German college named for Albanian who saved Jews sends college students to Tirana for Holocaust remembrance
Sixteen-year-old Melisa Malo, a Tenth-grader on the Gjimnazi Sami Frashëri right here, first realized concerning the Holocaust 4 years in the past when she attended an Albanian-language stage efficiency of “The Diary of Anne Frank.”
That night, her dad and mom advised her how unusual Muslims and Christians in Albania, an remoted Balkan nation with not more than 300 native Jews, risked their lives throughout World Struggle II to cover practically 2,000 international Jewish refugees from the nation’s Nazi occupiers. They did so due to “besa,” a tribal code of honor that requires Albanians to guard strangers fleeing persecution.
One such Albanian was Refik Veseli, a younger photographer’s apprentice who, from 1942 to 1944, hid a Jewish household at his circle of relatives’s home in Krujë, a village close to Tirana. In 1987, Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem honored Veseli and his dad and mom as Righteous Gentiles, the primary of 75 residents of Albania, in addition to these of neighboring Kosovo, to finally be so honored.
Twelve years in the past, college students at a German highschool in Berlin’s predominantly immigrant district of Kreuzberg voted to rename their college in his reminiscence.
On Jan. 27, a delegation from the Refik Veseli Schule visited Tirana for Worldwide Holocaust Remembrance Day. Amongst different issues, they and their teenage counterparts from the native Gjimnazi Sami Frashëri spoke to round 150 folks concerning the urgency of combating antisemitism.
Besa – standing up towards hatred and discrimination
“I feel this bridge we’re constructing between our two faculties illustrates the idea of besa very properly,” Malo stated. “We’re promising to be united and rise up towards hatred and discrimination.”
Malo and others then symbolically planted an olive tree outdoors Albania’s Ministry of European and International Affairs, which organized the half-day occasion attended by diplomats, lawmakers, native journalists, and different dignitaries.
“Besa is a core worth that also issues in on a regular basis life right here,” stated Eleventh-grader Amelia Miftari, 17. “Throughout the Holocaust, when Albanians risked their very own lives to assist the Jews, it wasn’t solely a customized however an ethical selection—a promise to behave with humanity and braveness.”
Not one of the college students at both college is Jewish. Actually, Ruben Ebert, an 18-year-old senior from Berlin, stated he participates in Shoah remembrance actions partly out of guilt.
“I really feel obligated to maintain the reminiscence of the Holocaust alive due to my household historical past,” he stated. “My great-grandmother and her husband and her brother had been all Nazis. I don’t know in the event that they had been occasion members, however they had been satisfied of their ideology. Clearly, they’re a part of my household, so I’ve a connection to them. However they had been additionally perpetrators of horrible crimes.”
Ebert is without doubt one of the few college students at Refik Veseli Schule who usually are not the youngsters of immigrants.
‘We’re all folks’
Hadiseh Alizadah, 15, wears a black hijab and got here to Germany from Afghanistan as a refugee 10 years in the past along with her dad and mom. She stated that out of her 22 classmates, just one is ethnic German. The remaining are largely Afghani, Syrian, Palestinian, Turkish, or Lebanese.
“We’re all folks,” Alizadah advised JTA when requested if she sees any irony in the truth that she, an Afghani Muslim, got here to Albania to commemorate Jews killed by Nazis throughout World Struggle II.
“Generally it’s troublesome for me as a result of folks know nothing about my household or me,” she stated. “I spent three months in Brandenburg [a state in northeastern Germany], and there, they hate immigrants. However in Berlin, there are numerous women with hijabs like me, so it’s not an issue.”
Following the official program, Alizadah joined a dozen different college students in a strolling tour of Tirana that included the well-known Ethem Bey Mosque fronting Skanderbeg Sq., a landmark on this nation of two.4 million inhabitants, roughly 45% of whom in the present day are Sunni or Bektashi Muslims. In addition they toured an outside show of 15 massive black-and-white Holocaust-related pictures sponsored by the Municipality of Tirana beneath the banner “By no means Once more.”
Refik Veseli Schule’s head instructor, Simon Groscurth, stated selecting this specific title for the college was a acutely aware resolution.
“In a metropolis like Berlin, the place the historical past of the Holocaust is written instantly into our cobblestones, we looked for an emblem of braveness that may resonate with our various scholar physique,” defined Groscurth. He stated his college discovered that image in Refik, whose bravery and fast considering saved the lives of Yugoslav photographer Moshe Mandil, his spouse Gabriela, his daughter Irena, and his son Gavra.
Throughout an April 1941 go to to their grandmother’s home in Belgrade, German troops invaded Yugoslavia and instantly started deporting Jews to focus camps. Herded onto trains, the Mandil household of Novi Unhappy, carrying counterfeit paperwork, was detained by German officers on suspicion of being Jewish.
However simply on the final second, defying expectations, Moshe confirmed the officers a small {photograph} of his kids laughing beneath a Christmas tree. The tree had merely been a prop in his photograph retailer, however the ruse labored—and the household was allowed to proceed on its means.
Arriving in Prishtinë, capital of present-day Kosovo, they spent a yr in a guarded refugee camp however, beneath Italian occupation, had been allowed to journey by truck to Albania. They arrived in Tirana and moved right into a small condo along with a buddy who owned a photograph studio in downtown Tirana. At that retailer, 17-year-old Refik Veseli labored.
“At some point, German troops got here into the photograph retailer in search of Jews. Refik advised Moshe to cover beneath a black fabric,” stated Israeli-born writer and lecturer Maya Klinger Cohen, who has written a kids’s ebook on the topic. “Refik spoke with the German troopers till they left. That’s when Moshe understood that Tirana was not protected anymore, however he had nowhere else to go.”
Decided to assist the Mandils, Refik traveled north to Krujë and requested his dad and mom, Vesel and Fatima, to cover the Jews. With out hesitation, his father agreed and got here with donkeys to move them. However they might solely journey beneath the duvet of darkness, sleeping throughout daytime within the forests.
The journey was lengthy and troublesome, though all of the Jews carried pretend Albanian id playing cards and wore conventional Muslim clothes. At one notably scary Nazi checkpoint, German officers interrogated Gabriela, whom they suspected of being a Jew due to her light-colored eyes, however she pretended to know solely Albanian.
Finally, the Germans let the household move, and as Cohen stated, “she saved all of them by taking part in the position of her life.”
On the finish of World Struggle II, Gavra Mandil and his household discovered their option to Israel. He finally turned a well-known photographer and arrange his personal studio in Tel Aviv.
And one yr in the past, Fatmir Veseli was the visitor of honor on the college named after his late father.
“When he stood amongst our college students, the story we normally educate from books abruptly turned actual,” Groscurth stated. “He advised us about his father’s humility, how Refik didn’t see himself as a hero, however merely as a person who saved his phrase and opened doorways.”
Karl Bergner, Germany’s ambassador to Albania, urged college students from that college and Gjimnazi Sami Frashëri ls to battle for democracy, and to “rise up towards injustice wherever you discover it.”
“In 2026, greater than 80 years after the tip of World Struggle II, it’s nonetheless essential to maintain the teachings of the Holocaust alive,” Bergner stated. “What can we do to stop such atrocities sooner or later? The reply lies in training, confronting the previous, and selling tolerance.”
Lisa Shekel is a German language instructor on the Refik Veseli Schule whose husband is Israeli. As such, she helps arrange encounters between her college students and Jewish children from Israel.
However rising antisemitism in Germany and all through Europe issues her, particularly the rising recognition of the far-right, anti-immigrant Various für Deutschland occasion, which at the moment controls 151 seats within the nation’s 630-member Bundestag.
“In fact, I’m frightened that quickly we gained’t reside in a democracy anymore,” Shekel stated. “Our worry is that after the following elections, AfD would be the strongest occasion in Germany.”
Nevertheless, as Ebert, the great-grandson of Nazis, stated about his personal background, “loads of Germans usually are not trustworthy about their household historical past. In the event that they had been, they wouldn’t vote for AfD.”
In current months, Tirana has been rocked by nightly demonstrations, a few of them violent, as supporters of opposition chief and former prime minister Sali Berisha protest alleged corruption by the hands of Berisha’s longtime nemesis, present Prime Minister Edi Rama.
Actually, Galit Peleg, Israel’s ambassador to Albania, didn’t attend the Jan. 27 Holocaust occasion in Tirana as a result of she needed to accompany Rama to Jerusalem, the place he addressed the Knesset, a uncommon honor supplied solely to 5 different heads of state: Egypt’s Anwar el-Sadat and U.S. Presidents Jimmy Carter, Invoice Clinton, George W. Bush and Donald Trump.
Throughout his Knesset speech, Rama affirmed his full assist for Israel within the present Gaza battle and lashed out at Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism. In September 2022, Albania broke ties with Tehran after Iranian-backed hackers launched an enormous cyberattack towards the federal government.
“If there’s one subject these two [Rama and Berisha] agree on, it’s Israel. We get wall-to-wall assist from Albania,” stated Peleg, who has served right here for the previous three and a half years.
“The primary week I arrived, I went to Krujë and entered a silver store available in the market. On the wall was a certificates from Yad Vashem,” the ambassador advised JTA. “I requested the shopkeeper what it was, and he stated that his grandfather had saved Jews in the course of the battle and that he needed everybody to know. Right now, you’d say it’s a gimmick, however this was earlier than the present wave of Israeli vacationers, and I discovered it very real, and in step with what I hear from unusual folks.”
In line with Albania’s Nationwide Institute of Statistics, 72,110 Israeli residents visited the nation in 2025, up 586% from the yr earlier than, due to the March 2025 launch of nonstop flights between Tel Aviv and Tirana by El Al subsidiary Sundor. It’s now frequent to listen to Hebrew within the streets, not solely within the capital but in addition at resorts like Saranda, Durres, and Himara.
Moreover its proximity to Israel, Albania can also be a low-cost vacation spot with pleasant folks, a Mediterranean delicacies, and no antisemitism towards the nation’s 60 or so Jews.
Such tourism additionally has a powerful cultural part; along with Tirana’s current lakeside Holocaust Memorial that includes granite info panels in Hebrew, English and Albanian, two Jewish-related points of interest are actually beneath building: the Jewish Museum of Albania in Vlorë and Tirana’s Besa Museum, a 26,000-foot shrine to the nation’s historical code of honor which, amongst different issues, saved so many Jews in the course of the Holocaust.
“In a world the place we’re witnessing an increase in antisemitism and hate speech, Besa will be our protect,” Groscurth stated. “It means ‘I cannot be a passive bystander. I’ll defend you, since you are my fellow human being.’ As a result of solely collectively, together with your assist, your concepts, and the Albanian spirit, can we be sure that the horrific crimes of World Struggle II are by no means repeated.”