Why Did Albanians Protect Jews during the Holocaust?

Abstract

The fact that some Albanians protected Jews during the Holocaust has long been known in Albania and has become increasingly well known in the West since Israel recognized sixty-five Muslim Albanians as Righteous Gentiles. Albanian historians ignored these facts until the fall of communism, and Westerners portrayed Albanian helpers of Jews as generalized mythical Muslims with a medieval culture in an obscure pro-Semitic European oasis rather than as individuals making a variety of choices. This research sheds light on the ideological limitations pervasive in existing Albanian historical scholarship and then draws on twenty-seven new oral history interviews with families who saved Jews to outline a range of reasons that Albanians of various religions, political backgrounds, and social statuses took Jews into their care between 1942 and 1945. Going beyond reductionist nationalist explanations, we see that it was a combination of geographically differentiated socio-cultural, political, economic, and war-specific factors that led to Jews finding safe haven in some areas populated by ethnic Albanians during World War Two.