At the event organized in New York, USA, honouring Albania’s contribution to sheltering and protecting Jews, Rama reminisced about a moment from the visit of Israeli President Herzog a few days ago in Tirana.

“Herzog laid a wreath at the Holocaust Memorial in Tirana together with our religious leaders. However, the real news was not the fact that they met; the news was that no one wrote about this meeting. In a country where leaders of Sunni Muslim communities, Bektashi, a moderate order of Sufi Shiites, Orthodox Christians, and Catholics regularly meet and celebrate each other’s religious holidays, the meeting of the President of Israel with them does not make any news,” said Rama.

This unity among our religious leaders and communities, according to Rama, “is not a show for the public; it is embedded in our DNA.”

“It reflects a ‘mutual understanding’ and ‘religious well-being’ that is so unique in this troubled and confused world – a blessing that we cherish. Albania has always been this way, and this explains why we have been so capable of implementing policies of peace, dialogue, and tolerance with our neighbours and the minorities within our territory, who have never suffered any form of ethnic or religious discrimination,” emphasized Rama.

According to the Prime Minister, Albania was the first country in Europe to legally recognize the right of the Jewish community to celebrate the Sabbath in 1932, at a time when anti-Semitism was on the rise.

“During the Holocaust, when the Nazi leader Hermann Neubacher summoned religious and political leaders in Berlin in 1943 to request a list of Jews and the amount of gold in the Bank of Rome, our representatives responded: ‘You can take the gold, but not them.’ Even after several meetings, they did not change their minds: ‘The gold is yours, take it; the Jews are ours, and we will protect them!’ And all of this is documented in the minutes of the negotiations. We continue to be this way even today,” he said..

“I learned about a written story by a young Jewish scholar named Theo Canter, who had recently visited the Solomon Museum in the ancient city of Berat, a UNESCO-protected heritage site. He left a note: ‘Here, I was that Greek-Polish Jew wearing a kippah, in an ancient Byzantine church, in the most Muslim country in Europe, in the most secular Islam, and perhaps in the most tolerant country in the world. And I felt safer walking there than in my own country.’ ‘A post-communist renaissance with a Jewish touch,’ Rama quoted him as saying.

Rama emphasized that he holds firm on his conviction that for Albania to grow and prosper as a proud nation and to be a small model state, it is essential to look at and learn from the past with an eye toward the future, and to never allow the future to be envisioned by the eyes of the past.

/sm/