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Albanian Friends: How Jews escaped Holocaust in Albania
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Israeli historians gather in Albania to study how country's Jews escaped Holocaust
Israeli and European historians gathered in Albania
Tuesday to study how the country rescued its tiny Jewish population from the Holocaust.
"The heroic rescue of Jews in Albania is very exceptional," said Mordechai Arbell, of the World Jewish Congress.
"Jews have been saved in Albania for almost 2,000 years. The special harmonious life of the religious communities in this country must be an example to the world."
Some 1,200 Jewish residents and refugees from other Balkan countries were
hidden by Albanian families during World War II, according to official
records.
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Albanian Friends: Albania marks the Holocaust
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Throughout much of the Muslim world, Holocaust denial and distortion is becoming a bedrock article of faith. Through the Arabic translations of
Holocaust revisionist literature and classic anti-Semitic screeds,
By Warren L. Miller - Washington Post
some Arab and Muslim leaders have sought to make Holocaust denial a tool against Israel and the West.
But in at least a few corners of Islam, there is an honest accounting of the past — and in particular, an understanding of what befell European Jewry more than six decades ago.
In January, I addressed the parliament of the European nation of Albania — which is predominantly Muslim — as it commemorated for the first time Holocaust Remembrance Day.
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Albanian Friends: Homage to a great friend of truth and of Kosovo
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The news of the Hon. Tom Lantos passing away has
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Tom Lantos
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distressed me. May his memory be eternal.
By Dr.Sami Repishti
I knew Congressman Lantos since 1987, when as a human rights activist, I pleaded with him to defend the Albanian Kosovar victims from the Serbian persecution organized by the butcher of the Balkans, Slobodan Milosevic. His personal experience under Nazi oppression had made him very receptive to people's suffering, and attentive to my factual presentations. He accepted the role of the defender of Kosovo both reflectively and emotionally.
He was moved and promised to help. And help he did. Tall, with a patriarchal look, but soft spoken, he forcefully denounced Milosevic's criminal regime in successive Hearings at the US House of Representatives, as well as in the many symposia we organized for that purpose.
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Posted by classiclady on Wednesday, February 13 @ 13:31:51 UTC (311 reads)
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Albanian Friends: Muslim Family Who Hid 26 Jews in Albania
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Muslim Family Who Hid 26 Jews in Albania from the Nazis Honored by ADL
New York, NY, January 18, 2007… A Muslim family
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Albania Map
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who saved 26 Jews from the Nazis and led them to safety in the mountains of Central Albania was honored by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) with its Courage to Care Award.
The award was presented posthumously to Mefail and Njazi Biçaku on International Rescuer's Day, January 17, in New York City.
Accepting the award on their behalf were family members Muhamet Biçaku, Elida Hazbiu and Qemal Biçaku, two of whom came from Albania.
Michael Salberg, ADL Director of International Affairs, who presented the award said; "Mefail, his son Njazi and their entire family had the courage to care. Through their compassion and valor without regard for religious or ethnic differences they upheld the honor of the human race and the conscience of the world. In the moral void that engulfed the world in those nightmare days when the cruelty of the Nazis ran rampant, the Biçaku family was among those few shining stars."
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Posted by classiclady on Thursday, January 18 @ 15:35:27 UTC (463 reads)
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Albanian Friends: Lord Byron - albanians friend
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Byron wrote that the Albanians "struck me forcibly by their resemblance of the Highlanders of Scotland, in dress, figure and manner of living. Their very mountains seemed Caledonian, with a kinder climate. The kilt, though white; the spare, active form; their dialect, Celtic in its sound..."
There is a precious costume on display in Bowood
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Lord Byron in Albanian Costume
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House near Calne. It is that magnificent costume
By Prof.Afrim Karagjozi, National Library of Albania
which Byron bought in Albania in 1809 and in which Thomas Phillips, the painter, portrayed him so
memorably. Not only Phillips but several other British and European painters too were inspired by Byron's various descriptions of Albania's splendid costumes, fierce fighters, pretty women, strange castles and houses.
It may seems rather strange that, in 1809, Byron should have started his journey to the Ottoman Empire from Albania, that small country within sight of Italy which "is less known than the interior of America", as Gibbon wrote. It happened that at that time a very famous Albanian Pasha, Ali Tepelena, ruled the southern part of the country. He had attracted the attention of the most distinguished personalities of the day, so that Byron and his companion, John Cam Hobhouse, were curious to meet him. The first morning Byron saw the mountains of Albania in the distance, he wrote those moving lines:
Land of Albania! Let me bend mine eyes
On thee, thou rugged Nurse of savage men
On his way to the fortress of Tepelena, he met Albanian soldiers and peasants and subsequently wrote: "I love the Albanians much". He was accompanied by one of them, Vasil by name.
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Posted by classiclady on Saturday, September 02 @ 12:20:36 UTC (400 reads)
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Albanian Friends: Edith Durham - Queen of the Highlanders
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Edith Durham, it should be said, was a difficult woman. The first entry for her in the British Foreign Office files, from 1908, reads "Durham,
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Edith Durham
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Miss M. E., Inadvisability of Corresponding With".
Rebecca West, R. W, Seton-Watson, Henry Wickham Steed, and most other important writers on East European affairs between the two world wars thought her a woman to be avoided. An advocate of the national aspirations of the Albanians, she was vilified by her critics in Britain, who generally looked more favourably on the cause of Yugoslav unity than she did. Her polemics on Balkan politics and the retrograde culture of what she called the "Serb vermin" alienated her contemporaries. Many thought her at best wildly eccentric and at worst completely mad. Travelling and living among the clansmen of upland Albania, they said, had taken its toll on her judgment and sense of decorum. "The fact is that while always denouncing Balkan mentality", wrote Professor Seton-Watson in 1929, "she is herself exactly what she means by the word."
Durham was, however, the twentieth century's indispensable interpreter of Albania, and arguably the most important writer on that culture since J. C. Hobhouse journeyed through the Albanian lands with Byron. She was adored among the Albanians themselves, who knew her as "Kralica e Malësorevet" - the Queen of the Highlanders. "She gave us her heart and she won the ear of our mountaineers", the exiled Albanian king, Zog, wrote to The Times on her death in 1944 (even though she was not on good terms with him, either). The only other Briton to have been so lionised was, improbably, Norman Wisdom, whom the Communist dictator Enver Hoxha found uproariously entertaining.
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Posted by classiclady on Tuesday, August 29 @ 08:26:26 UTC (433 reads)
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