My fascination with Kosovo has a rather atypical beginning. It was February 17, 2008 and it was the first time I was visiting the central Balkan state. On that Sunday, all 109 Kosovar deputies voted to unilaterally declare independence from Serbia in a move that completed the conflict-strewn breakup of the former Yugoslavia that had begun two decades earlier.
Within minutes a new flag was lofted into the cheering assembly in Kosovo’s new capital, Pristina, and the streets were flooded with people singing and dancing.
The international community was divided. The US and most members of the EU recognized the declaration, while Serbia, supported by Russia, denounced it as illegal. As did as many as 100,000 Serbs living in Kosovo.
I was in Pristina, reporting for Russian state television. It was difficult not to get caught up in the excitement; so much so that my editors in Moscow asked me not to sound so happy in my reporting.
As for Israel, she was reluctant to support Kosovo, fearing it would create a dangerous precedent for the Palestinians to follow suit. Likewise, Kosovo refused to recognize Israel not because its population was opposed to the Jewish State – they are in fact very pro-Israel and pro-America – but because of the quid pro quo principle: Israel had not yet recognized Kosovo yet. It became a waiting game.
The dispute over Kosovo is centuries-old. Serbia cherishes the region to its south as the heart of its statehood and religion, while ethnic Albanians have lived there for thousands of years. Until the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1989, Kosovo was an autonomous province inside Serbia within the Yugoslav confederation. The majority of its population was – and still is – Muslim Albanian although most of them identify as Albanian first and foremost.
When Slobodan Milosevic became president of Serbia in 1987, he refused to recognize the rights of the Kosovo majority and a bloody conflict between Serbs and Albanians broke out. More than 14,000 Albanian civilians were killed in the ensuing 10 years, two thousand of whom were children. An additional 20,000 women were raped and still today there are about 1,500 missing persons.
A 78-day NATO bombing campaign in 1999, ordered by then US-president Bill Clinton, finally ended the fighting.
“Recognition by Israel is one of our greatest achievements,” says Ines Demiri, Chargé d’Affairs of Kosovo to Israel who has lived in the country for a decade.
“This is something that we have been waiting for a very long time. It is a very important moment in consolidating Kosovo’s international position and integration into international organizations.
“It will dispel all the taboos and claims used by the non-recognizing countries and is a good example to them to recognize us. Kosovo can learn from the example and experience of Israel on how a country can become economically powerful. We are working on strengthening cooperation between us in the fields of culture, economy, education and tourism. Kosovo also has a lot to offer Israel. Our greatest potential is our brilliant young generation.”
Business manager Artan Borovci, 27, is part of that generation. He lives in Kamenica, 60 km. from Pristina. His sentiments sum up the feelings of many of his peers. “We love Israel and the Jewish people so much because we share the same common history,” he says. “So many times we have both been a target of ethnic hatred by other nations just because we are who we are – proud Kosovar Albanians and Israelis. We are both surrounded by hostile states who do not want to see us prosper and live our lives peacefully.”
Borovci also believes that Israel’s recognition of Kosovo is in part a gesture of gratitude towards Albanians who were the only people in Europe that, without exception, protected their few hundred Jewish friends and helped other Jews fleeing Nazi Germany and Austria, by either smuggling them abroad or hiding them in their homes. In fact, Kosovo was the only place in Europe where the number of Jews increased during the Holocaust as it became a transitional route for Jews escaping into Albania.
It’s a relationship that dates back centuries. Jews first arrived in the Balkans during Roman times and many made their home in Kosovo and neighboring Albania and Serbia. Their presence remained small until the late 15th century when Jews fleeing the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions found refuge in these Ottoman-ruled areas. They established flourishing communities with yeshivot, cemeteries and synagogues and were active members of society, learning to speak Albanian, Serbian and Turkish.
With the outbreak of World War II, Jews were safe in Italian-controlled Kosovo and Albania until 1943 when the Nazis arrived. They deported 250 Jews to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany where 92 of them were killed.
Moshe Mandil was one of the lucky ones who fled with his family to Kosovo during the war and later moved to Albania. A photographer by profession, he found work in a shop in the Albanian capital, Tirana, where he met 17-year-old apprentice Refik Veseli. After the Nazis invaded Albania, Veseli took the Mandil family by mules over rocky terrain, often traveling at night, to his parents’ home in the mountains. There they hid with another Jewish family for some two years until the war ended.
”They knew Jewish families were in great danger and that’s why they didn’t hesitate,” explained Enid Veseli, Refik’s grandson, from Tirana.There was a small cave underneath their house. So when the Germans would patrol the city, they would just take them there. The grownups had to hide but the kids, who were dressed as locals, would play with the other kids in the neighborhood and so weren’t recognized by the Germans.
“My grandfather would always speak about those times but we were very young and didn’t understand. I was only nine years old when he passed away but I remember he was very emotional when he told us these stories because he felt that it was very unjust. The Germans would go through the city and enter houses looking for Jews. They had no boundaries. So my family had to be very careful. If they were caught, they would have taken both the Jewish family and my family away.”
Veseli was recognized by Yad Vashem as a Righteous Among the Nations, as was Asllan Rezniqi, who saved more than 40 Jewish families. He set up the Kosovo-Israeli Friendship Association to research and record information about Albanian families in Kosovo who saved Jews during the Holocaust. Today the organization also looks after Jewish cemeteries and other Jewish sites.
“In Albanian tradition, if one enters a house he is immediately considered a guest and provided with shelter,” explains Asllan’s great-grandson, Leka, from Pristina.
“This is crucial to the whole Albanian Jewish rescue story, not only by my family but by all Albanians. It is a phenomenon called ‘besa’ or promise. When an Albanian says ‘you have my besa,’ this means he would sacrifice even his own family so as not to betray the promise.”
The story of Leka’s family is extraordinary not least “because it was a double saving of life. Dr. Haim Abravanel saved my grandfather’s life and then Dr. Abravanel was rescued by my great grandfather who saved his life.”
Abravanel was a Jewish medical doctor mobilized during the Second World War to serve in the Yugoslav army. During this time he was sent to Kosovo where a typhoid epidemic broke out. Asllan Rezniqi heard there was a doctor in town and asked him to treat his son, Mustafa. The family credits Abravanel with saving Mustafa’s life.
Not long after, Asllan heard that Dr. Abravanel had been captured by the Nazis and went to look for him. He managed to smuggle him out, give him traditional Albanian clothes and hid him in his house. He was there for about six months during which he treated the local population for free.
“Dr Haim was under besa of my great grandfather and because it was a small community, people knew that someone who was not a family member was living in our house. But they also knew that my great grandfather had given him besa so they would not allow for that promise to be broken,” said Leka.
After the situation became calmer, Abravanel and Rezniqi traveled to Skpoje, the capital of neighboring Macedonia, where Abravanel’s wife, Berta, was living. As many as 90% of Macedonia’s Jews had been killed during the Holocaust so it was a miracle both of them were alive.
“When they arrived, they knocked on the door and on the other side was Dr. Haim’s wife. Of course she was scared. My great-grandfather told her he was there with Dr. Haim and she started shouting ‘no, go away, they took him, they probably killed him, don’t make a joke with an old lady.’ Then Dr. Haim whistled and because they had a very specific whistle inside the family, she recognized it and opened the door. You can imagine how shocked she was. She was convinced that he’d been taken.”
But the story doesn’t end there. In 1963 an earthquake in Skopje destroyed about 80% of the city and among the more than one thousand people who died were the couple’s two children. Their only grandchild, a seven-year-old who today has a PhD in bio-mathematical modeling and lives in Israel, survived. Dr. Rachel Shelley Levy-Drummer picks up the story.
“In 1999 when the war in Kosovo started, there were a lot of refugees coming from Kosovo to Macedonia. Suddenly everything came back to me and I thought if Israel is giving support to refugees from Kosovo (the country had set up a mobile clinic outside Skopje) no one deserves it more than the Rezniqi family.”
It took two weeks to find them. “Finally I got a phone call from Mustafa Rezniqi,” Levy-Drummer recalled. Mustafa, “the boy who was cured by my grandfather, who was then about 84. We were very excited and he told me that they were not refugees and did not need support but were very happy to reestablish contact.”
The families soon met and Rachel and Leka are today very close, despite their differences in age. “It was a big excitement to meet them for the first time and somehow I had the feeling I was coming home,” said Levy-Drummer.
Many believe the timing could not be better. The so called ‘peace process’ between Israel and the Palestinians is effectively dead; support for Palestine in the Middle East is at an all-time low with many former backers of Palestine normalizing relations with Israel; there are no tangible prospects of the Palestinians declaring statehood; and finally – from a geopolitical point of view – Israel sees it fruitful to establish a stronger foothold in the Balkans because of the region’s strategic location.
Ines Demiri, the Chargé d’Affairs of Kosovo to Israel, emphasized “the special bond, the special history, between Albanians and Jews. That has never changed.” Demiri comes from a very old Jewish Kosovo family. Her Albanian grandfather saved her Jewish grandmother in World War II and they chose to remain in Kosovo where Demiri was born and grew up. But she visited Israel repeatedly over the years where, while most of her grandmother’s family was deported to Bergen-Belsen, those who survived lived. The majority of the Jews from Kosovo and Albania made aliyah in 1948, leaving behind only a small community in Prizren, numbering around 50 members. “The greatest honor of my life is to have this opportunity to open the Kosovo Embassy and proudly serve my country in Israel,” said Demiri.