Authored by Fahri Xharra. Translation by Petrit Latifi.
“What would the world be like if everyone behaved like Albanians?”
– John L Withers II
By Fahri Xharra
In fact, cold does not exist! Albert Einstein said as a student. According to what the latest studies and discoveries in physics say, cold is only the absence of heat. We can prove that if we offer an object to a source of energy and see that it heats up. So, without heat, objects are inert and do not react, which means that “cold” does not exist.
“What about darkness? Darkness is the complete absence of light. We can study light and brightness, but never darkness. Darkness is present and as such we have accepted it. With darkness we can and are able to explain the absence of light.” – said Einstein
Albert Einstein (Einstein) was born in Ulm, Württemberg, (Germany) on March 14, 1879. In 1901, he received his diploma and Swiss citizenship. In 1909 he became an extraordinary professor in Zurich, in 1911 a professor in Prague. In 1914 he became a professor at the University of Berlin and in 1914 he became a German citizen and lived in Berlin until 1933, when due to his Jewish affiliation he left Germany.
How did Albania become the second birthplace of Albert Einstein? How was Einstein reborn in Albania?
Initiated by the Albanian diaspora in Belgium, the Jewish Museum in Brussels held a conference a few days ago on “Albania and the Rescue of the Jews”. This was held as a public recognition of King Zog, where the main topic was the diplomacy of King Zog and the historical assistance of Albania to the rescue of Jews who fled the Holocaust in Albania (1929-1944).
The American historian Bernard Fisher claimed that King Zog’s initiatives and persistence made it possible to rescue over 2,640 Jews (a smaller number, due to the lack of records) in Albania, including Albert Einstein, by giving them tourist and transit visas, then changing their names, changing their religion and granting them Albanian citizenship.
Who saved Einstein? How did Albania become Einstein’s second birthplace? A person is born once, but a person is reborn when someone saves his life from certain death.
In one of the characteristic alleys of the city of Pogradec, in the Burima neighborhood, on the right side of the old church of the city, there is a two-story villa immersed in the middle of a flower garden and an orchard with apples and grapes. . It is the house of the Bashos, currently of associate professor Dr. Jovan Bashos, head of service at the Mother Teresa University Hospital Center, in Tirana. (B.Berberi).
Einstein came to Albania in April 1931, when he was being pursued by the German Nazis, due to his Jewish origin and then obtained an Albanian passport and left with this passport towards the USA. Albert Einstein was a great friend of this family.
In the old register of 1931, AK0 31, on page 53 /1, there is this note: Today, on April 10, 1931, Dr. Jani Bashua, born in 1892 in the Burima neighborhood of Poradec, son of Kozma and Anastasia, by profession personal physician to His Excellency Zogu i Parë, appeared at the office of the Municipality of Poradec, who gives us a guarantee that Albert Einstein will become a citizen of Poradec.
This municipality provides Albert Einstein with a certificate and a certificate, as a resident of Poradec in the Burima neighborhood. The Municipal Clerk was Reis Asllani – while the guarantor was Dr. Jani Basho
In Vienna, Dr. Jani Bashua met his professors and at the same time his friends, among whom was the famous actor Aleksandër Moisiu. At the meeting he had with his friends and close associates, they made him a request: His friend, Albert Einstein, was in danger and was wanted by the German Nazis as a Jew and had to leave, but he could not, since his German passport had been confiscated by the Gestapo.
So, they said, since you are the personal physician of King Zog, tell the king to give him an Albanian passport. Undoubtedly, our people should rightly be proud of having saved thousands of Jews, and among them the greatest scientist of the 20th century, Albert Einstein. According to official records, Albert Einstein’s German passport was confiscated by Nazi Germany and according to official records, Albert Einstein went to America twice in December 1931 and in 1932, with the Albanian passport that King Zog provided him with, since he had no other passport.
Dr. Basho had told him that Einstein had come to Albania in the early 1930s, had stayed for 3 days and had received an Albanian passport. Dr. Basho had intervened with the King and had accompanied him during his stay in Albania, a time when King Zog himself had received him. Dr. Basho had even exchanged several letters with him, in which Einstein thanked him for his kindness and told about the difficulties of his life.
Sadly, we miss these letters which were burned in February 1945 (along with many other books and documents) during the nationalization of Dr. Basho’s house and clinic, two houses next to each other in the center of Tirana, between the Central Post Office and the former High Court. (Communist primitivism f.xh.)
Before returning to Albania in June 2002, Mother Queen gave an interview to an English journalist, an interview which was published at the time in the English magazine “Style” under the title “The Return of the Queen”. She told the journalist that King Zog had told her that: “Einstein has come to Albania, met with him and received an Albanian passport”
Prof. Dr. Skënder KOJA, former Director of the Institute of Nuclear Physics (1971 – 1987).Prof. Koja has stated that at the time when he was the director of the Institute of Nuclear Physics, an employee of the Institute repeatedly told him that a neighbor of his, namely Mr. A. Bega, had met Einstein in Tirana. Prof. Koja himself spoke with him and A. Bega’s testimony was as follows:
“I met Einstein in Tirana in the early 1930s when he came to the Bank and asked me for transactions between the Albanian Bank and a German state bank, transactions that our bank had never carried out, due to the non-existence of connections with German banks at that time.”
It is well known that the Albanian state administration that was responsible for issuing passports at that time changed the names of Jews (perhaps for security reasons) and it was common for Moshe to be written as Musa, Zaharia, Zafir, etc. There is plenty of such evidence for the change of Jewish names in the Albanian State Archives.
In the Einstein Archives in Jerusalem, you can find:
- Dr. Basho’s letters to Einstein
- Documentation made about him in Albania
About Einstein: “In 1933 he had to flee to the United States, due to the danger of the rise of Nazism in Germany. A month later (May 1933) it was announced that he was on the list of assassins with a price of $ 5,000 on his head.” He traveled to the United States through Albania. “Thanks to the Albanian faith, many Jews, including Einstein, escaped assassination,” the letters of thanks say.
So was Albania the second birthplace of this great man of the twentieth century?
Einstein had raised his voice, accusing the Yugoslav Government, when Professor Milan Shuffly (a well-known Albanologist) was killed in the streets of Zagreb (18.02.1931), where together with the novelist Heinrich Mann, brother of Thomas Mann, they sent a joint letter to the League of Nations in Paris, protesting “against the terrible brutality of the Yugoslav government…”. Professor Shuffly was cited as the author of a large number of scientific books.
In Einstein’s letter dated May 6, 1931, he accused the Serbs of terrorizing the Croatian population and the Bosniaks and Albanians.
Einsteins Accusation
In February 1995, Congressmen Tom Lantos, Benjamin Gilman and Gerald Nadler and former Congressman Dioguardi spoke at a ceremony at the American Holocaust Museum (Washington D.C.), commemorating the declaration of Albania as “Righteous Among the Nations”
“Our people should rightly be proud of having saved thousands of Jews and among them the greatest scientist of the 20th century, Albert Einstein, who was “reborn” in Albania.
Einstein came to Albania in April 1931, when he was being pursued by the German Nazis, due to his Jewish origin and then obtained an Albanian passport and left with this passport towards the USA. Albert Einstein was a great friend of this family.
Reference
Balkan Academia 