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| You are here: 2000 / Plenary Sessions: Messages and speeches / Written Messages / Written Message by the Albanian Delegation | |||||||||
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Participants Countries and organizations Conference documentation Conference programme 
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Written Message by the Albanian Delegation Written Message by the Republic of Belarus Written Message by the Belgian Delegation Written Message by the Brazilian Delegation Written Message by the Canadian Delegation Written Message by the Republic of Chile Written Message by the Croatian Delegation Written Message by the European Commission Written Message by the Foreign Minister of Greece, George Papandreou Written Message by the Delegation of the Holy See Written Message by the Delegation of the State of Israel Written Message by the Republic of Poland Written Message by the Turkish Delegation Written Message by the Republic of Romania Written Message by UNESCO Written Message by the United Nations Written Message by the Uruguayan Delegation Written Message by the Albanian Delegation Ceco, Makbule Written Message by the Albanian Delegation Honourable participants in this conference,Honourable organiser of this conference,Honourable Prime Minister and other state authorities of Sweden,
The country I represent in this respectable forum is Albania, a tiny country on the Adriatic. I am not going to speak here on some specific experience in the education of anti-Semitism. But, I’d like to proudly underscore that in Albania there has never existed any sort of anti-Hebrew disposition either today or ever. When in the Albanian environments it is spoken about Holocaust, it is never considered as a question that has to do with them. And this is not only because in the time when the mass anti-Semite extermination had begun in the occupied countries by the Nazi ideas and in the regions occupied by them, they became a shelter for hiding, guaranteeing, sheltering and protecting the Jews. Not only because Albania is marked among the rare countries in the world where no denunciation of Jews has ever been made - on the contrary, Jews coming from the nearby neighbouring Balkan countries and beyond found in this small country the conditions to share a common and indivisible destiny what that of the local people. Experience and historic data indicate to a co-habitation without complexes, be it of superiority, or inferiority, between the Albanians and Hebrews for more than two thousand years. I believe this is due to the open character of the Albanian culture, the spirit of tolerance permeating it, the more so of the dignity of living of the Jewish community. The presence of Jews is testified in the form of a Judaic cultural tradition. I would like to pick out among the fundamental values of the Judaic tradition which are found even in the Albanian tradition: the cult of bread (reminding one of the manna myth), the cult of the Saturday, the cult of sacrifice, the cult of revival (resuscitation). It might sound strange for this auditor, but it is a fact that in the Albanian Middle Age David’s star is evident in the emblem of our national hero, George Castriotes Scanderbeg. I’d like to add another fact. David’s star is revealed in the internal environments of the old mosque of the Albanian capital. In the coastal areas of Albania there are a number of toponyms, which are similar to the Jewish ones. In Albania one can find Jerikon, Phoinike, Galile and Palestine. Almost along the whole Albanian coast there are to be found identified traces of Hebrew sanctuaries (synagogues). In no period of the history the Jews placed in Albania had ever any reason and found it indispensable to hide their identity. Noble Albania was always offered to them as a fatherland. It is a pleasure for me, but also I take pride in the fact that precisely in the time, when in order to justify anti-Semitism and mass extermination of Jews and when the so-called "international Israeli plot" was hatched up, in Albania, although the political administration was a collaborationist one with the Nazi-fascists, no episode of Holocaust support was witnessed. By the mid 30’s, when the world was clearly seeing the dangerous path the events were taking, what a misery and tragedy the planet was facing with fascism, an international project has existed, of which the Nations League and commissariat of refugees were aware of. According to it, on occasion of the outburst of the anti-Semite Nazi epidemic, the Balkan Jews would be settled in Albania. Although in the domestic policy, the Albanian official authorities of that time did not follow up a liberal line, they not only did never object this project, but practically it is proven that the started to adopt measures to welcome the Jewish population that might be displaced. Under the pressure of Rome, the ally of the Nazi Reich, the Albanian government seemed as if it was adopting measures to stop the coming of Jews. But never were these measures applied. During the World War II, the number of Jews in Albania multiplied. But there was not even a single victim amongst them - on the contrary, there were Jewish martyrs of the Anti-fascist War. They fought side by side with the Albanians in the liberation movement. The Anti-fascist war in Albania had an important component against anti-Semitism. The shadow of the Holocaust weighs on the consciousness of the world. I think that the Holocaust was born due to the complex of elected people. This complex gave rise to the anti-Semite Aryan Nazi idea. We Albanians have never suffered from such a complex, in fact, they have suffered cruelly the complex of the elected people, that has dominated the psyche of their Northern neighbours. I wish to underscore and put to your attention the fact that the Nazi Holocaust and Serbian ethnocide in Kosova are separated by 50 years and nothing else substantial. They are the same side of the same medal, they are the tragedy, irony and contradiction of human life. The Albanians of Kosova have faced for almost one century a forced state co-habitation with the Northern neighbours, the Serbs. The relations of the Albanians with them have traditionally been relations of conflict. This is the result of the Serbian ethno-phobia towards the Albanians. The fundamental document of the Serbian national ideology has a primary premise the ethnic cleansing and exclusion of the Albanians. The strategy of the Serbian political thinking, as the Nobel prize literature candidate Ismail Kadare has put it: "It is of the same race with the Nazi strategy". The anti-Albanian phobia of the Serbian policy has placed under its power the most outstanding scholars of Serbia. A Serbian academician of the mid of this century worked out the treaty of the Albanians’ deportation from Kosova. He thought that "the Arnavuts (Albanians - in Turkish) in ‘Old Serbia’ and in Macedonia managed to gain ground through the functioning of the Moslem religious community". He gave it the character of the doctrine of the Albanians’ displacement. It is very hard to find another case when an academician launches such appeals, as: "We should by all means ethnically cleanse Kosova, deporting on this occasion hundreds of thousands of Albanians from our state". The author of such survey "The Arnavuts (Albanians) deportation" concluded that the army, based on a plan and mercilessly must "cleanse those areas, which would be populated with our national element". It is significant the fact that the most outstanding Yugoslav writer Ivo Andriq, winner of Nobel prize, in his "Elaborate", when he was under-secretary of the premier of the Serbo-Croatian-Slovene Kingdom, has proposed to do away with Albania. The anti-Albanian ethno-phobia of the Serbian science was not sufficed with the national opposition. First rank scholars of the ethnologic school of Belgrade have developed the thesis that the Albanians were made impossible to deal with by Islamism. In the Serbian school of thought the history of the Albanians is divided in two parts. Before they were converted into Moslems "Serbs and Albanians lived in full harmony, under the splendour of the Serbian autocrats". The Albanians were so devoted that they gave to the pro-Slav church even a saint, such as Mother Angeline. The worst thing, according to this school, begins with the islamization of the Albanians, which transformed them into a people where religion came above nationality. The Albanians as a people have historically been submitted to an incessant shrinking, retreating towards the south. The Albanian ethnicum has been wrinkled throughout the historic process. On the contrary, the Serbs have systematically manifested an unrestrained, insatiable expansion, not to say a disfigured or monstrous one. To the function of this expansionism, they have exploited the national psychoses. In the narrow Balkans, the Slavs of the South did not feel themselves at ease from the border with one another and were never liberated not even for a single moment from the complex of space, that, as it seems is a complex of the origin, a memory of a distant period of time, when the Slavs lived without borders. Living in South-eastern Europe are the Balkan people, such as Slavs of the South and paleo-Balkan people, such as the Albanians, Romanians and Greeks. The lack of historic depth in this region has been transformed into sufferings and a historic complex for the Serbs. The peoples cannot chose the neighbours. But they might chose to live amongst them in relations of protagonism and antagonism. History proves that antagonism has been the choice of the Serbs and not of the Albanians. How can you explain differently the fact during four millenniums, with their other neighbours the Hellenes, the Albanians did not have war episodes?! With the Greeks too, just like as with the Slavs of the South, the Albanians are not joined either by the genetic source, national culture, or the religious faith. The disintegration of former Yugoslavia was an historic chance for the self-determination of the Albanians. They could not seek a common destiny with a state which was not theirs. They had remained in former Yugoslavia due to global peace. The Albanians were divided by a fatal equilibrium of the interests of great powers. The Albanian politilogue Ukshin Hoti, who languished in Serbia’s prisons for nearly ten years, and no one knows if he is alive or not, has managed to accurately formulate the Albanians’ political goals within the framework of the art of the possible. Deportation in the political behaviour of Belgrade towards the Albanians was not a phenomenon that occurred last year (1999) for the first time. Serbia’s goal has been the closure of the Albanians within the borders of political Albania. The Serbian science strove since a century now to create the opinion that the Albanians are a wandering people, that their movements are related to the Albanian ethno-type and not to the Serbian ethnocide exerted by them. Maybe the Serbs are a rare, unique case of setting up the national doctrine on the basis of the principle of the people elected by the Almighty, of the heavenly people. "We, the Serbs, are the sons of Adam, we are a people of a divine and tragic destiny. Our origin is related with the fusion of heaven in our national identity", writes the author of the book "Crazy country". In the Serbian science, Kosova is presented as a "Jerusalem" of orthodoxy. Precisely, the same ethnic superiority complex, based on the idea of divide people, was expressed by the Serbian doctrine of displacement, barbarous deportation of the Albanians in Kosova last year. The outbreak of the ethnic crisis during 1999 made public the international political opinions that precisely the mythological disaster "Kosova - the cradle of Serbia", the sanctification of a presumed soil, was the fundamental source of the conflict. By creating "the myth of Kosova as cradle of Serbia", in fact the Serbian erudition created the science of the rocking of this people in an alien cradle. The mythological disaster "Kosova - the cradle of Serbia" has been created to anticipate the conclusion that there is no place in Kosova for the Albanians. The Albanian science has proved the historic and space uninterrupted continuity of the Albanians in the current territories from the ancient times nowadays. The theories which treat the Albanians as allochthonous have been given a lie to by the government of autochthony. The Albanians have been in Kosova thousands of years before the arrival of the Slavs. In the construction of the anti-Albanian ethno-phobia, the Serbian science has started from the premise that the historic right is equal to the political right. This premise of the establishment of inter-ethnic relations pertains to the romantic period of the past century. Even if Kosova had been the "cradle of Serbia" three centuries ago, the current principle of ruling the world is that the peoples live there where the modern times have found them living in. As a prominent Albanian writer has put it "even if this tale were true, it does not constitute an argument to justify the suffocation of Kosova". It is my duty to recall to this honourable forum that the Albanians will begin to believe in the exorcism of that perverse consciousness that gave birth to Holocaust when the progressive world will bring the barbarous war criminals in Kosova and in the whole Yugoslavia to the Hague Tribunal. Otherwise, we should accept the wise words of the Prince of Denmark: "Word, only words". The Balkans is like the exotic East to the West and the West - rich for the East. The envies of the superstates, empires and great powers have crossed in this region. What should have been their superiority in the Balkans, their geographical position, in fact, as far as the Albanians are concerned became more their malediction. Speaking before this honourable forum on the crucial moments of the tragic history of the past and the present by drawing parallels of similarity of the Jewish people and the Albanian one in general and that of Kosova in particular, I would remind you of the message given by Julius Fucik on the most bloodstained historic period of the peoples of the world: "People be vigilant and paraphrasing it with the expression "politicians be wise", "people do not forget, remember and draw lessons from tragedies", "scientists, scholars, historians, archivists and museumologists, teachers and professors, study, generalise and draw conclusions for the education of everybody in his way so that everybody and all together think and act for the creation of a new world that would see and evaluate Holocaust as a relic in the museum of the past, that will never be repeated, never, never. Thank you.
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Introduction Opening Session: Messages and speeches Plenary Sessions: Messages and speeches Workshops, Panels and Seminars Closing Session and Declaration Other Activities |
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