I (Rabbi Mendel) was on the checkout line in a local store this week and overheard two teens speaking an unfamiliar foreign language. Curious I asked them what language they were speaking.
“Albanian,” they replied. Albanians in Albany!
“Is Albanian a Slavic language or maybe like Hungarian?” I asked in my ignorance.
“It is a language all its own. You should know!” they insisted, “Our country saved all of its Jews during the Holocaust!”
Back at the Maimonides School in Albany, my students and I looked up this story and found that the Republic of Albania (the only European country at the time with a Muslim majority) and 69 individual Albanians were honored as “Righteous Gentiles” by Yad VaShem, for nearly all of its Jews within its pre-war borders were saved from the Holocaust, in fact, there were more Jews in Albania after the war than before! Albanians who hid Jews or helped them escape attribute this to a strong tradition of hospitality and “Besa” their code of honor with “commitment to the promise”.
It was inspiring to see that this was transmitted down the generations, so that young teen Albanians living in the United States knew this important part of their history on the tips of their tongues. It’s not like we heard this from an old wizened grandfather who himself grew up with this memory; hearing it from English-speaking teens with no accent was all the more significant and telling.
Too many countries and too many peoples were indifferent or worse to the Jewish plight in the Holocaust. Some individuals stood up for us, but few nations as a whole did so. Aside for these Albanians, and the Danes in Denmark. Any others? Perhaps its behooves us to take a closer look at what made these people do what they did, what was their motivation and inspiration, despite the tremendous pressures and very real fear of that horrible period.