Albanian Righteous Being Used to Further Albanian Nazi Goals

Julia Gorin wrote me to set the record straight. Aaron Klein got it wrong.

I’m
normally a fan of Aaron Klein’s, so I was devastated to find that he had WND
fall for the Albanian PR ploy regarding World War II that’s been making the
rounds since 2005 ( “Forgotten history: Muslims who save Jews; Exhibition honors
Albanians who risked lives during Holocaust” ). The Albanian Righteous of
World War II are being used quite deliberately at this time to get American Jews
to push Israel to recognize Kosovo. Essentially the same “exclusive” piece WND
published this week had graced the pages of the Jewish Chronicle of Pittsburgh
just two weeks ago, as the PR makes its rounds to all Jewish and Jewish-friendly
publications, for the fourth year now. The same coverage that Klein gave to
Muslims saving Jews appears on Islamic sites as well.

In 2007,
I wrote a response op-ed for the New York Jewish Week after they also
fell victim to the scheme. (The original Jewish Week link is no longer
available, but the provided link serves.) More important is the direct response
to Norman Gershman’s and Yad Vashem’s exhibit – and therefore Klein’s piece –
here: “Can We
Please Stop Using the Jews?”

One
important point is that while Albanians are on top of their Jew-saving PR, it
never occurred to Serbs – exponentially more of whom saved Jews during World War
II – to compile a list of their Jew-saves for credit and flaunt it in the event
that an expansionist rival would use its own Jew-saves as a weapon against them.
Among the thousands of Serbian families who risked their lives to save Jews,
only about 150 are documented at Yad Vashem, still more than the 60-some
Albanian Righteous documented there and getting all the attention.

There is
an insidious and ironic motivation behind this parading of World War II’s
Albanian Righteous: to promote the birth of the supremacist state of Kosovo.
Gershman is one of a handful of Jewish front men helping out with the Kosovo
theft, wittingly or not. Last year he got his exhibit into the famed 92nd St. Y
in New York, as well as into the halls of the UN. Here is one eight-minute film by him, meant to be positive,
which nonetheless reveals the true nature of “Besa,” the Albanian honor code
that Gershman’s exhibit, and now WND, celebrate. Besa is part of the blood code
that makes Albanian society so terrifying. It is primitive, and it’s nothing to
be glorified.

In
general when dealing with questions of Albanian Righteous vs. Serbian Righteous
and who has the greater affinity for/history with the Jews, in addition to the
numbers that tell the story one must look at the wider history: Jews and Serbs
died together in World War II concentration camps and mass executions. Both were
targeted then. And both are targeted today. Albanians were not targeted; Albania
was an Axis ally that contributed SS divisions to the Nazi cause. And the
Albanians are not imperiled today; indeed, they are getting a second state –
they are expanding.

It’s
true that the Albanians have never particularly had it in for the Jews, but
they’ve always been out to exterminate the Serbs – and when opportunity knocks
(WWII, 1999), they make new friends fast. Let’s keep in mind that it wasn’t
Serbs who rounded up almost all the Jews of Kosovo (annexed to Albania) during
World War II for the Nazis; it was Albanians. That is not a reflection on the
Albanian Righteous, but it is key to the big picture.

Among
the Albanian-generated buzz phrases going around is that “all of Albania’s Jews
were saved” and that “Albania had more Jews at the end of the war than at the
beginning.” That’s because Albania had only 200 Jews to start with. One must ask
why. The answer is that most had left Albania by the end of World War I because
of persecution. In addition, Italy controlled Albania early in World War II and
was not interested in the Final Solution. Today Kosovo has 50 Jews left and
Albania has fewer than 10.

This is
what is relevant. For Yad Vashem’s purposes, both the Albanian Righteous and the
Serbian Righteous are correctly viewed as equal. But before setting pen to
paper, as the responsible journalist that I know he is, Aaron Klein should have
first asked why we are hearing exclusively, and so much, at this time about the
Albanian Righteous, far less numerous than their enemy Serb Righteous. What I
have stated above is well chronicled at the Jewish Virtual Library.

****UPDATE****

While
the WWII Albanians-Saving-Jews propaganda continues making its
rounds to Jewish and conservative media to help get Israel to commit suicide by
recognizing an independent Kosovo, let’s remember what former leader of Kosovo’s
tiny Jewish community said in an interview in
2000, about 1990s Kosovo:

[Cedomir]
Prlincevic: First of all, a large part of the ethnic Albanians wanted to return
to the situation that existed a hundred years ago, under the Ottoman Empire, and
again during World War II, when Kosovo was under Nazi- Albanian control. Most of
the Albanian population had been won to this goal by the secessionist
movement…And of course, many Albanians believed that during World War II the
German Nazis had set Albanians free.

The
Yugoslav constitution of 1974 didn’t help. It weakened the central government
and thus encouraged those in Kosovo who wanted to return to the W.W. II regime
when Albanian nationalists ruled Kosovo under the German Nazis and terrorized
the Serbs, Roma [’Gypsies’] and Jews. After 1974 the abuses against Serbs and
Roma increased. This was openly manifested during the ethnic Albanian riots in
1981.

These
were race riots, with Serbs as the targets, both the Serbian clergy and ordinary
Serbian citizens. After that the Americans entered the picture and magnified the
secessionists’ political strength ten times over.

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