jews were ethnic Albanians from Albania proper and from Kosovo. Albanians didn’t “rescue” 100% of the Jews in Albania. Albanians murdered 7% of the Jews in Albania proper and 40% of the Jews in New Albania, or Kosovo.

The Albanian role in the Holocaust does not end here. In fact, Albanians made up two Nazi SS Divisions, Skanderbeg and Handzar, the 13th Nazi SS Division formed in Bosnia and made up of Bosnian Muslim and Albanian Muslim Nazi SS troops.

The role of Albania and of Albanians in the Holocaust has been carefully falsified, manipulated, and covered-up.

Originally published on 2007-01-19

Author: Carl K. Savich

Source: Serbianna

Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection & Pinterest.

Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!

Donate to Support Us

We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.

READ MORE!

The Two Most Dangerous Warmongers in Political Office Today

They work in concert to carefully lay the foundations and propaganda for war, for between them they hope to dominate the world with their egocentric madness for power and influence. One is a former real estate developer and the other an expansionist occupier of foreign land. Both have access to nuclear and chemical/biological weapons of mass destruction. They use the most powerful economic and political sanctions available in today’s US-dominated world to aggressively cripple those nation states they wish to either command or destroy and will unilaterally threaten and intimidate all those who oppose them, with financial, economic and military sanctions. They ...

The NATO’s Violations of the “Just War” Principles in 1999

Current political process of acceptance of the quasi-independent state of Kosovo to the full UN’s UNESCO’s membership opened once again a question of the NATO’s military intervention against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (the FRY) in March−June 1999 as a foundation for Kosovo’s secession from Serbia and its unilateral proclamation of a quasi-independence in February 2008. Kosovo became the first and only European state up today that is ruled by the terrorist warlords as a party’s possession – the (Albanian) Kosovo Liberation Army (the KLA). The aim of this article is to investigate the nature of the NATO’s war on ...

Trump, Netanyahu and Israel’s Capital

When considering United States President Donald Trump’s decision to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, we learn many things about him: + He is desperate to hold onto his base, which includes so-called Christian fundamentalists, who unquestioningly support Israel; + His interest in ‘the ultimate deal’ between Palestine and Israel is non-existent; + He has no regard for the opinions of the U.S.’s closest allies; + His knowledge of international law is limited, at best; + He holds the safety of U.S. personnel abroad in disdain; + His understanding of the complexities of the Middle East are far beyond his interest or ability to ...

There is no Strategy Behind Trump’s War, Just Brute Force

These are awesome days for headline writers. So many global settings, such an abundance of weapons, such a wealth of choices! On the morning of April 14, the New York Times led with “A Giant U.S. Bomb Strikes ISIS Caves in Afghanistan,” matched by CNN’s “US Drops ‘Mother of All Bombs.’” The Washington Post chose Syria, where “Errant U.S. Strike Kills 18: Victims in Syria Were Allied Forces.” By mid-afternoon that same day, the Associated Press had shifted to the horn of Africa, where the “U.S. Sends Dozens of Troops to Somalia, 1st Time in Decades.” And as the Friday rush hour ...

Why the US Supports Kosovo Independence?

BELGRADE – Amnesty of crimes during NATO aggression, bilateral legalization of Camp Bondsteel in a friendly milieu, settling the Islamic world with support to their communities in the Balkans and forcing Russia out of that same Balkans, are four reasons the US supports the independence of Kosovo, writes “Sputnik”.On Christmas (according to Gregorian calendar) Michael Kirby shows up. Outgoing US Ambassador congratulates Serbia upcoming New Year. “The normalization of relations between Belgrade and Pristina implies Kosovo’s membership in the UN,” was the content of the “greeting card”.Apart from some kind of formalization, Kirby’s statement is not new for the local public ...

Why do They Hate Russia?

The fundamental and justifiable reasons of a Russophobic hysteria around the world by liberal-democratic governments, politicians, academics and political parties/movements are:Constant Russian global imperialism.Russian policy to transform world into Pax Russiana.Russian war crimes across the globe.Russian military presence across the globe.Russian occupation of foreign countries.Russian installation of puppet regimes across the globe.Russian collaboration with the terrorists.Corruption of Russian government.Etc.See below images as proves of justifiable reasons of a Russophobic hysteria around the world:SaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveOrigins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to ...

America’s “Long War” Against Humanity

America’s hegemonic project in the post 9/11 era is the “Globalization of War” whereby the U.S.-NATO military machine –coupled with covert intelligence operations, economic sanctions and the thrust of “regime change”— is deployed in all major regions of the world. The threat of pre-emptive nuclear war is also used to black-mail countries into submission. This “Long War against Humanity” is carried out at the height of the most serious economic crisis in modern history. It is intimately related to a process of global financial restructuring, which has resulted in the collapse of national economies and the impoverishment of large sectors of ...

Liberators over Vratnica

The Ploesti old fields in southeastern Romania were a vital strategic bombing objective for the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II. Located 35 miles north of the capital Bucharest, Ploesti had formerly supplied one-third of Germany’s oil. The U.S. had targeted Ploesti to deprive the German military of petroleum. The U.S. first bombed Ploesti on June 12, 1942 during the HALPRO bombing raid. Then on August 1, 1943 during Operation Tidal Wave, a major bombardment was launched. The Soviet Red Army advance on Yugoslavia and the capital Belgrade in 1944 was launched from Romania. Russian troops had captured Ploesti ...

Untold History of Lithuania: A Chicago Teacher Showed Her Grandfather was a Nazi Collaborator

Barring unexpected delays, Silvia Foti is months away from fulfilling an old promise that’s become her life’s work: to write a biography of her late grandfather, who is a national hero in his native Lithuania. Foti, a 60-year-old high school teacher from Chicago, made the pledge to her dying mother 18 years ago. She has spent a long time studying the life of her grandfather, Jonas Noreika, as well as acquiring the writing skills necessary for chronicling it and finding a publisher. But rather than celebrating Noreika’s legacy as her mother requested, the biography that Foti wrote confirms and amplifies the findings ...

The Origin of Jihadism

The origin of jihadism is prohibited from being reported truthfully — this truth is prohibited by all of the Establishment ‘press,’ including almost all ‘alternative news’ sites — in the West, because it challenges all of the “sensitive” buttons (all of the bigotries, to put the matter in plain terms); and, though this fact (the Establishment’s bigotries, and its hypocrisy to preserve and protect their bigotries even while condemning those of other people) will prevent almost all of the news-media that I send this to from publishing it, nothing prevents me from writing it; so, here it is (in whatever ...

Kosovo War and Plato’s “The Noble Lie”

During the Kosovo conflict in 1999, military intervention by the US and NATO was precipitated by the use of outright lies and deceptions. The conflict was “ostensibly about preventing “genocide” on the scale of the Holocaust. This was the Big Lie. This was the Noble Lie. In fact, the conflict was about secession and separatism and the creation of a US-sponsored Greater Albania. Why was the Noble Lie needed? A deception was needed because US policy was supporting an illegal land grab, a forceful take-over of territory from a sovereign nation, Yugoslavia. Why and how could such lies and deceptions occur ...

Zoran Djindjic: The Quisling Of Belgrade

Tributes to Zoran Djindjic, the assassinated prime minister of Serbia, have been pouring in. President Bush led the way, praising his “strong leadership”, while the Canadian government’s spokesman extolled a “heralder of democracy” and Tony Blair spoke of the energy Djindjic had devoted to “reforming Serbia”. In western newspaper obituaries Djindjic has been almost universally acclaimed as an ex-student agititator who bravely led a popular uprising against a tyrannical dictator and endeavoured to steer his country into a new democratic era. But beyond the CNN version of world history, the career of Zoran Djindjic looks rather different. Those who rail against the ...

Breaking Yugoslavia: How the US Used NATO as its Battering Ram

November 1991 is a month and year that will forever live in infamy when it comes to one of the most grievous crimes committed under the rubric of Western foreign policy, as it was on this month in this year that the break-up and destruction of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) was set in train. The Arbitration Commission of the Peace Conference on Yugoslavia was a body set up in 1991 by the Council of Ministers of the European Economic Community (EEC) in response to the conflict that had broken out between separatists in Slovenia and Croatia and the ...

Kosovo Albanian “Skanderbeg SS Division”

The historical and political precedents for the creation of a greater Sqiperia or Greater Albania was set during World War II when the Kosovo and Metohija regions along with territory Southwest of lake Skutari from Montenegro and the western region of Southern Serbia, or Juzna Srbija (now part of Macedonia), were annexed to Albania by the Axis powers led by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, under a plan devised by Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler to dismember and to destroy the Serbian Nation and people, which the Germans and Italians perceived as the main threat to the Axiss powers and ...

A Special Relationship Born in Hell: The US Should Cut all Ties with War Criminal Israel

If you want to understand what the “special relationship” between Israel and the United States really means consider the fact that Israeli Army snipers shot dead seventeen unarmed and largely peaceful Gazan demonstrators on Good Friday without a squeak coming out of the White House or State Department. Some of the protesters were shot in the back while running away, while another 1,000 Palestinians were wounded, an estimated 750 by gunfire, the remainder injured by rubber bullets and tear gas. The offense committed by the Gazan protesters that has earned them a death sentence was coming too close to the Israeli containment fence ...

NATO’s War on Yugoslavia and the Expulsion of Serbs from Kosovo

In the period before the 1999 NATO attack on Yugoslavia, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) waged a campaign to secede and establish an independent Kosovo dominated by Albanians and purged of every other ethnic group. In October 1998, KLA spokesman Bardhyl Mahmuti spelled the KLA’s vision: “We will never change our position. The independence of Kosovo is the only solution…We cannot live together [with Serbs]. That is excluded.” Once NATO’s war came to an end, the KLA set about driving out of Kosovo every non-Albanian and every pro-Yugoslav Albanian it could lay its hands on. The KLA left in its wake ...

Book Review: NATO War Crimes: “Media Lies and the Conquest of Kosovo”

Media Lies and the Conquest of Kosovo: NATO’s Prototype for the Next Wars of Globalization. Publisher: Unwritten History, Inc., New York, 2007. By Michel Collon, 276 pages, with photographs and maps. “Each war begins with media lies.” This is how Belgian journalist Michel Collon begins his analysis of the Kosovo conflict which resulted in the U.S. and NATO bombardment of Yugoslavia in 1999 and the subsequent occupation of the Serbian Kosovo province by U.S. and NATO troops. The U.S. and NATO had launched a war of aggression without United Nations approval and in violation of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of ...

The Skripal Affair – Another False Flag in NATO Litany to Criminalize Russia

If we start from a premise which understands that Britain and its NATO allies are capable of mounting false flag events in Syria with chemical weapons, then it is entirely possible that British secret services carried out a similar propaganda stunt in England with regard to former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal. We also need to bear in mind that British state intelligence agencies are plausibly running a covert assassination program targeting Russian exiles living in Britain – for the purpose of incriminating Moscow. Over the past two decades, more than a dozen Russian dissidents have met untimely deaths while residing in England, including ...

‘Barbarism by an Educated and Cultured People’ — Dawayima Massacre was Worse than Deir Yassin

“There was no battle and no resistance (and no Egyptians). The first conquerors killed from eighty to a hundred Arabs [including] women and children. The children were killed by smashing of their skulls with sticks. Is it possible to shout about Deir Yassin and be silent about something much worse?” For the first time ever, a letter quoting one of the Israeli soldiers who were part of the Al-Dawayima massacre in October 1948 is published in full. On Friday, February 5th 2016, Haaretz published an article in Hebrew by Israeli historian Yair Auron, which covers one of the biggest massacres of 1948. The ...

Here’s Why France Should Be Blamed for the Destruction in Syria

Why is France so interested in Syria? According to the Guardian, France’s policy in Syria has been “more forward than any other Western country”: “[France] was early in calling for President Bashar al-Assad to step down, still insists he must go, and recently joined airstrikes inside Syria against the Islamic State.” France joined the United States in bombing Syrian territory (without a U.N. mandate) even before the United Kingdom did. In 2013, France stood by Obama’s side despite the fact the United Kingdom’s parliament voted not to join Obama’s efforts to “punish” Syrian president Bashar al-Assad for crossing Obama’s imaginary red line. ...