By Saimir Lolja/
The World War II in Europe began with the invasion of Albania by the Italian Army on 7 April 1939. As a result, Albania lost its independence to become officially a protectorate of the Kingdom of Italy and existing as an autonomous part of the Italian Colonial Empire. The independence of Albania was de jure reestablished in October 1943. Albania was de facto an occupied country by Italian or German Armies that had unlimited authority on it throughout WWII.
The German, Italian and Hungarian Armies invaded ex-Yugoslavia in the period of 6-17 April 1941 and the German Army invaded mainland Greece in the period of 6-30 April 1941. Then, the German Army controlled the north of Kosova, including the north of Presheva Valley. In addition to most of Macedonia and eastern Greece, the Bulgarian Army controlled a small section of southeast of Kosova and the south of Presheva Valley. Besides Montenegro, inner Albania and two third of Greece, the Italian Army had the largest part of Kosova and western Macedonia.
Within the German sector in northern Kosova was the town of Mitrovica and its mine of Trepça. Without that mine, the Reich III military industry could hardly keep the war machine moving on. The head post of the German Army was in the town of Vushtri, 27 km away from Prishtina, the capital of Kosova which was under Italian control. The German and Italian Armies had an agreement that allowed the German Army to enter the Italian sectors in Kosova anytime and without any permission. The German Army occupied the Italian sectors after the capitulation of the Italian Army on 8 September 1943 and adjacent Bulgarian sectors after the Bulgarian Army changed side and joined the soviet forces of the 3rd Ukrainian Front on 9 September 1944.
From April 1941 to November 1944, many of the Albanian-inhabited areas that had been previously taken away from Albania and given to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, such as in the central and southern Kosova, western Macedonia, southern and southeastern Montenegro, joined Albania. Only the Southern Albanian province of Çamëria (occupied by Greece in March 1913) did not become yet part of Albania throughout WWII.
Documents from Albanian archives recently published help for an accurate view of what happened in the province of Kosova for the duration of WWII. The Albanian Prefectures in the period of WWII were complementing segments of the overall salvation of Jews from Albanians during the Holocaust and cannot be disjointedly comprehended. For instance, the main channel for Jews pouring into central Albania was that starting from the Prefecture of Prishtina. The Prefectures of wartime Albania had not even a Jew wearing any badge or sign that would distinguish him or her.
The anti-Semitism was well spread in Serbia before WWII and supported by politics, Army officers and Serbian Orthodox Church; it flourished in wartime. On 20 January 1942, a meeting of senior officials of the Reich III took place in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee. It has been known since as the Wannsee Conference that specifically made a decision for completing “the final solution to the Jewish question”. It assigned the numbers of Jews that should be exterminated in each of the European countries. Within three months and without German interference, the Serbian state and Chetniks completed the task to make Beograd the first “Judenfrei” city in Europe and liquidated almost all Jews in Serbia. Jews who could escape the holocaust in Serbia were bringing with themselves into Kosova the dreadful message of the holocaust conscientiously performed by Serbian state and Nazis.
The resident Jews of Kosova lived in towns and numbered 409 persons (the list exists). The Italian Army gathered resident Jews of Kosova and those caught as escaping the holocaust in ex-Yugoslavia and other countries into its military camp of Prishtina. It is the same spot of today where there is the Faculty of Philology of the University of Prishtina. The Italian Army had gathered more than 3000 Jews in that camp. Jews in Kosova were in a non-stop danger by Nazis and Serbs, and were not free to move in the open. The only survival option was to move deeper into Albania. Albanians did whatever they could and what their governmental authority was allowed to help. Apart from the Albanian officials in the central administration in Tirana who organized the rescue of Jews from the Prefecture of Prishtina in undisclosed cooperation with the highest Italian authority in wartime Albania, the Albanian officials in the Prefecture of Prishtina mentioned in this instance were: Riza Drini, Prefect of Prishtina 1941-1942; Hysen Prishtina, Prefect of Prishtina 1942-1944, Preng Uli, Secretary of Prishtina Town Hall, 1941-1944, and Dr. Spiro Lito.
By fearing that sooner or later the German Army would lethally deal with Jews in the Italian military camp of Prishtina, Halim Sh. Spahija, Arsllan Mustafa Rezniqi, Kol Biba, Hysen Prishtina, Preng Uli, Hasan Rrem Xerxa and Dr. Spiro Lito accomplished a plan. The Prefect of Prishtina, Hysen Prishtina, and Secretary of Prishtina Town Hall, Preng Uli, declared the camp infected by typhus. Then, Halim Sh. Spahia transported almost all “infected” Jews by trucks or busses to Kruma, Kukës, Burrel, Tirana, Durrës, Kavaja, Berat, Vlora, etc. A few Jews did not want to go and those who were still there when German Army reached the camp in September 1943 sealed their own fate.
Halim Sh. Spahia and brothers were businessmen from the town of Gjakova. They used the buildings of their business in Kukës, Kruma, Prizren, Tirana and Durrës to house relocated Jews before they found safe houses in the Albanian towns and villages or safe ways to travel by sea from Durrës to safer countries. Arsllan Mustafa Rezniqi built another house in his court to house Jewish families. His family rescued 42 Jewish families. In 2008, he received the title of “Righteous Among the Nations” from Yad Vashem. Arif Musa Aliçkaj, was an employee of the Town Hall of Deçan. Like Preng Uli, he made and issued false passports or documents for Jews of ex-Yugoslavia by registering them as Bosnian. With such documents, they traveled south to safer locations in Albania. Hasan Rrem Xerxa from Gjakova transported with his car Jews from Shkup to Deçan and deeper to Albania. Other Albanian families who sheltered Jews in Kosova until they ensured their safe journey to inner Albania are the following: the families of Bajram Voca and Sejdi Sylejmani in Mitrovica, the family of Sabit Haxhikurteshi in Prishtina, the families of Ruzhdi Behluli and Riza Çitaku in Gjilan, the families of Hasan Shala Mullashabani and Asim Luzha in Gjakova, and the Belegu family in Peja.
Only through official channels, Jews were sent from the Prefecture of Prishtina to central Albania in groups of dozens and hundreds. Since the transfers were in haste, it is common to find Albanian archival documents written in Italian or Albanian languages with lists of names each associated with the number (only the number) of the family members accompanying that name. Those rescuing transfers have been mentioned in the publications of Harvey Sarner, Martin Gilbert, Ariel Scheib, Gavra Mandil, etc.
Some typical examples from the Central Archive of Albania (CAA) follow. There is an archived dossier (F.152, V. 1942, D. 319) containing a group of 551 Jews relocated from the Prefecture of Prishtina to Berat in 1942. The document has the names of 87 individuals and 94 heads of families “con la famiglia – associated with their own family”. In a document of 30 March 1942, the Internal Ministry of Albania ordered the Prefects in the “liberated lands” to reposition all Jews of their districts into “old Albania”. On 1 April 1942, the Internal Ministry of Albania ordered the Prefecture of Prizren to send all its Jews to a gathering field for all Kosova and those, together with 69 Jews in the prison of Prishtina, were soon relocated to Kavaja, Burrel, Kruja, and Shijak. On 5 April 1942, a group of 100 Jews arrived in Berat. Some days later, 79 Jews from the town of Peja arrived in Preza, near Tirana; and so on.
Another salvation case is affirmed by the Lieutenant of the Italian King to wartime Albania, Francesco Jacomoni, in his book “La Politica dell’Italia in Albania (The Italian Politics in Albania), Cappelli Ed. 1965”, pages 288-289. Francesco Jacomoni asserts the secret cooperation with the Albanian Prime-Minister Mustafa Merlika Kruja and the chief of the Confidential Affairs Department in the Italian Foreign Ministry, Luigi Vidau, for saving Jews in Kosova. In April 1942, two months after the Wannsee Conference, the German Consul General had required from the Albanian Prime Minister the delivery of more than 300 Yugoslavian Jews that had taken refuge in Kosova. Mustafa Merlika Kruja had immediately sent his officials to Kosova for issuing Albanian passports to those Jews and transported them to Gjinokastra in southern Albania by buses [of the company SATA].
Another rescuing example is a list of 256 Jewish families, totaling 860 persons, who temporarily sheltered in Kosova before being relocated to central Albania in the period 1942-1943. This comprehensive list comes as a courtesy of the Friendship Association Kosova-Israel “Dr. Haim Abravanel”. There is another list of 55 ex-Yugoslavian Jews that on the pages 101-102 of the book “Jevreji Kosova i Metohije, Beograd, 1988” by P. D. Ivanov had been reported as transported from Prishtina to the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen in 1944. In fact, the documents in the Central Archive of Albania prove that they survived the holocaust by being relocated into central Albania. This information with broad archival references was published for the first time in the book “Jews in Albania: The Presence and Salvation, Naimi, Tirana, 2009; pages 297-301” by Shaban Sinani.
After the capitulation of Italian Army on 8 September 1943, Albania de jure reestablished its independence on 16 October 1943 and declared to be neutral. De facto, the war atrocities, military operations and fighting continued without interruption, though Reich III and its passing Army recognized the independence and neutrality of Albania. As a flash, things looked better and 185 Jews from Prishtina, who were safely residing in Berat went as families back to Prishtina. When they arrived there, they found themselves trapped; some could return with time to Berat while others remained in hiding. Khaim Adizhes (heading the Jewish Community in Prishtina after the war) that time was a small boy who returned to Prishtina with his family. According to his testimony, at a time when German Army was making massive arrests, Serbian neighbors spied on them. As a result, many Jews were arrested and the rest could escape to inner Albania. Those arrested were sent to the camp of Sajmishte near Beograd and later to the concentration camp in Bergen-Belsen. A few of them survived the war and Khaim Adizhes was one of them. The arrests and transportation to Sajmishte camp occurred in May or June 1944. Khaim Adizhes and his family were not in the “Transportenliste” of August 1944 from Prishtina to the camp of Sajmishte.
The conclusion goes by repeating that the salvation of Jews in Kosova was not different from that of inner Albania. They were complementing parts of the overall salvation of Jews from Albanians and cannot be separately understood. Jews were totally rescued by the Albanian governments and population in the entire Albania of WWII. When the German Army entered Kosova in September 1943, almost all Jews of Kosova were already relocated to inner Albania. An acknowledgement comes from the Encyclopedia “Pinkas haKehillot Yavan, Yad Vashem, 1998, p. 413-425” in writing that Germans requested from the Albanian administration in Spring 1944 the list of Jews and permission to act on them. The Albanian administration did not supply the list and also declared that the Jewish community was an internal Albanian affair and gave no permission for acting against Jews. Albanians saved Jews wherever they had jurisdiction on Albanian lands. Çamëria was not part of Albania during WWII and Jews terribly suffered there, though many could reach Albania and survived the holocaust. If Çamëria had been part of Albania, all Jews would have been rescued there. Absolutely.