Dear Oliver Jens Schmitt!/
I decided to spend some “precious” time of mine, writing to you,because of the fact that since some good time now, I’m being an inconscient testimony of your particular “swiss attack” against my country,it’s history and my people.
You should know Mr.Schmitt,that even if I’m not to be considered a historian,anyway,being an albanian, I’m more than aware of my origins, my history and my glorious predecessors.
So I’m just an albanian,who besides from his daily duties, work etc,has to find time to confront his views with persons like you,as if me and us albanians,hadn’t other better things to do in life!?
And to tell you honestly, I do have much better ways to pass my time,rather than read your essays or books that you with such great “generosity” dedicate to us albanians.
But since you do not finish your job,that consists mostly in “donating” us, your “wonders” regarding our origin and history, than I find myself in the need to respond to you!
This because, with you, things stand in a different position than other open questions with our neighbors, Greeks, Serbs or whatever they should be.
You are of the type of westerners, who are convinced that, if and when you say so, we undeveloped and highland people Albanians, should just applaud you and take for granted whatever comes out of your “lying” and vicious mouth and mind!
We are still not that developed, yes you guessed it right, we are also far behind Europe and your dear birthplace Swiss, in many things.
We are far from the West in the way we deal with our country, with ourselves, with our land, with the law, with corruption, with the crimes that at times overwhelm our society…
I don’t say absolutely that this is not true!
But since you don’t represent the EU Commission, the UN or any Non Profit Organization, since you don’t give anything but filthy sand to my country (the sand that you are trying at any price to throw above our history)…than I have all the right, to take some minutes and speak what I feel that I have to.
Now you’ll listen, if you are a man who stands behind his affirmations, to an Albanian, a very common one, saying loud NO to your banal provocations!
I had heard something once, when you took some time to speak about George Castriota and I must say that what came to my ears, made me and every normal compatriot of mine, furious, but some time later, I heard and saw you personally taking back that part of what you had said and negating to having ever told that Skanderbeg, wasn’t Albanian.
Because, I can say to you, that whoever would have tried to sustain such things, would be capable of saying also that Luis XIV was not French but instead Italian and that Julius Caesar was not the Roman Emperor, but instead a Germanic barbarian leader!
If you and every other falsifier of other’s history, find a single REAL evidence that Gjergj Kastrioti has been other than Arbër-Albanian, then I’ll be first to salute you.
If he spoke besides his language Greek, Serbian or Italian and Latin, this shows us his intelligence and capacity of mind and as we know, during that time, written languages were just the ones I mentioned.
If the Albanian League of Lezha, the Albanian (arbër) princes who took place there, were not Albanians, please mister historian, give us your arguments!
But since no such things exist, than you have to go on inventing them!
Since the Albanians of Greece, the Arvanites and the Albanians who after the Turkish invasion fled to Italy are still nowadays called Arbëreshë, than your and other’s empty arguments, are born dead.
Than passing to the present times, I hear again that your private little “hobby”, linked irreversibly with destroying the fundaments of our history, has given its newest products.
So I read something, in order to see with my own eyes what you write this time about us.
Same stuff as always!
Have maybe not done well your homework dear Mr. Schmitt?
Some little copy-paste maybe, in Serbian, Macedonian or Greek books?
Coz if you go and just have a little friendly chat with any Serbian, Greek or Turkish historian, you’ll hear the same things about us Albanians.
I am very glad, that in your “racist” eyes or at least glasses, we Albanians aren’t considered to have “tails” or to be still eating children etc, etc!
Because you are RACIST dear Schmitt, yes you are!
Admit it and I’ll be the first to not bother you anymore with my contestations.
My soul will be more than peaceful afterwards, coz I’ll know that my/our adversary, the one who lives for discrediting my history and land, is just another racist, who has found the scope of his insignificant life, in hating Albanians.
This is a good sign in the end, coz in my idea it means, that we are so important, that many people, like you and not only our neighbors, hate us profoundly.
Go on Schmitt, hate us as much as you can!
You’re not the first in doing this and certainly you’ll not be the last to do so.
Now regarding your views, you pretending that we’re not Illyrians, that we have no proven history, no language, no land, no, no, no, no and no……
Nothing new have you told us Mr. Schmitt!
Nothing at all!
Be a little more creative please, if not you’ll fall in the same rhetoric of others before you.
Have you heard about the Načertania almost 170 years ago, the Megali Idea , about Ilia Grašanin, Vaso Čubrilović and his state sponsored plan “za isterivajne Arnauta-expulsion of the Albanians”, about Milošević and about tens of thousands of Albanians brutally killed, slaughtered, raped and driven away from their land and home by force, sent to die in camps or in eternal exile in the dead lands of Anatolia?
More than 10 thousand innocent Albanians killed only during the last war in Kosovo (Reçak does ring any bell to you?), they are only one small part of our Albanian truth, the one you hate and despise totally.
Do you know that as Serbian sources say, only during the period between 1912 and 1913, in all the Albanian occupied territories the Serbs have killed more than 120.000 Albanians?
It’s not me telling this, but Kosta Novaković, Serbian famous politician and journalist of the time.
And I do not intend to go further deep inside our troubled history, in order to bring FACTS in front of your racist eyes.
Milošević was just the last one to try to erase our race and as you know, he did not succeed in his malefic plan, what a pity, you’d have been really glad in that eventuality!
All of this has happened because our neighbors were continuously negating our existence and historical tradition in this land.
You claim to know that no Albanian state ever existed before 1912!
Especially during the Middle Ages you say, there hasn’t existed a single Albanian state or principality!
And the Principality of Arbër-Arbanon?
Ever heard about it man?
Founded in 1190 by the archon Progon and followed by his sons Dhimitër and Gjin.
State that existed till 1255.It’s rulers are called “princeps Arbanorum” by the western sources of the time.
But for sure, you are wiser than the testimonies of that distant period and you don’t need to hear about them, as you have your prefixed idea, of destroying the fundaments of my land and nation.
Not necessary to ask you about the princes and big Arbër families of the Gropas, the Zaharias, the Balshajs, the Castriots, the Shpatas (who controlled even Arta in Greece now), the Topiajs, the Muzakas and many others.
Ever heard someone healthy in mind, to contrast with their Arbër-Albanian origins?
Even after their forced migration in Italy after the country fell in Turkish hands, their descendants continued to call themselves till today Arbëresh!
Anna Komnena talking about Albanians ten centuries ago , rings any other bell to you?
How could you ever know the ethnic composition of any Albanian town during that time, with byzantine, crusaders, Angevins, Serbian and Bulgarian occupations, when as normal, the ruling caste would always be that of the invaders and the rest of the population would be normally native Arbër . Just as in Italy during the barbarian conquest of the Longobards or in Spain with the domestic ibero-roman population living under a Visigoth ruling caste.
But leaving behind the Middle Ages and going in your preferred part, our contested Illyrian origin, here you go naturally in the side of those who without any sort of real proof, try to steal or erase at all our link with this land.
There is nothing to tell us that Albanians descend form Illyrians-you say!
Now Sir, tell me please, where do you think we come from?
Coz as I know, besides Huns, Avars, southern Slavs, Turks, Bulgarian-turks, Kumans, Ostrogoths and who knows what else, there is no written proof of any other migration to the lands where Albanians live now!
I don’ think we are Huns, Turks or Slavs!
Ostrogoths not at all neither!
We don’t speak Turkish, Slavic or German.
We speak an Indo-European language, as Franz Bopp demonstrated more than a century ago.
As we haven’t fallen from the clouds, no “rain of Albanians” ever fell in this region and as we don’t certainly come from another planet….then my dear Schmitt, we are in our land here!
Just like it- as easy as that!
No need to tell you, that hundreds of common non-Latin words in modern Albanian and Romanian, our ancient pre-Latin vocabulary, tend to prove that at least this peninsula now called Balkans, is our homeland.
Also as researchers have proven years before, Latin words in the Albanian language tend to be very old, sounding like from the first century after Christ.
These borrowings from the language of the Roman invaders, serve like a big proof for the fact that during that time, we were HERE in this land.
Other Latin ancient words that have developed in the centuries and exist only in the Albanian language (not in any of the modern Neo-Latin languages, Italian-French-Spanish-Portuguese-Romanian), show that the Albanian language, 20 centuries ago got heavily influenced by the language of the Romans!
Even many Greek words in modern Albanian, have been explained to be very ancient borrowings also!
Now just to debate a little…how can you Sir explain me the name of the Illyrian king Bardylis????????????
Try please to do it in Greek or Serbian or even in your German language if you want to.
No you can’t Sir!
Means in Albanian Yll I Bardhë-Bardhyl (white star)!
Like Lychnid (Ohrid now) may mean Liqen or lake, like Drin (the river) should mean Ndrin-Shines or Buna (river) should mean Bunon-The river springs.
Like even the Jonian Sea, may mean I Joni-Our Sea, just like the Romans did call the whole Mediterranean their own Mare Nostrum.
We know the Liburnians were great sailors or that during Queen Teuta’s reign her ships were famous for their piracy and dominion in the Adriatic and Jonian seas.
Or Pirro of Epirus, this “burrë-man” who defeated the Romans!
To tell that there are some facts just showing that Albanians may have lived in the northern regions of modern Albania, is another big fraud or simply lie too!
What were the Epirots to the Greeks?-Just Barbarians as the Illyrians and the ancient Macedonians.
So at least their identity, if not simply Illyrian, is contested to be Greek!
I don’t need to offer you more facts Mr. Schmitt!
You’ve got an idea in your mind and you are developing it day after day.
That idea is to annihilate our identity!
To help spread your poison, you use the ottomans (good, humble invaders who didn’t exterminate, massively force to assimilate religiously and to flee their land, the Albanians) and when you’ve got no more fake arguments, you rely on Enver, his dictatorship that dictated Albanian history!
No Sir, not at all!
We had a history before him and will have one after him for sure!
Our history has begun thousands of years before and we are Illyrians or maybe a mix of Illyrian-Thracian-Dacian cousins.
But we live in a land that is OURS!
We speak a language that derives from the Illyrian or Illyrian-Thracian and even the Messapian language (as we know even the name of the city Brindisi comes from an old Messapian-Albanian word Brina-Horn and every other explained Messapian word is related to modern and old Albanian).
Even the most famous word in Phrygian is related to modern Albanian…Bekos-Bukë (bread)!
So?
You Sir can be racist, you have the right to dislike us Albanians, but before “studying” our history and continuity in our land, you can devote yourself to the continuity of other nations closer to you.
Like the French, mixed between Gauls, Romans, Germanic Franks and Normans.
Or the English mixed between Celts, Picts, Angles, Danes, Saxons and Normans.
Or the Spanish with remains of various Iberians, Celts, Suevi, Vandals, Visigoths and Arabs!
As you see, we Albanians are less complicated that many others?
Why do you contest our TRUTH so much then?
And in the end…how is it that so many Swiss guys contest us Albanians in a form or another?????????
Carla del Ponte, the one prosecutor of the Hague Tribunal, who did everything to disperse the fault of the crimes committed during the conflict in ex-Yugoslavia, between the aggressors (Serbs) and the victims (Croats, Bosnians, Albanians, Slovenians), as if it hadn’t been Milošević and his military and paramilitary machinery who killed and attacked civilians throughout those territories.
Then Mr. Dick Marty and his offenses to our Albanian honor and the right war of the Albanians of Kosovo, against Arkan and Milošević!
A war that got the support of the entire civilized world (not you for sure) and finished by liberating that land from the Milošević occupation and plans of final extermination.
Then this other Swiss guy comes out from nothing and pretends to know about kidneys, traffics and everything else.
He has not a single proof, but he’s got his big mouth and he knows he can rely on the racism and hate towards the Albanians, of many people like him and you Sir.
Then is your turn!
Now Sir, as I know the amount of hate against my people the Albanians, is comparable with only that against the Jews…I can say something else and then I am finished!
The Jews as you must know…were deleted from the face of the earth by the Nazis and their collaborators in all of Europe…except two places, one of them being Denmark and the other Albania.
After the Second World War, in my country there were many times more Jews than before it.
And the Nazis invaded Albania too, but no one in my country betrayed the Jews.
Meanwhile…..in your civilized country, as I and many others know, there can be still hidden inside your Swiss Banks, the money derived from the slave work of Jews in Nazi hands or their properties, pictures and even their golden teeth which were confiscated from them by the Germans before they were sent to the gas rooms and the lager crematories.
Some of these Banks can even be near your own house Sir!
Why don’t you care a little about this, instead of “losing your time” inventing fake stories against our nation?
Mind your business Sir, we can mind about ours as we have done for thousands of years and you’re just one guy in the long list of haters and persons who try to negate our existence and history!
As the Jews do, we do exist too…that is the problem you’ve got with us.
You liking it or not…the reality is this.
Elvi Sidheri, Tirana