Views: 1846
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