Posted on 01/19/2007 11:07:59 AM PST by Graybeard58
NEW YORK -- World War II was over, and Anna Kohen, then a small child, was walking with her mother in Vlora, Albania, when a Muslim woman ran toward them, crying and calling her mother by an unfamiliar name.
The women hugged and cried. Later, her mother explained that the woman was from a village where she, Kohen's father and other Jews had hidden during the Nazi occupation before Kohen was born. To protect themselves, Kohen's mother and father had taken Muslim names.
"Everyone in the village knew they were Jews, but no one betrayed them," Kohen recalled Wednesday as the Anti-Defamation League praised Albania as the only occupied country where no Jews died at the hands of the Nazis, thanks to the country's Christians and Muslims.
Although records from that period are incomplete, Michael Salberg, the league's director of international affairs, estimated that several thousand Jews fled to Albania from surrounding countries in Eastern Europe.
"All of them were saved," Salberg said. "Albania is the only country occupied by the Nazis that had more Jews at the end of the war than at the beginning of the war, which is a reflection of Jews having sought refuge in Albania and survived."
The league posthumously honored a Muslim Albanian man and his son for protecting six Jewish families during the war.
The organization presented its Courage to Care Award to three relatives of the late Mefail Bicaku and his son Njazi. The two led the six families -- a total of 26 people -- to safety in the mountains of central Albania.
For months, the Bicakus shared their home and food with the families, the league said.
The award was presented to Mefail's son Muhamet and Njazi's daughter, Elida Hazbiu, and son, Qemal Bicaku.
With Kohen translating, Muhamet Bicaku thanked the Anti-Defamation League said he was greatly honored to accept the award on his father's behalf. His father was jailed in 1961 for "collaborating with Jews" and died in 1969, he said.
"I'm very proud of what he has done," he said.
Geez, not enough of these stories out there!
Probably because they are very rare concerning Muslims,
tell the children the truth!
http://www.tellthechildrenthetruth.com/
Exactly! I wonder what it was about this community that made the difference.
There was a pretty good doc on the History Channel a few weeks back linking Saddam's roots in Nazism. It talked about Al-Huseini and his contacts with Hitler, etc. I don't think it went far enough in showing the link with modern-day jihadism, though. Just mostly focused on Saddam.
So, they have found Muslim village where the inhabitants aren't anti-Semites. Hmm... the Muslims are doing better than I had expected.
Give them credit. Even among the worst people there can be goodness. Albania as a whole has a sorry record of crime and corruption, but country villages also value hospitality. And I would venture to guess that they didn't much like the Nazi occupiers, who no doubt treated the locals like dirt.
Thought you'd find this interesting.
CHRISTIANS and muslims protecting Jews, actually.
Just to remind us that Albania is not all sweetness and light.
They weren't arabs. The Bosnian muslims I know are not at all what you would expect of Muslims. No arab words, they drink, no headcovers. You would never know.
There was probably not a single country in WWII Nazi occupied Europe where a few good people of whatever nationality didn't do some good or offer some kind act to a few Jews or others who were being persecuted. Good & bad people come in all race, creeds, colors and nationalities.
I am just a little tired of these awards, sixty years later, being turned into PR coups to add support to a postion on a current political issue, as it is highly disrespectful of the actual victims.
I'll never forget the words of James Harff, Director of the PR Firm Ruder Finn's statements on manipulating public opinion during the 1990's Balkan wars
Question: What achievement were you most proud of?
Harff: To have managed to put Jewish opinion on our side. ...................
We OUTWITTED three big Jewish organizations - B'Nai Brith Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Committee, and the American Jewish Congress. We suggested to them to publish an advertisement in the New York Times and to organize demonstrations outside the U.N.
This was a tremendous coup. When the Jewish organizations entered the game on the side of the (Muslim) Bosnians, we could promptly equate the Serbs with the Nazis in the public mind. .........
We won by targeting Jewish audience. Almost immediately there was a clear change of language in the press, with the use of words with high emotional content, such as "ethnic cleansing", "concentration camps", etc. which evoked images of Nazi Germany and the gas chambers of Auschwitz. The emotional charge was so powerful that nobody could go against it.
Question: But when you did all of this, you had no proof that what you said was true. You only had the article in Newsday!
Harff: Our work is not to verify information. .....
http://www.vagabondpages.com/may98/golem.html
Great story, but I worry that it will somehow enrage radical Muslims - because basically everything enrages radical Muslims.
That's because Albania was communist at the time.
Interesting link. I've read a series of novels by Brock and Bode Thoene (may have spelled that wrong) that made the claim Hitler's agents incited the Muslim violence against the newly created State of Israel (Zion Covenant series). I always wondered how much was truth and how much was fiction.
there were actually two axis countries that did not cooperate with hitler regarding the jews-finland,where jews served openly in the army and had full rights,and bulgaria-providing the jews were bulgarian jews-others didn't fare so well-many italian military officers and diplomats also circumvented hitler's desires in occupied areas even though disobeying mussolini's orders-a very interesting aspect of ww2 history often overlooked
"Interesting link. I've read a series of novels by Brock and Bode Thoene (may have spelled that wrong) that made the claim Hitler's agents incited the Muslim violence against the newly created State of Israel (Zion Covenant series). I always wondered how much was truth and how much was fiction."
This site may answer many of your questions. http://www.tellthechildrenthetruth.com/
One of the pages also actually shows how many Nazi Germans escaped to the ME post WWII and became adivisors to ME dictators like Nasser. There was a definite cross-pollenation between Nazism and Islam via Amin Al-Husseini. And the black flag in the intro was the flag of the WWII Bosnian Muslims, who were part of Hitler's troops.
btt
Publicity for that needs to be ramped up, too.
Reasonable people can get along, it seems.
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