Prime Minister Edi Rama was honoured the Cultural Pluralism Award during his visit in the United States of America. The award was conferred to Prime Minister Rama in a special ceremony held at the White House by the Chair of the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, Paul Packer designated by President Trump.
The award was conferred under the motivation “For extraordinary contributions in advancing the cause of Holocaust remembrance, protecting the historical truth and promoting cultural preservation of the sites related to the heritage of American citizens.”
“Just yesterday we spoke about the impact and the amazing connection of Albania to the state of Israel, but now I am also honoured to be here, not only because of the connection between Albania and Israel but it is also a connection between America and Albania, because now there are many American citizens who have been rescued by your country, so from my Commission which represents the President I just want to say thank you on behalf of America,” Chair of the Commission Paul Packer said.
Likewise Packer praised the commitment and efforts of the Prime Minister Rama and the Albanian government to preserving Holocaust remembrance and protection of the historic truth. “I have also learned about the Prime Minister and how you are preserving and looking to preserve your cultural heritage in Albania and starting to build now the Holocaust museum which is going to be the same architect of the Israel museum showing the special bond USA has with Israel at least on the cultural side and now in many more ways USA will have on heritage side with Albania, so I just wanted to say it is an incredible honour for us.”
A special gratitude was addressed to Prime Minister Rama by one of the successors of the survivors in Albania who conveyed it amid a personal history. “It is an amazing opportunity to thank you, to thank the whole country because there is an expression in Jewish which says “he, who saves one person, can save the whole world.” There are a lot of explanations or interpretations that can apply to but in our case it is very clear, our mother, who was an only child and had four children, because you saved her. Her four kids had 14 children so she had 14 grandchildren and then she had 20 great great-children while she was alive and two more, so 22, so you can see how saving one person it is like saving the world. It is not only us who benefit but it is the world which would benefit from the many Jews saved at the graciousness of a consanguine whole country, accepting that and do the amazing thing they did to keep the Nazis away, it is amazing and there is nothing to say but thank you and to recognise heroism in any opportunity is an important thing and people should look for that.”
In his address at the ceremony, Prime Minister Rama said that humanity Albanian people testified by helping, sheltering and saving Jews during World War II is a shining page, a value and a stunning example for the next generations.
“It is a big surprise to be here as I was not supposed to be here but on the way home today, but I am very honoured and very humbled again to have this big gesture from the President, from your side and all of you!
At the same time I strongly believe that this shining page of our history is something we need to preserve and do whatever we can that the next generation are aware of it as it is a really stunning example and a really fantastic heritage for us and it somehow shapes us as we are and as we should be.
It is amazing what has happened. There are incredible episodes and stories and I think whatever budgets of our film industries, Steven Spielberg would have never ever been jobless in Albania as there are so many episodes, and I was telling before an incredible story of a hospital in Pristina, Kosovo, which at the time was a territory where the Nazis sent a special expedition to capture all male Jews and the director of the hospital was this guy form Lushnja, south Albania, and he had this incredible idea to send home all the patients and bring in the hospital all male Jews leaving the city and to exhibit around the hospital banners saying ‘do not approach, deadly epidemic virus’ and the Nazis were totally misled but what is stunning is that no one from the patients or families that were obliged to get all the sick people back home did not go to them to say that we were pushed out of the hospital because they are giving refuge to the Jews, so no Jew was captured in this expedition. There are many episodes like this. Even the government which was a collaborative government never accepted to negotiate anything with the Germans about the Jews and because Albania was recognised the so called relative independence the Germans all the time postponed and there is a report about the final solution clearly written that in all countries they were present the final solution was agreed with governments representing them and in one paragraph was written that at the moment the case of Albania would be postponed to another time, so the final solution was never agreed.
We are engaged in this project to built this centre which will be very particular as it will not be a typical Jewish cultural centre but it will be a centre that will have inside both the history of the Jews salvation and also the very torturing history of religious coexistence because of the fact that we passed through communism a nightmare of God ban and religious ban and a lot of prosecutions and blasts and tortures against all religions and I think this can be really living together in a space in a very unique way and we have engaged Daniel Libeskind to do the project and the dream is to start and make the project happen in Tirana, in the heart of the city. And then possibly have a twin space in Jerusalem where it can be visited by anyone and see how Muslims, Orthodox, Catholics, Christians, Sunni and Bektashi all together they saved Jews and it is uniformly, there is no case and this is the stunning thing, that not a single case of Albanians to go to the Nazis and release information about the Jews and many of them were hidden under Muslim identities, were adopted by Muslim families, like the uncle coming to visit, other under Catholic identities being baptised by bypassing all procedures of catechism and this is a great history, as I said it is most stunning but it is the fourth, with the first century, the fifteenth century and the seventeenth century, we even have small cities created by Jews, like Jerico, we had Jerico, in Albania, in the south which is now Orikum, it was a Jews settlement and they created their city and in this report at the Hebrew University of this missionary sent from here, Elton, he wrote that by all means we should not doubt that this country, meaning Albania, can be considered a reserve homeland for the Jewish people.”
