Protected from the harsh midday sun by a picnic-table umbrella, Kreshnik Bajraktari, an ethnic Albanian refugee from Kosovo, replays the events that led him to this safe haven alongside the calm shores of the Israeli Mediterranean.
Like most of the 74 people housed here, the 23-year-old Bajraktari’s thoughts are far away, tuned to members of his extended family still in the Balkans, the fate of his home in the Kosovar capital of Pristina, his dentistry studies that were abruptly cut off by the war.
Some of the refugees hope to return home as soon as possible, others want to rebuild their lives in Israel. All know they are lucky.
“We are grateful and appreciate what Israel has done for us,” says Bajraktari. “I don’t think any country in the world would have greeted us like this.”
Last week, on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, 111 ethnic Albanians were airlifted to Israel as a humanitarian gesture. Although the number is symbolic — it would take 7,000 such airlifts to relocate the approximately 700,000 refugees created by the crisis — for this small group, Israel is a guardian angel.
They were given a hero’s welcome. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu greeted them, Bajraktari spoke in front of a Knesset parliamentary committee and the group was taken on field trips last weekend to see the country.
However, as the euphoria dies down — the hordes of journalists and television crews are now gone — many appear to be in shock from the events that shattered their lives. Older men play chess and children frolic amid the white stucco field-school dormitories, but a sadness has descended upon these refugees.
Many are desperately calling home to try to locate relatives and friends. All are still coming to terms with what they have left behind and the challenge of rebuilding their lives in a country most know nothing about.
Just a few weeks ago, Bajraktari was studying dentistry in Pristina. Like many ethnic Albanians, his family believed it would only be a matter of days before NATO air strikes crushed Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. For 10 days, they hunkered down in their Pristina home, praying they would be spared both the NATO bombs targeting Serb military positions and the Serbian shells crashing down throughout the city.
With no end in sight, the Bajraktari family piled into their car and headed south for the Macedonian border. Although they did not witness any killings, bodies littered the streets of the Kosovar capital.
At the border, cars packed with fleeing families were backed up for miles. Serb soldiers herded the vehicles into an immense parking lot of an abandoned factory. For five terrifying nights the Bajraktari family stayed there, fearing all along that they may be part of a Serbian scheme to have them slaughtered should NATO bomb the plant.
When they finally reached the refugee camp near Skopje, Macedonia, Bajaktari and his cousin Astrit Kuci, also a dentistry student who had nearly completed his degree, soon found themselves working alongside doctors at the Israeli field hospital. When Israel said it would take in more than 100 refugees, they were among the first to sign up their families.
“I have seen some movies about what the Germans did to the Jews in World War II, and it touched my soul,” says Kuci, an Israel patch pinned to his T-shirt. “I couldn’t believe nobody spoke out against the atrocities then. But when we experienced this ourselves, I realized that Albanians and Jews had the same fate.”
While most Jews would not feel comfortable comparing Auschwitz to Skopje, Israelis have almost instinctively demonstrated sympathy and support for the plight of Kosovo’s Albanians.
Israelis have raised more than $1.25 million to aid the Kosovars and Israeli companies have sent an additional $500,000 worth of food, blankets and other relief.
“The response in Israel has been phenomenal,” Sallai Meridor, acting chairman of the Jewish Agency, said recently. He said Israel and the Jewish Agency “felt we had to do something” not “only because we are human beings, but maybe especially because we are Jews.”
Israel’s Arab community has also raised about $1.25 million to help the Albanians, most of whom are Muslims. But when Islamic leaders from a village near Ma’agan Michael last week came to invite the Albanians to services at a local mosque, the refugees politely declined.
The refugees may be wary of insulting their Jewish hosts and becoming embroiled in another ethnic conflict by showing their affinity with the Muslim community — even though officials with the Jewish Agency for Israel, who are sponsoring their stay, have told them to feel free to practice their religion.
More likely, however, the refugees simply do not identify with the local Muslims. “The Muslims invited us to use the mosque, but we said we are not religious,” explains Emrush Rama, a 19-year-old musician who has two earrings in his left ear. “We have a different way of thinking.”
Bajraktari agrees: “We were not persecuted because we are Muslims, but because we are Albanians,” he says. “We tried to explain this to the local Muslims.”
Such views appear to discredit the theory proffered by Ariel Sharon, Israel’s foreign minister, that a “greater Albania” could turn into a hotbed of militant Islam in the heart of Europe.
Sharon’s criticism of Serbian ethnic cleansing has been relatively mild. Many Israelis — and even some Foreign Ministry officials — cannot understand why Sharon has not been as supportive of the Albanian Kosovars as the Israeli public has been.
Meanwhile, a portion of another small group of Balkan Muslims that was on the receiving end of Serbian nationalist expansion earlier in the decade remains in Israel today. In 1993, Israel gave refuge to 84 Bosnians who were fleeing under circumstances similar to those faced by the Kosovars.
Safet Bajric is one of 35 who remained in Israel, and now he is working for the Jewish Agency as a translator for the Kosovars, through their common language of Serbo-Croatian.
“We are almost the same type of people,” he explains in fluent Hebrew, comparing the Bosnians to the Albanian Kosovars. Bajric, a factory worker who recently bought a house, is full of praise for Israel, although he has one gripe: Israel promised citizenship to the Bosnians who stayed on.
“We did not receive it, though,” he says. “We put in a request to the Interior Ministry last year, but have not received a response.”
Several of the new arrivals, already believing they will have nothing to return to, want to apply for citizenship. Israel has promised citizenship to those who choose to stay after six months. In addition, many of the refugees in Israel are professionals, and they want to begin studying Hebrew as soon as possible so they can find jobs.
“We hope to get the Hebrew ulpan started quickly, and we are also trying to find them workplaces,” said Jaffa Barsis, who is managing the Ma’agan Michael site on behalf of the Jewish Agency. “Their main problem will be to decide where their future lies, whether to stay here or return home.”
For the Jaha family, that is not even a question. In part, they are determined to stay in Israel because their fate was joined with the Jewish people long before the current Balkan war.
During World War II, Lamija Jaha’s parents hid a Jewish woman named Mira Bakovic in their Sarajevo home. Jaha’s father also saved a Haggadah, which is now on display at a museum in Sarajevo.
After she and her family fled their home in Pristina, Jaha, a 44-year-old economist, approached the Jewish community in Macedonia. “We were totally without hope,” she says.
She showed the Jewish community a certificate given to her family by the Jewish community for their heroism during the Holocaust. The community helped her get in touch with Israeli authorities, who had the family brought to Israel.
Jaha has come here with her husband, Vllaznim, an electrical engineer, and their two children. Even though Vllaznim’s parents were left behind, the Jahas have no doubts about their future lives.
“We left behind one life; that life is over,” says Vllaznim Jaha. “I think now it is time to begin another life here.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
