The Holocaust in Albania

The Holocaust in Albania
Part of The Holocaust and World War II
A map of Albania during World War II, with territories annexed to Albania-proper shown in light yellow.
Location	Italian- and German-occupied Albania
Date	1941–1944
Target	Jews
Attack type	Genocide
Deaths	c. 600
Perpetrators	Nazi Germany and its collaborators
Defenders	75 citizens of Albania recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations (2018)

The Holocaust in Albania consisted of crimes committed against Jews in Albania while Albania was under Italian and German occupation during World War II. Throughout the war, nearly 2,000 Jews sought refuge in Albania-proper. Most of these Jewish refugees were treated well by the local population, despite the fact that Albania-proper was occupied first by Fascist Italy, and then by Nazi Germany. Albanians often sheltered Jewish refugees in mountain villages and transported them to Adriatic ports from where they fled to Italy. Other Jews joined resistance movements throughout the country.

For the 500 Jews who lived in Kosovo, the experience was starkly different, and about 40 percent did not survive the war. With the surrender of Italy in September 1943, Germany occupied Albania. In 1944, an Albanian Waffen-SS division, the 21st Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Skanderbeg was formed, which arrested and handed over to the Germans 281 Jews from Kosovo who were subsequently deported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where many were killed. In late 1944, the Germans were driven out of Albania-proper and the country became a communist state under the leadership of Enver Hoxha. Around the same time, Axis forces in the Albanian-annexed regions of Kosovo and western Macedonia were defeated by the Yugoslav Partisans, who subsequently reincorporated these areas into Yugoslavia.

Approximately 600 Jews were killed in Axis-occupied Albania during the Holocaust. In Albania-proper, five Jews from the same family were killed by the Germans, the only native Jews to be killed there over the course of the war. Albania-proper emerged from the war with a population of Jews eleven times greater than at the beginning, numbering around 1,800. Most of these subsequently emigrated to Israel. Several hundred remained in Albania until the fall of Communism in the early 1990s before doing the same. There is no academic consensus as to why Jewish survival rates in Albania-proper differed so drastically from those in Kosovo. Some scholars have argued that the traditional code of honour known as besa, an important part of the culture of Albania-proper, played a role. Other academics have suggested the cause was the relative lenience of the Italian occupying authorities in 1941–1943, Germany's failure to seek out Jews in Albania-proper in 1943–1944 as thoroughly as they had in other countries, and also the Kosovo Albanians' distrust of foreigners. As of 2018, 75 citizens of Albania had been recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.