Muslims Who Saved Jews?
Who Ever Heard of It?
When I first learned of the WWII rescue of Jews in Muslim Albania and Kosovo, my reaction was visceral. Muslims who saved Jews? I must record this forgotten event with my camera and tell the story through the various family histories of the people I was to meet. As a Jew and a Sufi, my spiritual connection with the beauty of Islam and Judaism is seamless.
The old adage of “A picture is worth a thousand words” is manifested in our photographic project.
For more than six years, I have been traveling to Muslim Albania and Kosovo, documenting and doing portraits of Muslim families that saved Jews in World War II. Although besa is a traditional Albanian code of honour, many Muslim families have incorporated it into their religious beliefs and often were inspired by their faith in saving Jews from the Nazis. The rescue of Jews in Albania was a unique experience in Holocaust history as Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler were welcomed not as refugees, but as guests.
Besa is a message to the world of brotherhood and compassion for those in need and unique to the Albanian people. Equally important is the message, through my portraits and stories, of the compassion extended to Jews by Albanian Muslim families during the Holocaust.
As a Jew, and a student of the Sufi tradition, I always made it a point to thank those Muslim families I photographed for the saving of Jews during those harrowing times.
— Norman H. Gershman
Norman H. Gershman established The Eye Contact Foundation to promote religious, political, cultural and economic understanding and tolerance among people worldwide through the use of portrait photography. Its origins lie in the citizen diplomacy of its founder, through his years of international humanistic portrait photography. And they lie in the Albanian honor code of besa, which requires individuals to protect anyone in danger regardless of all religious and political affiliations.
Baba Haxhi Dede Reshat Bardhi
For fifteen years, I have been the head of the worldwide movement of Bektashi. There are more than seven million Bektashi in the world, including in the United States. Our sect derives from the Shia. We trace our heritage back to Imam Ali, the son-in-law of the prophet Mohammed.
We are the most liberal of Muslims. Our religious practices are in the language of the country where we live. Many of our rituals are secret. Ataturk expelled our order from Turkey in the early 1920s because we refused to take off our religious garb in public. It was then that we moved our centre here to Tirana. All around us is the colour green. This has been the colour of our mosques for 800 years. Green is pure, peaceful and clean. It is the colour of the earth.
At the time of the Nazi occupation, the prime minister of Albania was Mehdi Frashëri. He was a member of the Bektashi. He refused to release the names of Jews to the Nazi occupiers. He organized an underground of all Bektashi to shelter all the Jews, both citizens and refugees. At that time, nearly half of all Muslims in Albania were Bektashi. Prime Minister Frasheri gave a secret order: “All Jewish children will sleep with your children, all will eat the same food, all will live as one family.”
We Bektashi see God everywhere, in everyone. God is in every pore and every cell, therefore all are God’s children. There cannot be infidels. There cannot be discrimination. If one sees a good face, one is seeing the face of God.
God is Beauty. Beauty is God. There is no God but God.
Abaz & Zade Sinani
I was nine years old. We lived in a big house in the village of Lushmja, in southern Albania. My parents took in a Croatian Jewish family of three — Fritz, Katherine and their daughter, Gertrude. I do not remember their family name. A fourth member of the family was sheltered with our cousin. We gave them false passports, and Gertrude went to school with me. Fritz was a carpenter, and I remember that the family was educated. We always treated Fritz and his family as guests. We never gave them work assignments. We were secular Muslims. In our home, we celebrated all the holidays — Jewish, Muslim and Christian.
At times, the situation became dangerous because of German patrols, so we would move the Jews back and forth between our home and our cousin’s home. They stayed with us for six months and at the end of the war, they left for England. After the war, we lost contact with all those we sheltered.
Why did we shelter the Jewish family? We had the biggest house in the village. Any villager would have done the same.
We also sheltered two Italian soldiers during the German occupation. And in 1912, after the war with Turkey, my mother’s family sheltered Turkish soldiers.
Why should we be honoured? We did nothing special. We did what any Albanian would do. We are all human.
This is a picture of my father. All else has been lost.
Beluli Sadik & Son Rruzhdi
We lived in the small village of Novosel in Kosovo. My father owned a pastry shop. Our entire family fought against the Italians, the Bulgarian fascists and the Germans. The Bulgarians jailed me in 1941, when I was 20 years old. It was easy to bribe them with a chicken and I was released.
In 1942, a prisoner train from Serbia came through our region. Chaim Cohen escaped with 72 other Jews into the mountains near our village. We sheltered Chaim in our home when he sought asylum. At first, we found it strange that he never took off his clothing. He even slept in his clothing. It was because Chaim had sewn gold coins into his garments. We assured him that no one in our family would steal from him. We then dressed Chaim as a woman in traditional Muslim clothing, including a veil. After three weeks, we sent him to my sister’s house where her father-in-law provided him with false Albanian papers. My father then walked Chaim to the Albanian border.
We know that he spent three years in Elbason, Albania, and opened a textile shop. After the war, he immigrated to several countries in South America, to Italy, Israel, Serbia and then finally to Brazil. We know all this because Chaim visited us with gifts, first in 1957 and then again in 1981. We also were privileged to meet his family on his second visit. Under the communists our family suffered. My father, as a nationalist, was first condemned to death and then his sentence was commuted to 10 years in prison.
Our family are Albanian nationalists and devout Muslims. It was through the Koran and Besa that we felt the courage to shelter Chaim. No one in our village knew. We acted from our hearts.
Esheref & Easuere Shpuza
My parents lived in the town of Durres. In 1944, my father befriended the Jewish family of Raphael (Rudi) Abravanel. They were originally from Yugoslavia. He provided the family with false passports for Rudi, his wife and two children, and escorted them to the border. They escaped first back to Yugoslavia, then to Italy. Then our family lost all trace of the Abravanels.
It was through the help of another righteous Albanian, Refik Veseli, that in 1990 we again made contact with Rudi and his family, now living in Israel. We received letters and exchanged telephone calls. It seems strange to ask why my father did what he did for this Jewish family. Besa is a tradition of the entire nation of Albania.
Family Of Ali & Ragip Kraja
Solomon Adixhes, his wife and son Isak escaped certain death in Skopie, Macedonia, by bribing a guard and crossing at night over to Albania after the entire Jewish community in Skopie had been rounded up for transport to a death camp. A courier brought them to our fathers who were twins, shoemakers. The times were difficult and dangerous for any family to harbour Jews, but we sheltered the Jewish family in our village near Shkoder from 1943 until the end of the war. All three families lived under one roof. We often dressed Solomon in peasant women’s clothing to hide his identity. Sometimes he worked in a garment factory owned by a friend of our father’s. Once Solomon cured a peasant of an infection, and the villagers then revered him as a healer. Isak was always peering out the window in fear of a Nazi patrol.
After the war, the Adixhes family settled in Israel. In 1994, Solomon and Isak came from Israel to visit our families. What a joyous occasion! A film was made of that trip: One Wants To Remember — One Wants To Forget. Last year, Isak again visited us from Los Angeles. We have many pictures from his trip.
We are gathered near the sign that we erected: “The Jewish Refugees of Solomon Adixhes and family drank from this nearby well while being sheltered by Ali and Ragip Kraja when being chased by the Nazis.” We sheltered the Adixhes family out of the goodness of our hearts. We are all brothers and proud of our heritage. If need be, we would do it again.
Family Of Ali & Nadia Kazazi
Our grandfather sheltered refugees from the war in Yugoslavia in 1913. Our father was illiterate, and very kind-hearted. He was a baker.
This is the neighbourhood in Tirana where we lived and sheltered the Solomon family. It was a very friendly neighbuorhood and everyone, including the children, knew we were sheltering a Jewish family. We gave the family Muslim names. Matilda and Memo played with us in the inner courtyard. The father and mother were terror stricken, but when there were searches, our Jewish guests were able to hide by scrambling through connecting doorways to other homes. Those were dangerous times.
For six months in 1943, we sheltered the Solomon family — David and Esther Solomon and their children, Matilda and Memo. We now know that Memo’s real name was Mori Amarilio Solomon. Esther was a dressmaker. She sewed gold into her dress as a potential source of survival.
Memo became a teacher of music in Beersheba, Israel. He now lives in Jerusalem. Matilda is a businesswoman in Israel.
Our parents were not very religious, but they believed in the Koran and Besa. Without the Koran there is no Besa. Without Besa there is no Koran. For the heart there is no colour of skin. No man or woman can forget God.
Rexhep Rifat Hoxha
I was born after the war. My father only told me of his rescue of a Jewish family shortly before he died, when I was 17 years old. He waited until he felt I was mature enough to accept the obligation he had committed to and would be unable to complete.
In 1944, under the German occupation, my parents sheltered the (Bulgarian refugee) family of Nesim Hallagyem, his wife, Sara, and their son, Aron. They stayed with my parents for six months. Fortunately, my father spoke Bulgarian, and he and Nesim became good friends. There were times of great danger, when German patrols went from house to house seeking Jews. My father then arranged shelter for Nesim and Sara in outlying villages, safe from German patrols. Aron, who was 10 years old, stayed in my parents’ home, pretending to be their son.
Toward the end of the occupation, my father escorted Nesim and his family to the port city of Durres, where they embarked as refugees, hopeful of gaining access to Palestine. Just before leaving, Nesim entrusted to my father three beautifully bound books in Hebrew to keep until he could retrieve them “when the waters are still,” after the war. “Save them as you would save your eyes,” he told my father.
After the war, my father did receive a letter from Nesim that he and his family were safely in Palestine. This was during the communist period in Albania, when any correspondence from abroad was considered a crime, subject to arrest. My father was prohibited from answering the letter, and that was the last time there was any communication.
My father gave me both the honour and the responsibility of safeguarding these Hebrew books until Nesim or his descendants return to retrieve them. This is a heavy burden and I will be saddened if I have to pass this responsibility on to my son. Perhaps Aron is alive in Israel. Perhaps there are grandchildren. I have never been outside of Albania and do not have the means to travel.
The books remain in my home. They are a treasure. I still await the Hallagyems’ return.
Basri Hasani
I do not remember my parents. I am an orphan. I have lived all my life in Mitrovica, Kosovo, and have been the city administrator for many years. Our town is known as Red Mitrovica because we have seen so much bloodshed. We suffered under the Nazis from 1941 to 1945, then experienced the Serb ethnic cleansing and NATO bombing in 1998 and 1999. I lived through it all. I know the history and suffering of the families, and especially of the Jews.
Before the war there were 11,000 inhabitants of Mitrovica. There were Turks, Serbs, Jews and Albanians. All citizens worked together and respected the individuality of all.
The Rubenovic brothers were my next-door neighbours. There was Rakamin, Aron and my best friend Moshe. Moshe’s uncle was the Rabbi of Mitrovica. The Jewish families of our town were religious and prayed at the synagogue. Most of the Jews were traders.
In 1941, the Germans occupied our town. Rakamin’s shop was closed. The Prefect of Mitrovica organized an escape for the Jews. They were hidden in surrounding mountain villages. We also helped to shelter Italian soldiers whom the Germans were killing.
The Nazis captured both Rakamin’s and Aron’s families. We never heard from them again. Moshe joined the partisans in 1941 and fought the Nazis throughout Albania and Kosovo. He came back as a captain of the partisans and I sheltered him in my home while he and his band fought the Nazis in our town.
In 1945 Moshe left for Israel and then I think he settled in America. I don’t really know as I have lost all contact with my friend. Forgive my tears, but Moshe was such a good friend during those years. I long to be reunited with him.
I do not go to the mosque, but I am a true Muslim. The Holy Koran is in my genes. I say my prayers each evening. My door is always open to anyone in need.
