IV 
112TH CONGRESS 
2D SESSION 
H. RES. 812 
Commending the Albanian people on the 100th anniversary of the declaration 
of their independence from the Turkish Ottoman Empire on November 
28, 1912, and commending Albanians in Albania and Kosova for pro-
tecting and saving the lives of all Jews who either lived in Albania 
or sought asylum there during the Holocaust. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
NOVEMBER 15, 2012 
Mr. ROHRABACHER (for himself and Mr. NADLER) submitted the following 
resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs 
RESOLUTION 
Commending the Albanian people on the 100th anniversary 
of the declaration of their independence from the Turkish 
Ottoman Empire on November 28, 1912, and com-
mending Albanians in Albania and Kosova for protecting 
and saving the lives of all Jews who either lived in 
Albania or sought asylum there during the Holocaust. 
Whereas in 1934, United States Ambassador to Albania, 
Herman Bernstein, wrote that, ‘‘There is no trace of any 
discrimination against Jews in Albania, because Albania 
happens to be one of the rare lands in Europe today 
where religious prejudice and hate do not exist, even 
though Albanians themselves are divided into three 
faiths’’; 
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•HRES 812 IH 
Whereas in 1938, approximately 300 Albanian Jews lived in 
the Republic of Albania, and more than 1,900 escaped to 
Albania from Nazi-occupied Western Europe and the 
former Yugoslavia during World War II; 
Whereas Albanians in Albania and Kosova, based on their 
unique history of religious tolerance, considered it a mat-
ter of national pride and tradition to help Jews during 
the Holocaust, and due to the actions of many individual 
Albanians, the entire native and refugee Jewish commu-
nity in Albania during World War II survived the Holo-
caust; 
Whereas Albanians sheltered and protected Jews in Albania 
and in Kosova, even at the risk of Albanian lives, begin-
ning with the invasion and occupation of Albania by 
Mussolini’s Italian fascists in 1939; 
Whereas after Nazi Germany occupied Albania in 1943 and 
the Gestapo ordered Jewish refugees in the Albanian cap-
ital of Tirana to register, Albanian leaders refused to 
provide a list of Jews living in Albania, and Albanian 
clerks issued false identity papers to protect all Jews in 
the country; 
Whereas in June 1990, Jewish American Congressman Tom 
Lantos and former Albanian American Congressman Joe 
DioGuardi were the first United States officials to enter 
Albania in 50 years and received from then Communist 
Party leader and Albanian President Ramiz Alia a thick 
file from the government’s archives containing hundreds 
of news clippings and personal letters sent by Jews to 
their Albanian rescuers after World War II, but that the 
Communist government prevented from being delivered 
for 45 years; 
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•HRES 812 IH 
Whereas Joe DioGuardi, upon returning to the United States 
in June 1990, sent the file to Elli Streit in Tel Aviv, 
Israel, for delivery to appropriate officials at Yad Vashem 
in Jerusalem for authentication; 
Whereas Josef Jakoel and his eldest daughter, Felicita, Alba-
nian Jews, led the emigration of nearly all Albanian Jews 
to Israel in 1991 as the Communist regime was col-
lapsing; 
Whereas Yad Vashem (the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ 
Remembrance Museum) has thus far designated 69 Alba-
nians as ‘‘Righteous Persons’’ and Albania as one of the 
‘‘Righteous among the Nations’’; 
Whereas in February 1995, Congressmen Tom Lantos, Ben-
jamin Gilman, and Jerrold Nadler and former Congress-
man Joe DioGuardi spoke at a ceremony at the United 
States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, 
commemorating the addition of Albania to the museum’s 
‘‘Righteous among the Nations’’ installation; 
Whereas based on the information authenticated by Yad 
Vashem, Jewish American author and philanthropist 
Harvey Sarner published ‘‘Rescue in Albania’’ in 1997, 
to call international attention to the unique role of the 
Albanian people in saving Jews from the Nazi Holocaust; 
Whereas in October 1997, the Albanian American Civic 
League and Foundation began the distribution of 10,000 
copies of ‘‘Rescue in Albania’’ with forewords by Con-
gressmen Lantos and Gilman to bring to the attention of 
the Jewish people and their leaders the plight of Alba-
nians in Kosova living under a brutal occupation at the 
hands of Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic, in order to 
forestall another genocide in Kosova; 
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•HRES 812 IH 
Whereas in a statement at the 2005 Albanian American Civic 
League and Foundation’s ‘‘Salute to Albanian Tolerance, 
Resistance, and Hope: Remembering Besa and the Holo-
caust’’, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the lib-
eration of the Nazi death camps, Dr. Mordechai Paldiel, 
then Director for the Righteous at Yad Vashem, com-
memorated the heroism of Albanians as ‘‘the only ones 
among rescuers in other countries who not only went out 
of their way to save Jews, but vied and competed with 
each other for the privilege of being a rescuer, thanks to 
besa’’, the code of honor that requires an Albanian to 
save the life of anyone seeking refuge, even if it means 
sacrificing one’s own life; 
Whereas in 2006, Shirley Cloyes DioGuardi, Balkan Affairs 
Adviser to the Civic League and Executive Director of 
the Albanian American Foundation, published ‘‘Jewish 
Survival in Albania & the Ethics of ‘Besa’ ’’ in the jour-
nal of the American Jewish Congress to document the 
saving role of Albanians and how that role was revealed, 
in spite of the Communist effort to suppress it; 
Whereas, on December 2, 2008, Arslan Rezniqi was the first 
Kosovar Albanian recognized by Yad Vashem’s ‘‘Right-
eous among Nations Department’’, for leading 400 Jew-
ish families from Decan, Kosova, into safety in Albania, 
and his son, Mustafa Rezniqi, who aided him as a teen-
ager during World War II, accepted the award from Yad 
Vashem for him, posthumously; 
Whereas Arif Alickaj, the Secretary of the Municipality of 
Decan, risked his job and his life helping the Rezniqis 
rescue Jews in Nazi-occupied Kosova by issuing false 
identity papers to insure their safe passage to Albania 
and for whom (like so many other Albanians from 
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•HRES 812 IH 
Kosova and Albania), Jewish survivors could not be 
found to validate his role, even posthumously, because of 
the Communist cover-up for 45 years of the archives doc-
umenting the many stories of Albanian heroism; 
Whereas Shirley Cloyes DioGuardi addressed the 2010 Inter-
national Oral History Association Conference in Prague, 
Czech Republic, and brought Leka Rezniqi, the grandson 
of Mustafa Rezniqi (who died in May 2008), to join her 
in revealing the ‘‘underground railroad’’ between Alba-
nians in Kosova and Albania that was essential to the 
rescue of Jews; and 
Whereas Albania is the only country in Europe that had more 
Jews in it after World War II than before it: Now, there-
fore, be it 
Resolved, That the House of Representatives— 
(1) commends the people of Albania and 
Kosova for protecting and saving the lives of all 
Jews who either lived in Albania or sought asylum 
there during the Holocaust; 
(2) commends Yad Vashem in Israel for recog-
nizing Albanians who took action at great risk to 
themselves to protect Jews during the Holocaust, for 
their humanity, courage, and heroism; 
(3) reaffirms on the 100th anniversary of Alba-
nia’s declaration of independence in 1912, its sup-
port for close ties between the United States and Al-
bania and between the United States and Kosova, 
which declared its independence in 2008; and 
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•HRES 812 IH 
(4) commends the officers, board of directors, 
and members of the Albanian American Civic 
League and Albanian American Foundation for their 
unstinting work, since 1989, to bring the plight of 
the Albanian people and the unique historic connec-
tion between Albanians and Jews to international at-
tention. 
Æ 
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