HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF - 1/2
(la Storia si ripete / prima parte di due)
- The Holocaust in Kosovo
(S. Mac Mathuna and J. Heathcote)
- Genocide in Kosovo: the Albanian Skenderbeg Division
(Carl Kosta Savich)
Per una documentazione in lingua italiana sullo stesso argomento si
veda l'importante articolo PASSATO PRESENTE, di Matthias Kuentzel, alle
URL:
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/1029
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/1030
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http://www.kosovo.com/ww2kos.html
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The Holocaust in Kosovo
Following the German occupation of Yugoslavia in 1941, the the country
was partitioned and a quisling fascist state in Serbia was
established under General Milan Nedic. In May 1941, a large
part of Kosovo, with a population of some 820,000 Serbs,
Montenegrins, Roma, Jews and Albanians was detached from
Serbia and given to the Axis state of Albania, whose leaders had
been installed by Mussolini's fascist regime in Italy. Albania was
one of the first countries in Europe to have a puppet
fascist regime established - in this case by when Mussolini
ordered Italian troops to invade and occupy the country.
This forced the Albanian ruler King Zog I, to flee to Greece
on April 7th, 1939, and Italy then formally annexed the country
and established a military government and viceroy.
The Italian fascists then began a programme to colonize the
country when thousands of settlers emigrated to Albania. An
Albanian Fascist Party was established with Albanian Black
skirts based on Italian models. Albania thus became an Axis
power - sending it troops to fight alongside Italy when Greece
was invaded in 1941. With support of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem,
Haj Amin El Husseini and Bedri Pejani, the Muslim leader of
the Albanian National committee, a call was made for a union
of the new Greater Albania with Bosnia and Herzegovina and
the Sandzak region of Serbia, into a Islamic state. The
Germans, whilst sympathetic to idea, rejected the plan.
As soon as the occupation of Kosovo began in 1941, the
Italian and German army began setting up an Albanian
gendarmerie in Kosovo that composed of some 1000 men, while
another 1000 were registered as armed volunteers, known as Vulnetana,
under the command of local officers. The Italian army also
began organising Albanian units to serve under its command.
Albanian quislings who had formed the so-called Kosovo
Committee, returned from exile, and according to Miranda
Vickers, writing in her book Between Serb and Albanian: A
History of Kosovo (Hurst, London, England, 1998):
Played an important role in collaborating with the
occupation forces, who were able to present themselves as
liberators of the Albanians and creators of a unified
Albania (p 122). These Albanian collaborators participated in the
forced deportation of thousands of Slavs, many of whom were
sent to forced labour camps. In scenes similar to those in
1999 and 2000, many thousands more were killed and scores of
villages were burnt down and their occupants (an estimated
10,000) were expelled. The Italian occupation forces encouraged
an extensive settlement of up to 72,000 Albanians from Albania to
Kosovo, according to Vickers (p123).
The SS set up the Skanderbeg division
Who was Skanderbeg the legendary hero of Albania who the SS
named a division after ? A Christian by birth, George
Kastrioti Skanderbeg (1405-1468), was given as a hostage to
the Ottoman Sultan Murat II to be brought up as a Muslim at
Adrianople (Edrine) when he was a child. He became an
officer in the Ottoman Turkish army and led them in many victories
over European armies. The Sultan was impressed with him that he
gave him the title Iskander Bey in Turkish, from "Iskander",
(Aleksander the Great, or prince Aleksander), and "Bey",
Master. The name was shortened to Skanderbeg, beg being the
local variant of bey. Later Kastrioti renounced Islam and
converted back to Christianity. Soon afterwards, he led a
revolt against the Ottomans in 1442. Sultan Mohammed II sent
Turkish armies to quell the uprising, but they were unable initially
to put down the Albanian revolt. However, after Kastrioti died
in 1468 the Turks soon occupied Albania and finally
established control over the territory. Albania would remain
part of the Ottoman Empire until 1912, when it finally won
independence.
On September 3rd, 1943, when Italy capitulated the German
were forced to occupy Albania. They sent in the 100th Jaeger
Division from Greece and the 297th Infantry Division from
Serbia and the German 1st Mountain Division to occupy
Albania, including Kosovo. These troops were organized into the XXI
Mountain Corps which was under the command of General Paul
Bader. However, the German's realised that additional
security forces for Kosovo were needed, as Germans troops
would be need for for defense of Albania's coastline. Thus,
the decision was made to form Albanian Skanderbeg division
for this purpose. Acting upon instructions of the SS war criminal
Henrich Himmler, the SS ordered the formation of the
Albanian Skanderbeg SS Division on April 17th, 1944. The SS
Command in Albania, in conduction with the Albanian National
Committee, found some 11,398 possible recruits for the
Skanderbeg SS division - most of whom were from Albanian gendarmes,
special police and para-military units in Kosovo that were under
the direct control of the Albanian Interior Minister Xhafer
Deva.
The official German designation for the division was 21
Waffen Gebirgs Division der SS "Skanderbeg" (Albanische Nr
1). The Albanians in the Skanderbeg Division were mostly
Muslims, of the Bektashi and Sunni sects of Islam. The division
however, contained several hundred Albanian Catholics,
followers of Jon Marko Joni. The SS designed a distinctive
arm patch for the division, consisting of a black
double-headed eagle on a red background, the national symbol
of Albania. The word "Skanderbeg", embroidered in white, appeared
above the eagle and was worn on the left sleeve. The right collar
patch consisted of a helmet with a goat's head on top, the
helmet supposedly worn by Skanderbeg.
They were helped by the newly formed Albanian Nazi party,
known as the Balli Kombetar (BK) which has been established
through the efforts of Ernst Kaltenbrunner (later executed
as a war criminal after the war). Like with the KLA (Kosovo
Liberation Army) today, they wanted the establishment of a Greater
Albanian state within the 1941 borders (including Kosovo) set up
by the Axis powers. Many of its leaders and supporters were
drawn from rich landowners in Albania, who saw fascism as a
political system that would protect their privileges in a
"unified" Albania.
According to Vickers, the Skanderbeg division - which was
stationed and operated in Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro -
"indiscriminately killed Serbs and Montenegrins" in Kosovo.
The actions of these Albanian quislings led to the departure
of another estimated 10,000 Slavs from the province. Altogether it is
estimated that at least 50-60,000 Slavs were expelled from
Kosovo during the Second World War. This however, does not
excuse the terror unleashed by the Yugoslav state both in
1945 under Tito and later in the 1990's under under
Milosevic, when, thousands of Albanian civilians were either
murdered, or their houses burnt down or were expelled from Kosovo. Like
in 1945, many who remained were subjected to gross
violations of human rights including unfair trials, torture
and extra-judicial executions.
In June 1944, the Skanderbeg SS Division was based in
Montenegro, whilst other parts of the division were based in
the Kosovo towns of Pristina, Pec, Jakova and Prizren. The
first major action of the division occurred in August, 1944
in Kosovo, and in September, the Skanderbeg SS Division occupied
part of Macedonia, and helped to garrison the capital Skopje. It
was also active in the southern part of the puppet state of
Serbia.
Although some 6,500 Albanian volunteers had come forward to
join the SS Saknderbeg division, by October 1944 desertions
were rife: Over two-thirds of the volunteers were declared
unfit for military service and the Division suffered some
3,500 desertions within its first two months of operation. The high
desertion rate resulted in the unit being disbanded and reformed
with the German SS officers forming Kampfgruppe "Skanderbeg"
which joined up with the SS "Prinz Eugen" regiment in
Yugoslavia. This battle group was was in action in December
1944/January 1945 around Zwornik, Bjellina and Brcko. On
30th January 1945, a small number of Germans and Albanians
from this unit were transferred to 32nd SS-Panzer
grenadier-Division on 30th January 1945 and sent to the Oder front in
1945. German forces had fled Kosovo by November 1944, leaving
the BK (then numbering some 9,000 members) to fend for
itself. Albanian fascists continued to resist partisans
representing Tito's emerging government until the spring of
1945.
Albanian extremists target the Jews of Kosovo
At the beginning of the second world war, Kosovo had a
population of 550 Jews. Altogether, 210 perished in German
concentration camps - the only Jews to be killed in the war
in Kosovo - representing 38.18% of the Jewish population.
This compares with Belgrade, were only 1,115 survived the
war out of almost 12,000 (9%), and Croatia, where an estimated
25% of the Jewish population survived. Thus, you were more likely to
survive the war if you were Jewish and lived in Albania or
Kosovo rather than Belgrade or Croatia. However, this is not
to say that it was any easier for Jews, Roma or Slavs - the
three national groups designated by the Nazi's as "subhuman
races", and top of their list for extermination or
deportation by the Nazis or their quislings in Croatia,
Serbia and Kosovo.
In fact, one of the first acts of the SS Skanderbeg division
in April 1944 was the arresting of 281 Jews in Pristina, and
"510 Jews, Communists, Partisans and individual suspects".
According to Bernard J. Fischer, writing in Albania at War,
1939-1945 (Purdue University Press, West Lafayette, Indians,
USA, 1999, p. 187). All 281 Jews were deported to Germany -
probably to Bergen-Belsen death camp. However, the German occupation
authorities allowed Albania an unusual degree of autonomy and,
for the most part, refrained from deporting and/or murdering
the majority of Albanian Jews. Most of the tiny Jewish
population of "old Albania" (about 200) survived the
Holocaust. The Germans, however, confiscated most
Jewish-owned property in 1943-1944.
Indeed, Albania is the only country occupied by Germany in
which the Jewish population actually grew during the war and
was larger than when the war started in 1939. There were
some 1,800 Jews in Albania by war's end, mostly escapees
from the Holocaust in Greece and Yugoslavia. Albanians sheltered
them and were later honored by the Israel for their efforts.
As the war drew to a close, Yugoslav Partisans launched a
large-scale military campaign in Kosovo to consolidate their
rule and the Albanians reacted with a general insurrection,
that forced the new authorities to declare martial law in
the region in 1945. Because of their co-operation with the Germans,
the Kosovo Albanians were seen as politically unreliable and
thus a possible threat to the stability and territorial
integrity of the new Communist Yugoslavia. Thus, Kosovo
emerged from the war in a state of siege, with its
population seen as a threat rather than as an asset.
Following the war, the post war population of Jews in Kosovo
dwindled considerably after the war to only 35 who were
registered as living in Pristina in 1989 and 41 in 1995.
Most reports now suggest that Albanian extremists have
driven them out since NATO drove out the Yugoslav army in 1999. The
Jewish population of Yugoslavia today is estimated to be 2500
with most of them living in Belgrade. The recent conflict in
Kosovo has ironically led to the exodus of the last of the
remaining Jews of Kosovo - something that didn't even happen
in the last war in 1941.
Sean Mac Mathuna and John Heathcote
original text and more information
http://www.flamemag.dircon.co.uk/skanderbeg.htm
More about Kosovo Albanian Nazism during the WW2
http://www.kosovo.com/hist2.html#fascist
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http://www.kosovo.com/skenderbeyss.html
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Albanian Nazi troops in WW2 Launched a Wide Spread Terror Against
Kosovo Serbs
Second World War
by Carl Kosta Savich
Genocide in Kosovo
Albanian Skenderbeg Division
The historical and political precedents for the creation of a greater
Sqiperia or Greater Albania was set during World War II when
the Kosovo and Metohija regions along with territory
Southwest of lake Skutari from Montenegro and the western
region of Southern Serbia, or Juzna Srbija (now part of
Macedonija), were annexed to Albania by the Axis powers led by Fascist
Italy and Nazi Germany, under a plan devised by Benito
Mussolini and Adolf Hitler to dismember and to destroy the
Serbian Nation and people, which the Germans and Italians
perceived as the main threat to the axis powers and to the
Third Reich in the Balkan.
On April 7, 1939, Italian troops invaded and occupied
Albania forcing the Albanian ruler King Zog I Ahmed Bey
Zogu, to flee to Greece. Italy formally annexed into the
Kingdom of Italy under the Italian king Victor Immanuel and
established a military government and viceroy. The Italian began
a program to colonize the country when thousands of settlers
emigrated to Albania. An Albanian Fascist Party was
established with Albanian Black skirts based on Italian
models. The Albanian Army consisted of three infantry
brigades of 12 000 men.
On October 28 1940, Italy invaded Greece from Albania with
10 Italian divisions and the Albanian Army but were driven
back.
Germany sought to assist the Italian-Albanian offensive by
operation Alpine Violet, a plan to move a corps of tree
German mountain divisions to Albania by air and sea. Instead
German built up a heavy concentration of the German Twelfth
Army on the northwest Greek Border with Bulgaria, from where
the German invasion was launched.
On April 6, 1941, Nazi Germany and the axis powers invaded
Yugoslavia, Operation Punishment, and Greece forcing the
capitulation of Yugoslavia on the 17th, and Greece on the
23rd. Yugoslavia was subsequently occupied and dismembered.
The Axis powers established a greater Albania or greater
Shqiperia at the expense of Serbia and Montenegro. Territory from
Montenegro was annexed to Greater Albania. From Serbia, the
Kosovo and Metohija were ceded to greater Albania, along
with the western part of Southern Serbia (Juzna Srbija), now
part of Macedonia, an area which was part of Stara Srbija
(Ancient Old Serbia). This Kosovo-metohija region and the
surrounding territory annexed to Greater Albania was called "New
Albania".
To create an ethnically pure Shqiptar Kosovo, which Albanian
called "Kosova", the Shqiptari (Albanians) launched a
widescale campaigns of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Ethnic
Serbs in the Kosovo-Metohija regions were massacred, and
their homes were burned, and survivors were brutally driven out
and expelled in policy of ethnic cleansing and genocide.
The Balli Kombetar (BK or National Union) was an Albanian
nationalist group led by Midhat Fresheri and Ali Klissura
whose political objective was to in incorporate
Kosovo-Metohija into a Greater Albania and to ethnically
cleanse the region of Orthodox Serbs
The Abanian Committee of Kosovo organized massive campaigns
of ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Orthodox
Serbian inhabitants of Kosovo- Metohuja. A contemporary
report described the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Serbs
as follows:
Armed with material supplied by the Italians, the Albanians
hurled themselves against helpless settlers in their homes
and villages. According to the most reliable sources, the
Albanian burned many Serbian settlements, killing some of
the people and driving out others who escaped to the
mountains. At present other Serbian settlement are being attacked and
the property of individuals and of communities is either being
confiscated or destroyed. It is not possible to ascertain at
the present time the exact number of victims of those
atrocities, but it may be estimated that at least between
30.000 and 40.000 perished.
Bedri Pejani, the Muslim leader of the Albanian National
committee, called for the extermination of Ortodox Serbian
Cristians in Kosovo Metohija and for a union of a Greater
Albania with Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Rashka (Sandzak)
region of Serbia, into a great Islamic state. The grand
Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin El Husseini was presented to Pejani
a plan which he approved as a being in the interest of Islam. The
Germans however rejected the plan.
On September 3, 1943, Italy capitulated by signing an
armistice with the Allies. The German were now forced to
occupy Albania with the collapse of the Italian forces. The
Germans sent the 100th Jaeger Division from Greece and the
297th Infantry Division from Serbia and the German 1st
Mountain Division to occupy Albania. These troops were organized into
the XXI Mountain Corps which was under the command of General
Paul Bader.
Additional security forces for the interior were needed,
however, to free up Germans troops for defense of the
coastline. The decision was made to form an Albanian SS
mountain division for this purpose. In April in 1944, recruitment
for the Albanian SS division began under direction of the newly
formed Albanian Nazi party, which has been formed through
the efforts of Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Acting upon instructions
of Reichsfuehrer SS Henrich Himmler, the SS main office
ordered the formation of an Albanian volunteer mountain
division on April 17, 1944. SS Brigadefuehrern and Generalmajor
of the Waffen SS Josef Fitzhum, who Headed the Higher SS and Police
Command in Albania, oversaw the forming and training of the
division.
The SS high Command planed to create a mountain division of
10.000 men. The Higher SS and Police Command in Albania, in
conduction with the Albanian National Committee, listed
11.398 possible recruits for the Waffen SS mountain
division. Most of these recruits were "kossovars", shqiptar
Ghegs from Kosovo Metohija in Serbia. The Shqiptar Tosks were
found mainly in southern Albania. Most of the Shqiptar collaborators
with the nazi forces were theNazi forces were the so-called
Kossovars, ethnic Shqiptars from the Kosmet of Serbia. The
Nazi German-sponsored Albanian gendarmes, special police and
para-military units were made up by Kossovars. The Kossovars
were under the direct control of the Albanian Interior
Minister Xhafer Deva.
The Skanderbeg Division was formed and trained in Kosovo and
was made up mostly of muslim Shqiptar Kossovars. There were
only a small number of Albanians from Albania proper in the
division. The Skanderbeg Mountain Division of the Wafen SS
was thus essentially a Kosovo or Kosmet Division. The
Division was stationed and operated in Kosovo and other Serbian
regions almost exclusively.
Of the 11.398 recruits listed for the Division, 9.275 were
ascertained to be suitable to draft in the Waffen SS. Of
those suitable to be drafted, 6.491 Albanian were chosen and
inducted into the Skanderbeg Division. To this Albanian core
were added veteran German troops primarily Reichdeutsche
from Austria and Volkdeutcshe officers, NCOs, and enlisted men,
transferred from the 7th SS Mountain Division "Prinz Eugen"
which was stationed in Bosnia-Hercegovina. The Kosovo
Albanian 21st Waffen Gebirgs Division der SS "Skanderbeg"
consisted in total of 8.500 - 9.000 men of all ranks. The
6.491 Shqiptar recruits were assembled at depots in Kosovo
where the formation and the training of the division began.
The official designation for the division was 21 Waffen
Gebirgs Division der SS "Skanderbeg" (Albanische Nr 1). The
SS Main Office designed a distinctive arm patch for the
division, consisting of a black double-headed eagle on a red
background, the national symbol of Albania. The word
"Skanderbeg", embroidered in white, appeared above the eagle
and was warn on the left sleeve. The right collar patch consisted
of a helmet with a goat's head on top, the helmet supposedly worn
by George Kastrioti Skanderbeg, after whom the division was
named. The Shqiptars recruits in the division wore a white
skullcap, the national attire of the Shqiptar Ghegs. The SS
main office also issued gray skullcaps with the Totenkopf
(death's head) insignia sewn on the front below the
Hoheitszeichen (the national symbol of Nazi Germany, consisting of a
white eagle over a Nazi swastika).
Division was named after George Kastrioti, or Gjergj
Kastriota, also as Kastriotis (1405-1468), national hero of
Albania, who fought for the Ottoman Turks. As a child,
Kastrioti was given as a hostage to Sultan Murat II to be
brought as a Muslim at Adrianople (Edrine). Kastrioti became an officer
in the Ottoman Turkish army and led the Turkish forces in
many victories over Christian troops. Murat II was impressed
with his valor and bravery in his battle for Islam and gave
him the name Iskander Bey in Turkish, from "Iskander",
Aleksander the Great, or prince Aleksander, and "bey",
master. The name was shortened to Skanderbeg, beg being the
local variant of bey. Later Kastrioti renounced Islam and
converted to Christianity and attacked his former Ottoman Turkish
masters. He captured the Albanian capital Kroja from the
Turkish governor and proclaimed a revolt against the Turks
in 1442. Sultan Mohammed II sent Turkish armies to defeat
the renegade Kastrioti, but he was able to defeat Turkish
forces, wich besieged Kroja but could not capture it.
Kastrioti died in 1468. Kroja surrendered in 1479 and the Turks
occupied Albania.
The Albanians in the Skanderbeg Division were mostly
Muslims, of the Bektashi and Sunni sects of Islam. The
division contained several hundred Albanian Catholics,
followers of Jon Marko Joni.
The first commander of the Skandereg division was SS
Brigadefuehrer Generalmajor of the Waffen SS Josef Fitshum,
who commanded the division from April to June 1944. After
the Juli 20, assassination plot against Hitler, Fitzhum was
appointed supreme commander in Albania. In June, SS Stardentenfuehrer
August Schmidhuber was appointed division commander, a post
would hold until August 1944. On June 21, 1944, Schmidhuber
was promoted to SS Oberfuehrer and later in the war, he
would be promoted to SS Brigadefuhrer. SS
Oberstrumbannfuhrer Alfred Graf commanded the reorganized remnants
of the Skanderbeg Division from August 1944, to may, 1945.
The Shultzstaffel or SS was created in the period 1923-1925
and was initially known as the Stosstrupp (Shock troop)
"Adolf Hitler". On Januari 16, 1929, Hitler appointed
Heinrich Himmler leader of SS, Reichsfuehrer SS. The SS was
envisioned as an elite troop of the Party, a praetorian
bodyguard to Hitler and the Nazi leadership. The SS was a formation
"composed of the best physically, the most dependable, and the
most faithful men in the Nazi movement. In 1940, combat units
of the SS were formed, collectively termed the Waffen SS.
Approximately 30-40 Waffen SS divisions were formed during
the war, divided into three groupings, Waffen divisions made
by Germans, those made up of ethnic Germans outside the
Reich, and those made up of non-Germans. "Divisions der SS",
Divisions of the SS.
On September 27,1939, Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler as
Chief of German Police consolidated the Gestapo, Kripo, and
SD under an SS Main Office of Reich Security, or the RSHA.
The RSHA was the actual body entrusted with the overall
administration of the final solution at the Jewish Problem,
what became known as the Holocaust. The SS Economic and administrative
Main Office or WVHA, run the concentration camp system. Nazi
concentration camp personnel and guards, althout not under
the command of the Army or the Kommandoamt der Waffen SS,
neverthless, wore Waffen SS uniforms and received Waffen SS
paybooks. Reichfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler oversaw a program
that resulted in the extermination of millions of men, women
and children. Himmler was the Arhictect of genocide and of the
Holocaust and the Wafen SS was his "private army", the black
angels".
In Jun,1944, The Skanderbeg Waffen SS Mountain Division
engaged in large-scale field maneuvers in the area between
the towns of Berane and Adrijevica in Monte Negro (Crna
Gora). Garrisons of Skanderbeg division were established in
Kosovo towns of Pec, Jakova, Prizren, and Pristina. Further training
of the division continued in August as new recruits were
inducted in the division. An artillery battalion of the
division, consisting of two batteries, was located in
Gnjilane.
The first major action of the division occurred in August,
144 in Kosovo. In September, 1944, the Skanderbeg division
occupied the Southern Serbia (Juzna Srbija) region now part
of the communist created republic of Macedonia, and helped
to garrison the region. The Skanderberg division was ordered
into the areas surrounding the towns Skoplje (or Skopje),
Kumanovo Presevo and Bujanovac. Sanderbeg operated in Stara Serbija
(old and Ancient Serbia) region, in the towns of Pec,
Gnjilane,Djakovica, Tetovo Gostivar, and Kosovska Mitrovica,
then part of Kosovo Metohija and Southern Serbia.
In November, 1944, when the German armies in the Balkan were
retreating from Yugoslavia and the Balkans, the Skanderbeg
division remnants were reorganized into Regimentegruppe 21
SS Gebirgs "Skanderbeg" and was transferred to Skoplje,
according to one account of the movements of the Battle
group. This SS Kampfgrupe "Skanderbeg", along with the prinz
Eugen Divisin, defended the Vardar valley. The battle group
"Skanderbeg" and Prinz Eugen held the Vardar area because it
was the sole corridor of escape for the retreating German armies
in Alexander Loehr's Army Group E, which was retreating from Greece
and Aegean Islands.
The Skanderbeg Battle Group along with the Prinz Eugen
Division retreated to the to the Brcko region of
Bosnia-Herzegovina by mid-january 1945. At this time the
remaining Skanderbeg personnel were incorporated into the
14th SS Volonteer Mountain Infantry Regiment of the 7th SS division
Prinz Eugen. The remnants of the Skanderbeg Division fought in
this formation until the end of the war, retreating to
Austria in May, 1945.
The Skanderbeg division engaged in a policy of ethnic
cleansing and genocide against the Serbian Orthodox
Christian populations of the regions under occupation by the
division in Kosovo Metohija, Montenegro, and southern
Serbia. Balkan Historian Robert Lee Wolff, in the "Balkans in Our
time", described the genocide committed against Kosovo Serbs by
the Shqiptar 21st Waffen Gebirgs Division der SS Skenderbeg as
follows:
In the regions annexed by the Albanians, their so-called
Skanderbeg division, made up of members of the Albanian
minority in Yugoslavia, massacred Serbs with impunity.
Historian L.H. Stavrianos, in "The Balkan Since 1453",
described the genocide committed against Orthodox Serbs by
the Shqiptar Skanderbeg Division in these terms: Yugoslav
Albanians, organized in their fascist Skanderbeg Division,
conducted an indiscriminate massacre of Serbians.
The Skanderbeg Division played a role in the Holocaust, the
genocide if European Jewry, by rounding up scores of Kosovo
Jews in a group roughly 500 persons deemed enemies of the
Third Reich when the division occupied Prizren in Kosovo
Metohija. The division sought to create ethnically pure
Kosovo, ethnically cleansed of Orthodox Serbs, Jews and Gypsies
the untermenschen (subhuman), who were targeted for extermination.
The Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal declared the Shutzstaffel
or SS criminal organization and every individual member of
SS was found to Be a war criminal guilty of "planning and
carrying out crimes against humanity". The Shqiptar Kosovars
in the 21st Waffen Gebirgs Division "Skanderbeg" committed
war crimes and genocide against the Orthodox Serbian population
of Kosovo. The Shqiptar planed and carried out crimes against
humanity in Kosovo. Orthodox Serbians of Kosovo were the
victims of ethnic cleansing and genocide. This genocide
would contribute in the Shqiptar goal and policy to create
an ethnically pure, Shqiptar Kosovo, in an attempt to create
a greater Shqiperia or greater Albania. Following World war
II, the Yugoslav Communist dictatorship allowed the policy of ethnic
cleansing and genocide against the Orthodox Serbs to continue,
and indeed, gave greater impetus and legitimacy to the
policy.
---
During World War II, the Axis powers dismembered and
occupied Yugoslavia and created a greater Albania by
annexing the Serbian region of Kosovo-Metohija by Nazi
Germany, Germany formed a Shqiptar "Kosovar" Waffen SS
Division, the 21st Waffen Gebirgs Division der SS "Skanderbeg"
which engaged in a policy of ethnic cleansing and genocide against
the Orthodox Serbian population of Kosovo. The result was
that the Shqiptars, with the help of Germany, were able to
virtually exterminate the Serbian and Jews populations of
Kosovo, thereby creating an ethnically pure, Nazi
German-sponsored Greater Albania or Greater Shqiperia.
One more text on the same subject by C. Savich
Kosovo During World War II, 1941-1945...
Genocide in Kosovo: The Skenderbeg SS Division
http://www.serbianna.com/columns/savich/004.shtml
by Carl Savich
November 28, 2000
Historical evidence demonstrates that genocide and ethnic cleansing
were perpetrated upon the Serbian population of Kosovo and
Metohija, first by theY Ottoman Turks, by Albanian leaders
and the populace , then during the occupation by fascist
Italy and Nazi Germany by Albanian fascists and Nazis, and
continued throughout the Communist period , during which
periods the ethnic Serbian population was forced to emigrate...
The historical and political precedent for the creation of a
Greater Albania or Greater ShqiperiaY was set during World
War II when the Kosovo and Metohija regions, along with
territory southwest of Lake Scutari from Montenegro and the
western region of Macedonia,, which was then southern
Serbia, or Juzna Srbija, were annexed to Albania by the Axis powers,
led by fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, under a plan devised by
Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler which sought to dismemberY
the Serbian nation and people, which the Germans and
Italians perceived as the main threat to the Axis powers and
to the Third Reich in the Balkans.
On April 7, 1939, Italian troops invaded and occupied
Albania, forcing the Albanian ruler King Zog I, Ahmed Bey
Zogu, to flee to Greece.Italy next formally annexed Albania
into the Kingdom of Italy under the Italian King Victor
Immanuel and established a military government and Viceroy.The
Italians began a program to colonize the country when thousands of
settlers emigrated to Albania.An Albanian Fascist Party was
established with Albanian Blackshirts basedY on the Italian
models.The Albanian army consisted of three infantry
brigades of 12,000 men.
On October 28, 1940, Italy invaded Greece from Albania with
10 Italian divisions and the Albanian army but were driven
back.
Germany sought to assist the Italian-Albanian offensive by
Operation Alpine Violet, a plan to move a corps of three
German mountain divisions to Albania by air and sea.
Instead, the Germans built up a heavy concentration of the
German Twelfth Army on the northwest Greek border with Bulgaria,
from where the German invasion was launched.
On April 6, l941, Nazi Germany and the Axis powers invaded
Yugoslavia, Operation Punishment, and Greece, forcing the
capitulation of Yugoslavia on the 17th and Greece on the
23rd.Yugoslavia was subsequently occupied and
dismembered.The Axis powers established a Greater Albania or Greater
Shqiperia at the expense of Serbia and Montenegro. Territory
from Montenegro was annexed to Greater Albania. From Serbia,
the Kosovo and Metohija regions were ceded to Greater
Albania, along with the western part of southern Serbia
(Juzna Srbija), now part of Macedonia, an area which was
part of Stara Srbija (Ancient or Old Serbia).This Kosovo-Metohija
region and the durrounding territory annexed to Greater Albania
was called iNew Albaniai.
To create an ethnically pure Albanian Kosovo, which the
Albanians called iKosovai,theY Albanians (Shqiptari)
launched a widescale campaigns of ethnic cleansing and
genocide.Ethnic Serbs in the Kosovo-Metohija regions were
massacred, and their homes were burned, and the survivors were
brutally driven out and expelled in a policy of ethnic cleansing and
genocide.
The Balli Kombetar (BK or National Union) was an Albanian
nationalist group led by Midhat Frasheri and Ali Klissura
whose political objective was to incorporate Kosovo-Metohija
into a Greater Albania and to ethnically cleanse the region
of Orthodox Serbs.
The Albanian Committee of Kosovo organized massive campaigns
of ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Orthodox
Serbian inhabitants of Kosovo-Metohija.A contemporary report
described the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Serbs as
follows:
Armed with material supplied by the Italians, the Albanians
hurled themselves against the helpless settlers in their
homes and villages. Accoring to the most reliables sources
the Albanians burned many Serbian settlements, killing some
of the people and driving out others who escaped to the
mountains. At present other Serbian settlements are being attacked and
the property of indviduals and of communities is either being
confiscated or destroyed. It is not possible to ascertain at
the present the exact number of victims of those atrocities,
but it may be estimated that at least between 30,000 and
50,000 perished.
Bedri Pejani, the Muslim leader of the Albanian National
Committee, called for the extermination of Orthodox Serbian
Christians in Kosovo-Metohija and for a union of a Greater
Albania with Bosnia-Hercegovina and the Rashka (Sandzak)
region of Serbia into a Greater Islamic State. The Grand
Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el Husseini, was presented the Pejani
plan which he approved as being in the interest of Islam. The
Germans,however, rejected the plan.
On September 3, 1943, Italy capitulated by signing an
armistice with the Allies. The Germans were then forced to
occupy Albania with the collapse of the Italian forces.The
Germans sent he 100th Jaeger Division from Greece and the
297th Infantry Division from Serbia and the German 1st
Mountain Division to occupy Albania.Y These troops were organized into
the XXI Mountain Corps, which was under the command of
General Paul Bader.
Bedri Pejani organized and headed the Second Albanian League
of Prizren in 1943, which sought to revive the goals of the
First League of Prizren in 1878, whiich were to unite all
the lands where Albanians lived into a single, unified
Greater Albania. The Second Albanian League,like the First,
was reactionary, anti-democratic, racist, authoritarian, and
allied with Nazi Germany. Pejani found an ardent supporter of the
Second League in Heinrich Himmler, the iarchitect of
genocidei and the person who oversaw the Final Solution to
the Jewish Problem. The Second League fit perfectly into
Hitleris New Order in Europe. Moreover, Italian anthropological
research had revealed that the Ghegs were Aryans or Nordic, the
herrenvolk or master race like the Germans.Pejani and the
Second League opposed democracy and human rights but sought
to create a Greater Albania through genocide and ethnic
cleansing. The 21st Waffen SS Division Skanderbeg resulted
from the efforts of the Second League of Prizren.
Germany re-occupied Albania and Kosovo in 1943. Additional
security forces for the interior were needed,however, to
free up German troops for defense of the coastline. The
decision was made to form an Albanian SS mountain division
for this purpose. In April, 1944, recruitment for the Albanian
SS Division began under the direction of the newly formed Albanian
Nazi Party, which had been formed through the efforts of
Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Acting upon the instructions of
Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler, the SS Main Office
ordered the formation of an Albanian Volunteer mountain
Division on April 17,1944. Himmler planned to create two Albanian SS
divisions. SS Brigadefuehrer and Generalmajor of the Waffen SS
Josef Fitzhum, who headed the Higher SS and Police Command
in Albania, oversaw the formation and training of the
division.
The SS High Command planned to create a mountain division of
10,000 men. The Higher SS and Police Command in Albania, in
conjunction with the Albanian National Committee, listed
11,398 possible recruits for the Waffen SS mountain
division. Most of these recruits, roughly two-thirds were
Kosovars, Albanian (Shqiptar) Ghegs from Kosovo-Metohija in Serbia.
The Shqiptar Tosks were found mainly in southern Albania. Most
of the Shqiptar collaborators with the Nazi forces were the
so-called Kosovars, ethnic Shqiptars from the Kosmet of
Serbia. The Albanian gendarmes, special police, and
para-military units were Kosovars. The Kosovars were under
the direct control of the Albanian Interior Minister, Xhafer
Deva.
The Skanderbeg Division was formed and trained in Kosovo and
was made up mostly of Muslim Shqiptar Kosovars.There were
only a small number of Albanians from Albania proper in the
division, about one-third.Y The Skanderbeg Mountain Division
of the Waffen SS was thus essentially a Kosovo or Kosmet
division. The division was stationed and operated in Kosovo
and other Serbian regions almost exclusively.
Of the 11,398 recruits listed for the division, 9,275 were
ascertained to be suitable to draft in the Waffen SS. Of
those suitable to be drafted, 6,491 Albanians were chosen
and inducted into the Skanderbeg Division. To this Albanian
core were added veteran German troops, primarily Reichdeutsche
from Austria and Volkdeutsche officers, NCOs, and enlisted men,
transferred from the 7th SS Mountain Division iPrinz Eugeni
which was stationed in Bosnia-Hercegovina.The Kosovo
Albanian 21st Waffen Gebirgs Division der SS iSkanderbegi
consisted in total of 8,500-9,000 men of all ranks.The 6,491
Albanian recruits were assembled at depots in Kosovo where the
formation and the training of the division began.
The official designation for the division was 21. Waffen
Gebirgs Division der SS iSkanderbegi (Albanische Nr.1).The
SS Main Office designed a distinctive arm patch for the
division, consisting of a black, double-headed eagle on a
red background, the national symbol for Albania. The word
iSkanderbegi , embroidered in white, appeared above the eagle and was
worn on the left sleeve.The left collar patch consisted of a
helmet with a goatis head on the top, the helmet supposedly
worn by George Kastrioti, Skanderbeg, after whom the
division was named. The Shqiptar recruits in the division
wore a white skullcap, the national attire of the Shqiptar
Ghegs. The SS Main Office also issued gray skullcaps with
the Totenkopf (Deathis Head) insignia sewn on the front below the
Hoheitzeichen (the national symbol of Nazi Germany, consisting of
a white eagle over a Nazi swastika).
The division was named after George Kastrioti, or Gjergj
Kastriota, also as Kastriotis (1405-1468), a national hero
of Albania, who fought against the Ottoman Turks.As a child,
Kastrioti was given as a hostage to Sultan Murad II to be
brought us as a Muslim at Adrianople (Edirne).Kastrioti
became an officer in the Ottoman Turkish army and led the Turkish
forces in many victories over Christian troops.Murad II was
impressed with his valor and bravery in his battles for
Islam and gave him the name Iskander Bey in Turkish, from
iIskanderi, Alexander the Great, or Prince Alexander, and
iBeyi, master.
The nameY was shortened to Skanderbeg, beg being the local
variant of beg.Later, Kastrioti renounced Islam and
converted to Christianity and attacking his former Ottoman
Turkish masters. He captured the Albanian capital Kruja from
the Turkish governor and proclaimed a revolt against the
Turks in 1442.Sultan Mohammed II sent Turkish armies to defeat the
renegade Kastrioti, but he was able to defeat the Turkish
forces, which besieged Kruja but could not capture it.
Kastrioti died in 1468. Kruja surrendered in 1479 and the
Turks occupied Albania.
The Albanians in the Skanderbeg Division were mostly
Muslims, of the Bektashi and Sunni sects of IslamThe
division contained several hundred Albanian Catholics,
followers of Jon Marko Joni.
The first commander of the Skanderbeg division was SS
Brigadefuehrer and Generalmajor of the Waffen SS Josef
Fitzhum, who commanded the division from April to June,
1944. After the July 20, 1944 assassination plot against
Hitler, Fitzhum was appointed supreme commander in Albania.
In June, SS Standartenfuehrer August Schmidhuber, who had been a member
of the 7th SS Mountain Division iPrinz Eugeni, was appointed
commander of the division, a post he would hold until
August, 1944. On June 21, 1944, Schmidhuber was promoted to
SS Oberfuehrer, and later in the war, he would be promoted
to SS Brigadefuehrer. SS Obersturmbannfuehrer Alfred Graf
commanded the reorganized remnants of the Skanderbeg Division from
August, 1944, to May, 1945.
The Schutzstaffel or SS was created in the period 1923-1925
and was initially known as the Stosstrupp (Shock Troop)
iAdolf Hitleri. On January 16, 1929, Hitler appointed
Heinrich Himmler leader of the SS, Reichsfuehrer SS. The SS
was envisioned as an elite troop of the Party, a Praetorian
bodyguard to Hitler and the Nazi leadership. The SS was a formation
icomposed of the best physically, the most dependable, and the
most faithful men in the Nazi movement.i In 1940, combat
units of the SS were formed, collectively termed the Waffen
SS. Approximately 30-40 Waffen SS divisions were formed
during the war,divided into three groupings, Waffen SS
divisions made up of Germans, those made up of ethnic Germans
outside the Reich, and those made up of non-Germans, iDivisions der
SS, Divisions of the SS.
On September 27, 1939, Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler as
Chief of German Police consolidated the Gestapo, Kripo, and
SD under an SS Main Office of Reich Security, or the RSHA.
The RSHA was the actual body entrusted with the overall
administration of the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem,
what became known as the Holocaust. The SS Economic and Administrative
Main Office, or WVHA, ran the concentration camp system. Nazi
concentration camp personnel and guards, although not under
the command of the Army or the Kommandoamt der Waffen SS,
nevertheless, wore Waffen SS uniforms and received Waffen SS
paybooks. Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler oversaw a
program that resulted in the extermination of millions of men, women,
and children. Himmler was the architect of genocide and of the
Holocaust and the Waffen SS was his iprivate armyi, the
iblack angelsi. As part of the Skanderbeg Waffen SS
Division, Kosovar Albanians would play a role in the Final
Solution, the Holocaust. Kosovo Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies
would be victims.
In June, 1944, the Skanderbeg Waffen SS Mountain Division
engaged in large-scale field maneuvers in the area between
the towns of Berane and Andrijevica in Montenegro ( Crna
Gora). Garrisons of the Skanderbeg division were established
in the Kosovo towns of Pec, Djakovica, Prizren, and Pristina.
Further training of the divisionY continued in August as new recruits
were inducted in the division. An artillery battalion of the
division, consisting of two batteries, was located in
Gnjilane.
The first major action of the division occurred in August,
1944 in Kosovo. In September, 1944, the Skanderbeg Division
occupied Macedonia, then denoted as southern Serbia, and
helped to garrison the region. The Skanderbeg Division was
ordered into the areas surrounding the towns of Skopje,
Kumanovo, Presevo, and Bujanovac. Skanderbeg operated in the Stara
Srbija (Old Serbia) region, in the Kosovo-Metohija towns of
Pec, Gnjilane, Djakovica, Kosovska Mitrovica, and the
Macedonian towns of Tetovo and Gostivar. The city of Tetovo
was a major base for the Skanderbeg Division.
In November, 1944, when the German armies in the Balkans
were retreating from Yugoslavia and Greece, the Skanderbeg
Division remnants were reorganized into Regimentgruppe 21.
SS Gebirgs iSkanderbegi and was transferred to Skopje,
according to an account of the movements of the Battle Group.
This SS Kampfgruppe iSkanderbegi, along with the Prinz Eugen Division,
defended the Vardar valley. The Battle Group iSkanderbegi
and Prinz Eugen held the Vardar area because it was the sole
corridor of escape for the retreating German armies in
Alexander Loehris Army Group E, which was then retreating
from Greece and the Aegean Islands.
The Skanderbeg Battle Group along with the Prinz Eugen
Division retreated to the Brcko region of Bosnia-Hercegovina
by mid-January, 1945. At this time, the remaining Skanderbeg
personnel were incorporated into the 14th SS Volunteer
Mountain infantry Regiment of the 7th SS Division Prinz
Eugen. The remnants of the Skanderbeg division fought in this
formation until the end of the war, retreating to Austria in May, 1945.
The Skanderbeg Division engaged in a policy of ethnic
cleansing and genocide against the Serbian Orthodox
population of the regions under occupation by the division
in Kosovo-Metohija, Montenegro, and Macedonia. Balkan
historian Robert Lee Wolff, in The Balkans in Our Time, described the
genocide committed against Kosovo Serbs by the Albanian 21st
Waffen Gebirgs Division der SS iSkanderbegi as follows:
In the regions annexed by the Albanians, their so-called
Skanderbeg division,
made up of members of the Albanian minority in Yugoslavia,
massacred Serbs with impunity..
Historian L.S. Stavrianos, in The Balkans Since 1453,
described the genocide committed against Orthodox Kosovo
Serbs by the Skanderbeg Division in these terms:
Yugoslav Albanians, organized in their fascist Skanderbeg
Division, conducted an indiscriminate massacre of Serbians.
The Skanderbeg Division played a role in the Holocaust, the
genocide of European Jewry. In Kosovo: A Short History, Noel
Malcolm noted that in the Djakovica region of
Kosovo-Metohija, the Skanderbeg Division engaged in ithe
round-up and deportation of 281 Jewsi to the
concentration-extermination camps in May, 1944. According to
Malcolm, ithey took part in the most shameful episode of
Kosovois wartime history.i p310 Skanderbeg rounded up scores
of Jews in a group of approximately 500 Kosovans deemed enemies
of the Third Reich when the Division occupied Prizren in
Kosovo-Metohija. The division sought to create an ethnically
pure Kosovo, ethnically cleansed of Orthodox Serbs, Jews,
and Gypsies,Y the untermenschen (subhumans), not part of the
so-called West, who were targeted for extermination.
According to Miranda Vickers in Between Serb and Albanian: A
History of Kosovo, the Kosovo Albanian Skanderbeg SS
Division ethnically cleansed an estimated 10,000 Kosovo
Serbian families, most of whom fled as refugees to Serbia
while Albanian colonists from Albania entered Kosovo and took over
their lands and homes:
Until the first months of 1944 there were continued waves of
migration from Kosovo of Serbs and Montenegrins,forced to
flee following intimidation....TheY 21stSS eSkanderbeg
Divisioni (consisting, as already mentioned, of two
battalions) formed out of Albanian volunteers in the spring of 1944,
indiscriminately killed Serbs and Montenegrins in Kosovo. This
led to the emigration of an estimated 10,000 Slav families,
most of whom went to Serbia...replaced by new colonists from
the poorer regions of northern Albania.
The Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal declared the Schutzstaffel
or SS a criminal organization and every individual member of
the SS was found to be a war criminal guilty of iplanning
and carrying out crimes against humanity.i The Albanian
Kosovars in the 21st Waffen Gebirgs Division der SS iSkanderbegi
committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic
cleansing, and genocide against the Orthodox Serbian
population of Kosovo.This genocide would contribute to the
Kosovar goal and policy to create an ethnically pure Kosova,
in a attempt to create a Greater Albania.
During World War II, the Axis powers dismembered and
occupied Yugoslavia and created a Greater Albania by
annexing Kosovo-Metohija to Albania. During the occupation
of Kosovo-Metohija by Nazi Germany, Germany formed an
Albanian Kosovar Waffen SS Division, the 21st Waffen Gebirgs Division
der SS iSkanderbegi which engaged in a policy of ethnic
cleansing and genocide against the Orthodox Serbian
population of Kosovo. The result was that with the
Albanians, with the help of Germany, were able to either
kill or drive out entire Serbian families and to round up and
deport Kosovo Jews to the extermination camps, thereby creating during
World War II an ethnically pure, Nazi German-sponsored
Greater Albania.
end
More about the Nazism among Kosovo Albanians in WW2
http://www.kosovo.com/hist2.html#fascist
(la Storia si ripete / prima parte di due)
- The Holocaust in Kosovo
(S. Mac Mathuna and J. Heathcote)
- Genocide in Kosovo: the Albanian Skenderbeg Division
(Carl Kosta Savich)
Per una documentazione in lingua italiana sullo stesso argomento si
veda l'importante articolo PASSATO PRESENTE, di Matthias Kuentzel, alle
URL:
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/1029
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/1030
---
http://www.kosovo.com/ww2kos.html
---
The Holocaust in Kosovo
Following the German occupation of Yugoslavia in 1941, the the country
was partitioned and a quisling fascist state in Serbia was
established under General Milan Nedic. In May 1941, a large
part of Kosovo, with a population of some 820,000 Serbs,
Montenegrins, Roma, Jews and Albanians was detached from
Serbia and given to the Axis state of Albania, whose leaders had
been installed by Mussolini's fascist regime in Italy. Albania was
one of the first countries in Europe to have a puppet
fascist regime established - in this case by when Mussolini
ordered Italian troops to invade and occupy the country.
This forced the Albanian ruler King Zog I, to flee to Greece
on April 7th, 1939, and Italy then formally annexed the country
and established a military government and viceroy.
The Italian fascists then began a programme to colonize the
country when thousands of settlers emigrated to Albania. An
Albanian Fascist Party was established with Albanian Black
skirts based on Italian models. Albania thus became an Axis
power - sending it troops to fight alongside Italy when Greece
was invaded in 1941. With support of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem,
Haj Amin El Husseini and Bedri Pejani, the Muslim leader of
the Albanian National committee, a call was made for a union
of the new Greater Albania with Bosnia and Herzegovina and
the Sandzak region of Serbia, into a Islamic state. The
Germans, whilst sympathetic to idea, rejected the plan.
As soon as the occupation of Kosovo began in 1941, the
Italian and German army began setting up an Albanian
gendarmerie in Kosovo that composed of some 1000 men, while
another 1000 were registered as armed volunteers, known as Vulnetana,
under the command of local officers. The Italian army also
began organising Albanian units to serve under its command.
Albanian quislings who had formed the so-called Kosovo
Committee, returned from exile, and according to Miranda
Vickers, writing in her book Between Serb and Albanian: A
History of Kosovo (Hurst, London, England, 1998):
Played an important role in collaborating with the
occupation forces, who were able to present themselves as
liberators of the Albanians and creators of a unified
Albania (p 122). These Albanian collaborators participated in the
forced deportation of thousands of Slavs, many of whom were
sent to forced labour camps. In scenes similar to those in
1999 and 2000, many thousands more were killed and scores of
villages were burnt down and their occupants (an estimated
10,000) were expelled. The Italian occupation forces encouraged
an extensive settlement of up to 72,000 Albanians from Albania to
Kosovo, according to Vickers (p123).
The SS set up the Skanderbeg division
Who was Skanderbeg the legendary hero of Albania who the SS
named a division after ? A Christian by birth, George
Kastrioti Skanderbeg (1405-1468), was given as a hostage to
the Ottoman Sultan Murat II to be brought up as a Muslim at
Adrianople (Edrine) when he was a child. He became an
officer in the Ottoman Turkish army and led them in many victories
over European armies. The Sultan was impressed with him that he
gave him the title Iskander Bey in Turkish, from "Iskander",
(Aleksander the Great, or prince Aleksander), and "Bey",
Master. The name was shortened to Skanderbeg, beg being the
local variant of bey. Later Kastrioti renounced Islam and
converted back to Christianity. Soon afterwards, he led a
revolt against the Ottomans in 1442. Sultan Mohammed II sent
Turkish armies to quell the uprising, but they were unable initially
to put down the Albanian revolt. However, after Kastrioti died
in 1468 the Turks soon occupied Albania and finally
established control over the territory. Albania would remain
part of the Ottoman Empire until 1912, when it finally won
independence.
On September 3rd, 1943, when Italy capitulated the German
were forced to occupy Albania. They sent in the 100th Jaeger
Division from Greece and the 297th Infantry Division from
Serbia and the German 1st Mountain Division to occupy
Albania, including Kosovo. These troops were organized into the XXI
Mountain Corps which was under the command of General Paul
Bader. However, the German's realised that additional
security forces for Kosovo were needed, as Germans troops
would be need for for defense of Albania's coastline. Thus,
the decision was made to form Albanian Skanderbeg division
for this purpose. Acting upon instructions of the SS war criminal
Henrich Himmler, the SS ordered the formation of the
Albanian Skanderbeg SS Division on April 17th, 1944. The SS
Command in Albania, in conduction with the Albanian National
Committee, found some 11,398 possible recruits for the
Skanderbeg SS division - most of whom were from Albanian gendarmes,
special police and para-military units in Kosovo that were under
the direct control of the Albanian Interior Minister Xhafer
Deva.
The official German designation for the division was 21
Waffen Gebirgs Division der SS "Skanderbeg" (Albanische Nr
1). The Albanians in the Skanderbeg Division were mostly
Muslims, of the Bektashi and Sunni sects of Islam. The division
however, contained several hundred Albanian Catholics,
followers of Jon Marko Joni. The SS designed a distinctive
arm patch for the division, consisting of a black
double-headed eagle on a red background, the national symbol
of Albania. The word "Skanderbeg", embroidered in white, appeared
above the eagle and was worn on the left sleeve. The right collar
patch consisted of a helmet with a goat's head on top, the
helmet supposedly worn by Skanderbeg.
They were helped by the newly formed Albanian Nazi party,
known as the Balli Kombetar (BK) which has been established
through the efforts of Ernst Kaltenbrunner (later executed
as a war criminal after the war). Like with the KLA (Kosovo
Liberation Army) today, they wanted the establishment of a Greater
Albanian state within the 1941 borders (including Kosovo) set up
by the Axis powers. Many of its leaders and supporters were
drawn from rich landowners in Albania, who saw fascism as a
political system that would protect their privileges in a
"unified" Albania.
According to Vickers, the Skanderbeg division - which was
stationed and operated in Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro -
"indiscriminately killed Serbs and Montenegrins" in Kosovo.
The actions of these Albanian quislings led to the departure
of another estimated 10,000 Slavs from the province. Altogether it is
estimated that at least 50-60,000 Slavs were expelled from
Kosovo during the Second World War. This however, does not
excuse the terror unleashed by the Yugoslav state both in
1945 under Tito and later in the 1990's under under
Milosevic, when, thousands of Albanian civilians were either
murdered, or their houses burnt down or were expelled from Kosovo. Like
in 1945, many who remained were subjected to gross
violations of human rights including unfair trials, torture
and extra-judicial executions.
In June 1944, the Skanderbeg SS Division was based in
Montenegro, whilst other parts of the division were based in
the Kosovo towns of Pristina, Pec, Jakova and Prizren. The
first major action of the division occurred in August, 1944
in Kosovo, and in September, the Skanderbeg SS Division occupied
part of Macedonia, and helped to garrison the capital Skopje. It
was also active in the southern part of the puppet state of
Serbia.
Although some 6,500 Albanian volunteers had come forward to
join the SS Saknderbeg division, by October 1944 desertions
were rife: Over two-thirds of the volunteers were declared
unfit for military service and the Division suffered some
3,500 desertions within its first two months of operation. The high
desertion rate resulted in the unit being disbanded and reformed
with the German SS officers forming Kampfgruppe "Skanderbeg"
which joined up with the SS "Prinz Eugen" regiment in
Yugoslavia. This battle group was was in action in December
1944/January 1945 around Zwornik, Bjellina and Brcko. On
30th January 1945, a small number of Germans and Albanians
from this unit were transferred to 32nd SS-Panzer
grenadier-Division on 30th January 1945 and sent to the Oder front in
1945. German forces had fled Kosovo by November 1944, leaving
the BK (then numbering some 9,000 members) to fend for
itself. Albanian fascists continued to resist partisans
representing Tito's emerging government until the spring of
1945.
Albanian extremists target the Jews of Kosovo
At the beginning of the second world war, Kosovo had a
population of 550 Jews. Altogether, 210 perished in German
concentration camps - the only Jews to be killed in the war
in Kosovo - representing 38.18% of the Jewish population.
This compares with Belgrade, were only 1,115 survived the
war out of almost 12,000 (9%), and Croatia, where an estimated
25% of the Jewish population survived. Thus, you were more likely to
survive the war if you were Jewish and lived in Albania or
Kosovo rather than Belgrade or Croatia. However, this is not
to say that it was any easier for Jews, Roma or Slavs - the
three national groups designated by the Nazi's as "subhuman
races", and top of their list for extermination or
deportation by the Nazis or their quislings in Croatia,
Serbia and Kosovo.
In fact, one of the first acts of the SS Skanderbeg division
in April 1944 was the arresting of 281 Jews in Pristina, and
"510 Jews, Communists, Partisans and individual suspects".
According to Bernard J. Fischer, writing in Albania at War,
1939-1945 (Purdue University Press, West Lafayette, Indians,
USA, 1999, p. 187). All 281 Jews were deported to Germany -
probably to Bergen-Belsen death camp. However, the German occupation
authorities allowed Albania an unusual degree of autonomy and,
for the most part, refrained from deporting and/or murdering
the majority of Albanian Jews. Most of the tiny Jewish
population of "old Albania" (about 200) survived the
Holocaust. The Germans, however, confiscated most
Jewish-owned property in 1943-1944.
Indeed, Albania is the only country occupied by Germany in
which the Jewish population actually grew during the war and
was larger than when the war started in 1939. There were
some 1,800 Jews in Albania by war's end, mostly escapees
from the Holocaust in Greece and Yugoslavia. Albanians sheltered
them and were later honored by the Israel for their efforts.
As the war drew to a close, Yugoslav Partisans launched a
large-scale military campaign in Kosovo to consolidate their
rule and the Albanians reacted with a general insurrection,
that forced the new authorities to declare martial law in
the region in 1945. Because of their co-operation with the Germans,
the Kosovo Albanians were seen as politically unreliable and
thus a possible threat to the stability and territorial
integrity of the new Communist Yugoslavia. Thus, Kosovo
emerged from the war in a state of siege, with its
population seen as a threat rather than as an asset.
Following the war, the post war population of Jews in Kosovo
dwindled considerably after the war to only 35 who were
registered as living in Pristina in 1989 and 41 in 1995.
Most reports now suggest that Albanian extremists have
driven them out since NATO drove out the Yugoslav army in 1999. The
Jewish population of Yugoslavia today is estimated to be 2500
with most of them living in Belgrade. The recent conflict in
Kosovo has ironically led to the exodus of the last of the
remaining Jews of Kosovo - something that didn't even happen
in the last war in 1941.
Sean Mac Mathuna and John Heathcote
original text and more information
http://www.flamemag.dircon.co.uk/skanderbeg.htm
More about Kosovo Albanian Nazism during the WW2
http://www.kosovo.com/hist2.html#fascist
---
http://www.kosovo.com/skenderbeyss.html
---
Albanian Nazi troops in WW2 Launched a Wide Spread Terror Against
Kosovo Serbs
Second World War
by Carl Kosta Savich
Genocide in Kosovo
Albanian Skenderbeg Division
The historical and political precedents for the creation of a greater
Sqiperia or Greater Albania was set during World War II when
the Kosovo and Metohija regions along with territory
Southwest of lake Skutari from Montenegro and the western
region of Southern Serbia, or Juzna Srbija (now part of
Macedonija), were annexed to Albania by the Axis powers led by Fascist
Italy and Nazi Germany, under a plan devised by Benito
Mussolini and Adolf Hitler to dismember and to destroy the
Serbian Nation and people, which the Germans and Italians
perceived as the main threat to the axis powers and to the
Third Reich in the Balkan.
On April 7, 1939, Italian troops invaded and occupied
Albania forcing the Albanian ruler King Zog I Ahmed Bey
Zogu, to flee to Greece. Italy formally annexed into the
Kingdom of Italy under the Italian king Victor Immanuel and
established a military government and viceroy. The Italian began
a program to colonize the country when thousands of settlers
emigrated to Albania. An Albanian Fascist Party was
established with Albanian Black skirts based on Italian
models. The Albanian Army consisted of three infantry
brigades of 12 000 men.
On October 28 1940, Italy invaded Greece from Albania with
10 Italian divisions and the Albanian Army but were driven
back.
Germany sought to assist the Italian-Albanian offensive by
operation Alpine Violet, a plan to move a corps of tree
German mountain divisions to Albania by air and sea. Instead
German built up a heavy concentration of the German Twelfth
Army on the northwest Greek Border with Bulgaria, from where
the German invasion was launched.
On April 6, 1941, Nazi Germany and the axis powers invaded
Yugoslavia, Operation Punishment, and Greece forcing the
capitulation of Yugoslavia on the 17th, and Greece on the
23rd. Yugoslavia was subsequently occupied and dismembered.
The Axis powers established a greater Albania or greater
Shqiperia at the expense of Serbia and Montenegro. Territory from
Montenegro was annexed to Greater Albania. From Serbia, the
Kosovo and Metohija were ceded to greater Albania, along
with the western part of Southern Serbia (Juzna Srbija), now
part of Macedonia, an area which was part of Stara Srbija
(Ancient Old Serbia). This Kosovo-metohija region and the
surrounding territory annexed to Greater Albania was called "New
Albania".
To create an ethnically pure Shqiptar Kosovo, which Albanian
called "Kosova", the Shqiptari (Albanians) launched a
widescale campaigns of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Ethnic
Serbs in the Kosovo-Metohija regions were massacred, and
their homes were burned, and survivors were brutally driven out
and expelled in policy of ethnic cleansing and genocide.
The Balli Kombetar (BK or National Union) was an Albanian
nationalist group led by Midhat Fresheri and Ali Klissura
whose political objective was to in incorporate
Kosovo-Metohija into a Greater Albania and to ethnically
cleanse the region of Orthodox Serbs
The Abanian Committee of Kosovo organized massive campaigns
of ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Orthodox
Serbian inhabitants of Kosovo- Metohuja. A contemporary
report described the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Serbs
as follows:
Armed with material supplied by the Italians, the Albanians
hurled themselves against helpless settlers in their homes
and villages. According to the most reliable sources, the
Albanian burned many Serbian settlements, killing some of
the people and driving out others who escaped to the
mountains. At present other Serbian settlement are being attacked and
the property of individuals and of communities is either being
confiscated or destroyed. It is not possible to ascertain at
the present time the exact number of victims of those
atrocities, but it may be estimated that at least between
30.000 and 40.000 perished.
Bedri Pejani, the Muslim leader of the Albanian National
committee, called for the extermination of Ortodox Serbian
Cristians in Kosovo Metohija and for a union of a Greater
Albania with Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Rashka (Sandzak)
region of Serbia, into a great Islamic state. The grand
Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin El Husseini was presented to Pejani
a plan which he approved as a being in the interest of Islam. The
Germans however rejected the plan.
On September 3, 1943, Italy capitulated by signing an
armistice with the Allies. The German were now forced to
occupy Albania with the collapse of the Italian forces. The
Germans sent the 100th Jaeger Division from Greece and the
297th Infantry Division from Serbia and the German 1st
Mountain Division to occupy Albania. These troops were organized into
the XXI Mountain Corps which was under the command of General
Paul Bader.
Additional security forces for the interior were needed,
however, to free up Germans troops for defense of the
coastline. The decision was made to form an Albanian SS
mountain division for this purpose. In April in 1944, recruitment
for the Albanian SS division began under direction of the newly
formed Albanian Nazi party, which has been formed through
the efforts of Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Acting upon instructions
of Reichsfuehrer SS Henrich Himmler, the SS main office
ordered the formation of an Albanian volunteer mountain
division on April 17, 1944. SS Brigadefuehrern and Generalmajor
of the Waffen SS Josef Fitzhum, who Headed the Higher SS and Police
Command in Albania, oversaw the forming and training of the
division.
The SS high Command planed to create a mountain division of
10.000 men. The Higher SS and Police Command in Albania, in
conduction with the Albanian National Committee, listed
11.398 possible recruits for the Waffen SS mountain
division. Most of these recruits were "kossovars", shqiptar
Ghegs from Kosovo Metohija in Serbia. The Shqiptar Tosks were
found mainly in southern Albania. Most of the Shqiptar collaborators
with the nazi forces were theNazi forces were the so-called
Kossovars, ethnic Shqiptars from the Kosmet of Serbia. The
Nazi German-sponsored Albanian gendarmes, special police and
para-military units were made up by Kossovars. The Kossovars
were under the direct control of the Albanian Interior
Minister Xhafer Deva.
The Skanderbeg Division was formed and trained in Kosovo and
was made up mostly of muslim Shqiptar Kossovars. There were
only a small number of Albanians from Albania proper in the
division. The Skanderbeg Mountain Division of the Wafen SS
was thus essentially a Kosovo or Kosmet Division. The
Division was stationed and operated in Kosovo and other Serbian
regions almost exclusively.
Of the 11.398 recruits listed for the Division, 9.275 were
ascertained to be suitable to draft in the Waffen SS. Of
those suitable to be drafted, 6.491 Albanian were chosen and
inducted into the Skanderbeg Division. To this Albanian core
were added veteran German troops primarily Reichdeutsche
from Austria and Volkdeutcshe officers, NCOs, and enlisted men,
transferred from the 7th SS Mountain Division "Prinz Eugen"
which was stationed in Bosnia-Hercegovina. The Kosovo
Albanian 21st Waffen Gebirgs Division der SS "Skanderbeg"
consisted in total of 8.500 - 9.000 men of all ranks. The
6.491 Shqiptar recruits were assembled at depots in Kosovo
where the formation and the training of the division began.
The official designation for the division was 21 Waffen
Gebirgs Division der SS "Skanderbeg" (Albanische Nr 1). The
SS Main Office designed a distinctive arm patch for the
division, consisting of a black double-headed eagle on a red
background, the national symbol of Albania. The word
"Skanderbeg", embroidered in white, appeared above the eagle
and was warn on the left sleeve. The right collar patch consisted
of a helmet with a goat's head on top, the helmet supposedly worn
by George Kastrioti Skanderbeg, after whom the division was
named. The Shqiptars recruits in the division wore a white
skullcap, the national attire of the Shqiptar Ghegs. The SS
main office also issued gray skullcaps with the Totenkopf
(death's head) insignia sewn on the front below the
Hoheitszeichen (the national symbol of Nazi Germany, consisting of a
white eagle over a Nazi swastika).
Division was named after George Kastrioti, or Gjergj
Kastriota, also as Kastriotis (1405-1468), national hero of
Albania, who fought for the Ottoman Turks. As a child,
Kastrioti was given as a hostage to Sultan Murat II to be
brought as a Muslim at Adrianople (Edrine). Kastrioti became an officer
in the Ottoman Turkish army and led the Turkish forces in
many victories over Christian troops. Murat II was impressed
with his valor and bravery in his battle for Islam and gave
him the name Iskander Bey in Turkish, from "Iskander",
Aleksander the Great, or prince Aleksander, and "bey",
master. The name was shortened to Skanderbeg, beg being the
local variant of bey. Later Kastrioti renounced Islam and
converted to Christianity and attacked his former Ottoman Turkish
masters. He captured the Albanian capital Kroja from the
Turkish governor and proclaimed a revolt against the Turks
in 1442. Sultan Mohammed II sent Turkish armies to defeat
the renegade Kastrioti, but he was able to defeat Turkish
forces, wich besieged Kroja but could not capture it.
Kastrioti died in 1468. Kroja surrendered in 1479 and the Turks
occupied Albania.
The Albanians in the Skanderbeg Division were mostly
Muslims, of the Bektashi and Sunni sects of Islam. The
division contained several hundred Albanian Catholics,
followers of Jon Marko Joni.
The first commander of the Skandereg division was SS
Brigadefuehrer Generalmajor of the Waffen SS Josef Fitshum,
who commanded the division from April to June 1944. After
the Juli 20, assassination plot against Hitler, Fitzhum was
appointed supreme commander in Albania. In June, SS Stardentenfuehrer
August Schmidhuber was appointed division commander, a post
would hold until August 1944. On June 21, 1944, Schmidhuber
was promoted to SS Oberfuehrer and later in the war, he
would be promoted to SS Brigadefuhrer. SS
Oberstrumbannfuhrer Alfred Graf commanded the reorganized remnants
of the Skanderbeg Division from August 1944, to may, 1945.
The Shultzstaffel or SS was created in the period 1923-1925
and was initially known as the Stosstrupp (Shock troop)
"Adolf Hitler". On Januari 16, 1929, Hitler appointed
Heinrich Himmler leader of SS, Reichsfuehrer SS. The SS was
envisioned as an elite troop of the Party, a praetorian
bodyguard to Hitler and the Nazi leadership. The SS was a formation
"composed of the best physically, the most dependable, and the
most faithful men in the Nazi movement. In 1940, combat units
of the SS were formed, collectively termed the Waffen SS.
Approximately 30-40 Waffen SS divisions were formed during
the war, divided into three groupings, Waffen divisions made
by Germans, those made up of ethnic Germans outside the
Reich, and those made up of non-Germans. "Divisions der SS",
Divisions of the SS.
On September 27,1939, Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler as
Chief of German Police consolidated the Gestapo, Kripo, and
SD under an SS Main Office of Reich Security, or the RSHA.
The RSHA was the actual body entrusted with the overall
administration of the final solution at the Jewish Problem,
what became known as the Holocaust. The SS Economic and administrative
Main Office or WVHA, run the concentration camp system. Nazi
concentration camp personnel and guards, althout not under
the command of the Army or the Kommandoamt der Waffen SS,
neverthless, wore Waffen SS uniforms and received Waffen SS
paybooks. Reichfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler oversaw a program
that resulted in the extermination of millions of men, women
and children. Himmler was the Arhictect of genocide and of the
Holocaust and the Wafen SS was his "private army", the black
angels".
In Jun,1944, The Skanderbeg Waffen SS Mountain Division
engaged in large-scale field maneuvers in the area between
the towns of Berane and Adrijevica in Monte Negro (Crna
Gora). Garrisons of Skanderbeg division were established in
Kosovo towns of Pec, Jakova, Prizren, and Pristina. Further training
of the division continued in August as new recruits were
inducted in the division. An artillery battalion of the
division, consisting of two batteries, was located in
Gnjilane.
The first major action of the division occurred in August,
144 in Kosovo. In September, 1944, the Skanderbeg division
occupied the Southern Serbia (Juzna Srbija) region now part
of the communist created republic of Macedonia, and helped
to garrison the region. The Skanderberg division was ordered
into the areas surrounding the towns Skoplje (or Skopje),
Kumanovo Presevo and Bujanovac. Sanderbeg operated in Stara Serbija
(old and Ancient Serbia) region, in the towns of Pec,
Gnjilane,Djakovica, Tetovo Gostivar, and Kosovska Mitrovica,
then part of Kosovo Metohija and Southern Serbia.
In November, 1944, when the German armies in the Balkan were
retreating from Yugoslavia and the Balkans, the Skanderbeg
division remnants were reorganized into Regimentegruppe 21
SS Gebirgs "Skanderbeg" and was transferred to Skoplje,
according to one account of the movements of the Battle
group. This SS Kampfgrupe "Skanderbeg", along with the prinz
Eugen Divisin, defended the Vardar valley. The battle group
"Skanderbeg" and Prinz Eugen held the Vardar area because it
was the sole corridor of escape for the retreating German armies
in Alexander Loehr's Army Group E, which was retreating from Greece
and Aegean Islands.
The Skanderbeg Battle Group along with the Prinz Eugen
Division retreated to the to the Brcko region of
Bosnia-Herzegovina by mid-january 1945. At this time the
remaining Skanderbeg personnel were incorporated into the
14th SS Volonteer Mountain Infantry Regiment of the 7th SS division
Prinz Eugen. The remnants of the Skanderbeg Division fought in
this formation until the end of the war, retreating to
Austria in May, 1945.
The Skanderbeg division engaged in a policy of ethnic
cleansing and genocide against the Serbian Orthodox
Christian populations of the regions under occupation by the
division in Kosovo Metohija, Montenegro, and southern
Serbia. Balkan Historian Robert Lee Wolff, in the "Balkans in Our
time", described the genocide committed against Kosovo Serbs by
the Shqiptar 21st Waffen Gebirgs Division der SS Skenderbeg as
follows:
In the regions annexed by the Albanians, their so-called
Skanderbeg division, made up of members of the Albanian
minority in Yugoslavia, massacred Serbs with impunity.
Historian L.H. Stavrianos, in "The Balkan Since 1453",
described the genocide committed against Orthodox Serbs by
the Shqiptar Skanderbeg Division in these terms: Yugoslav
Albanians, organized in their fascist Skanderbeg Division,
conducted an indiscriminate massacre of Serbians.
The Skanderbeg Division played a role in the Holocaust, the
genocide if European Jewry, by rounding up scores of Kosovo
Jews in a group roughly 500 persons deemed enemies of the
Third Reich when the division occupied Prizren in Kosovo
Metohija. The division sought to create ethnically pure
Kosovo, ethnically cleansed of Orthodox Serbs, Jews and Gypsies
the untermenschen (subhuman), who were targeted for extermination.
The Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal declared the Shutzstaffel
or SS criminal organization and every individual member of
SS was found to Be a war criminal guilty of "planning and
carrying out crimes against humanity". The Shqiptar Kosovars
in the 21st Waffen Gebirgs Division "Skanderbeg" committed
war crimes and genocide against the Orthodox Serbian population
of Kosovo. The Shqiptar planed and carried out crimes against
humanity in Kosovo. Orthodox Serbians of Kosovo were the
victims of ethnic cleansing and genocide. This genocide
would contribute in the Shqiptar goal and policy to create
an ethnically pure, Shqiptar Kosovo, in an attempt to create
a greater Shqiperia or greater Albania. Following World war
II, the Yugoslav Communist dictatorship allowed the policy of ethnic
cleansing and genocide against the Orthodox Serbs to continue,
and indeed, gave greater impetus and legitimacy to the
policy.
---
During World War II, the Axis powers dismembered and
occupied Yugoslavia and created a greater Albania by
annexing the Serbian region of Kosovo-Metohija by Nazi
Germany, Germany formed a Shqiptar "Kosovar" Waffen SS
Division, the 21st Waffen Gebirgs Division der SS "Skanderbeg"
which engaged in a policy of ethnic cleansing and genocide against
the Orthodox Serbian population of Kosovo. The result was
that the Shqiptars, with the help of Germany, were able to
virtually exterminate the Serbian and Jews populations of
Kosovo, thereby creating an ethnically pure, Nazi
German-sponsored Greater Albania or Greater Shqiperia.
One more text on the same subject by C. Savich
Kosovo During World War II, 1941-1945...
Genocide in Kosovo: The Skenderbeg SS Division
http://www.serbianna.com/columns/savich/004.shtml
by Carl Savich
November 28, 2000
Historical evidence demonstrates that genocide and ethnic cleansing
were perpetrated upon the Serbian population of Kosovo and
Metohija, first by theY Ottoman Turks, by Albanian leaders
and the populace , then during the occupation by fascist
Italy and Nazi Germany by Albanian fascists and Nazis, and
continued throughout the Communist period , during which
periods the ethnic Serbian population was forced to emigrate...
The historical and political precedent for the creation of a
Greater Albania or Greater ShqiperiaY was set during World
War II when the Kosovo and Metohija regions, along with
territory southwest of Lake Scutari from Montenegro and the
western region of Macedonia,, which was then southern
Serbia, or Juzna Srbija, were annexed to Albania by the Axis powers,
led by fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, under a plan devised by
Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler which sought to dismemberY
the Serbian nation and people, which the Germans and
Italians perceived as the main threat to the Axis powers and
to the Third Reich in the Balkans.
On April 7, 1939, Italian troops invaded and occupied
Albania, forcing the Albanian ruler King Zog I, Ahmed Bey
Zogu, to flee to Greece.Italy next formally annexed Albania
into the Kingdom of Italy under the Italian King Victor
Immanuel and established a military government and Viceroy.The
Italians began a program to colonize the country when thousands of
settlers emigrated to Albania.An Albanian Fascist Party was
established with Albanian Blackshirts basedY on the Italian
models.The Albanian army consisted of three infantry
brigades of 12,000 men.
On October 28, 1940, Italy invaded Greece from Albania with
10 Italian divisions and the Albanian army but were driven
back.
Germany sought to assist the Italian-Albanian offensive by
Operation Alpine Violet, a plan to move a corps of three
German mountain divisions to Albania by air and sea.
Instead, the Germans built up a heavy concentration of the
German Twelfth Army on the northwest Greek border with Bulgaria,
from where the German invasion was launched.
On April 6, l941, Nazi Germany and the Axis powers invaded
Yugoslavia, Operation Punishment, and Greece, forcing the
capitulation of Yugoslavia on the 17th and Greece on the
23rd.Yugoslavia was subsequently occupied and
dismembered.The Axis powers established a Greater Albania or Greater
Shqiperia at the expense of Serbia and Montenegro. Territory
from Montenegro was annexed to Greater Albania. From Serbia,
the Kosovo and Metohija regions were ceded to Greater
Albania, along with the western part of southern Serbia
(Juzna Srbija), now part of Macedonia, an area which was
part of Stara Srbija (Ancient or Old Serbia).This Kosovo-Metohija
region and the durrounding territory annexed to Greater Albania
was called iNew Albaniai.
To create an ethnically pure Albanian Kosovo, which the
Albanians called iKosovai,theY Albanians (Shqiptari)
launched a widescale campaigns of ethnic cleansing and
genocide.Ethnic Serbs in the Kosovo-Metohija regions were
massacred, and their homes were burned, and the survivors were
brutally driven out and expelled in a policy of ethnic cleansing and
genocide.
The Balli Kombetar (BK or National Union) was an Albanian
nationalist group led by Midhat Frasheri and Ali Klissura
whose political objective was to incorporate Kosovo-Metohija
into a Greater Albania and to ethnically cleanse the region
of Orthodox Serbs.
The Albanian Committee of Kosovo organized massive campaigns
of ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Orthodox
Serbian inhabitants of Kosovo-Metohija.A contemporary report
described the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Serbs as
follows:
Armed with material supplied by the Italians, the Albanians
hurled themselves against the helpless settlers in their
homes and villages. Accoring to the most reliables sources
the Albanians burned many Serbian settlements, killing some
of the people and driving out others who escaped to the
mountains. At present other Serbian settlements are being attacked and
the property of indviduals and of communities is either being
confiscated or destroyed. It is not possible to ascertain at
the present the exact number of victims of those atrocities,
but it may be estimated that at least between 30,000 and
50,000 perished.
Bedri Pejani, the Muslim leader of the Albanian National
Committee, called for the extermination of Orthodox Serbian
Christians in Kosovo-Metohija and for a union of a Greater
Albania with Bosnia-Hercegovina and the Rashka (Sandzak)
region of Serbia into a Greater Islamic State. The Grand
Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el Husseini, was presented the Pejani
plan which he approved as being in the interest of Islam. The
Germans,however, rejected the plan.
On September 3, 1943, Italy capitulated by signing an
armistice with the Allies. The Germans were then forced to
occupy Albania with the collapse of the Italian forces.The
Germans sent he 100th Jaeger Division from Greece and the
297th Infantry Division from Serbia and the German 1st
Mountain Division to occupy Albania.Y These troops were organized into
the XXI Mountain Corps, which was under the command of
General Paul Bader.
Bedri Pejani organized and headed the Second Albanian League
of Prizren in 1943, which sought to revive the goals of the
First League of Prizren in 1878, whiich were to unite all
the lands where Albanians lived into a single, unified
Greater Albania. The Second Albanian League,like the First,
was reactionary, anti-democratic, racist, authoritarian, and
allied with Nazi Germany. Pejani found an ardent supporter of the
Second League in Heinrich Himmler, the iarchitect of
genocidei and the person who oversaw the Final Solution to
the Jewish Problem. The Second League fit perfectly into
Hitleris New Order in Europe. Moreover, Italian anthropological
research had revealed that the Ghegs were Aryans or Nordic, the
herrenvolk or master race like the Germans.Pejani and the
Second League opposed democracy and human rights but sought
to create a Greater Albania through genocide and ethnic
cleansing. The 21st Waffen SS Division Skanderbeg resulted
from the efforts of the Second League of Prizren.
Germany re-occupied Albania and Kosovo in 1943. Additional
security forces for the interior were needed,however, to
free up German troops for defense of the coastline. The
decision was made to form an Albanian SS mountain division
for this purpose. In April, 1944, recruitment for the Albanian
SS Division began under the direction of the newly formed Albanian
Nazi Party, which had been formed through the efforts of
Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Acting upon the instructions of
Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler, the SS Main Office
ordered the formation of an Albanian Volunteer mountain
Division on April 17,1944. Himmler planned to create two Albanian SS
divisions. SS Brigadefuehrer and Generalmajor of the Waffen SS
Josef Fitzhum, who headed the Higher SS and Police Command
in Albania, oversaw the formation and training of the
division.
The SS High Command planned to create a mountain division of
10,000 men. The Higher SS and Police Command in Albania, in
conjunction with the Albanian National Committee, listed
11,398 possible recruits for the Waffen SS mountain
division. Most of these recruits, roughly two-thirds were
Kosovars, Albanian (Shqiptar) Ghegs from Kosovo-Metohija in Serbia.
The Shqiptar Tosks were found mainly in southern Albania. Most
of the Shqiptar collaborators with the Nazi forces were the
so-called Kosovars, ethnic Shqiptars from the Kosmet of
Serbia. The Albanian gendarmes, special police, and
para-military units were Kosovars. The Kosovars were under
the direct control of the Albanian Interior Minister, Xhafer
Deva.
The Skanderbeg Division was formed and trained in Kosovo and
was made up mostly of Muslim Shqiptar Kosovars.There were
only a small number of Albanians from Albania proper in the
division, about one-third.Y The Skanderbeg Mountain Division
of the Waffen SS was thus essentially a Kosovo or Kosmet
division. The division was stationed and operated in Kosovo
and other Serbian regions almost exclusively.
Of the 11,398 recruits listed for the division, 9,275 were
ascertained to be suitable to draft in the Waffen SS. Of
those suitable to be drafted, 6,491 Albanians were chosen
and inducted into the Skanderbeg Division. To this Albanian
core were added veteran German troops, primarily Reichdeutsche
from Austria and Volkdeutsche officers, NCOs, and enlisted men,
transferred from the 7th SS Mountain Division iPrinz Eugeni
which was stationed in Bosnia-Hercegovina.The Kosovo
Albanian 21st Waffen Gebirgs Division der SS iSkanderbegi
consisted in total of 8,500-9,000 men of all ranks.The 6,491
Albanian recruits were assembled at depots in Kosovo where the
formation and the training of the division began.
The official designation for the division was 21. Waffen
Gebirgs Division der SS iSkanderbegi (Albanische Nr.1).The
SS Main Office designed a distinctive arm patch for the
division, consisting of a black, double-headed eagle on a
red background, the national symbol for Albania. The word
iSkanderbegi , embroidered in white, appeared above the eagle and was
worn on the left sleeve.The left collar patch consisted of a
helmet with a goatis head on the top, the helmet supposedly
worn by George Kastrioti, Skanderbeg, after whom the
division was named. The Shqiptar recruits in the division
wore a white skullcap, the national attire of the Shqiptar
Ghegs. The SS Main Office also issued gray skullcaps with
the Totenkopf (Deathis Head) insignia sewn on the front below the
Hoheitzeichen (the national symbol of Nazi Germany, consisting of
a white eagle over a Nazi swastika).
The division was named after George Kastrioti, or Gjergj
Kastriota, also as Kastriotis (1405-1468), a national hero
of Albania, who fought against the Ottoman Turks.As a child,
Kastrioti was given as a hostage to Sultan Murad II to be
brought us as a Muslim at Adrianople (Edirne).Kastrioti
became an officer in the Ottoman Turkish army and led the Turkish
forces in many victories over Christian troops.Murad II was
impressed with his valor and bravery in his battles for
Islam and gave him the name Iskander Bey in Turkish, from
iIskanderi, Alexander the Great, or Prince Alexander, and
iBeyi, master.
The nameY was shortened to Skanderbeg, beg being the local
variant of beg.Later, Kastrioti renounced Islam and
converted to Christianity and attacking his former Ottoman
Turkish masters. He captured the Albanian capital Kruja from
the Turkish governor and proclaimed a revolt against the
Turks in 1442.Sultan Mohammed II sent Turkish armies to defeat the
renegade Kastrioti, but he was able to defeat the Turkish
forces, which besieged Kruja but could not capture it.
Kastrioti died in 1468. Kruja surrendered in 1479 and the
Turks occupied Albania.
The Albanians in the Skanderbeg Division were mostly
Muslims, of the Bektashi and Sunni sects of IslamThe
division contained several hundred Albanian Catholics,
followers of Jon Marko Joni.
The first commander of the Skanderbeg division was SS
Brigadefuehrer and Generalmajor of the Waffen SS Josef
Fitzhum, who commanded the division from April to June,
1944. After the July 20, 1944 assassination plot against
Hitler, Fitzhum was appointed supreme commander in Albania.
In June, SS Standartenfuehrer August Schmidhuber, who had been a member
of the 7th SS Mountain Division iPrinz Eugeni, was appointed
commander of the division, a post he would hold until
August, 1944. On June 21, 1944, Schmidhuber was promoted to
SS Oberfuehrer, and later in the war, he would be promoted
to SS Brigadefuehrer. SS Obersturmbannfuehrer Alfred Graf
commanded the reorganized remnants of the Skanderbeg Division from
August, 1944, to May, 1945.
The Schutzstaffel or SS was created in the period 1923-1925
and was initially known as the Stosstrupp (Shock Troop)
iAdolf Hitleri. On January 16, 1929, Hitler appointed
Heinrich Himmler leader of the SS, Reichsfuehrer SS. The SS
was envisioned as an elite troop of the Party, a Praetorian
bodyguard to Hitler and the Nazi leadership. The SS was a formation
icomposed of the best physically, the most dependable, and the
most faithful men in the Nazi movement.i In 1940, combat
units of the SS were formed, collectively termed the Waffen
SS. Approximately 30-40 Waffen SS divisions were formed
during the war,divided into three groupings, Waffen SS
divisions made up of Germans, those made up of ethnic Germans
outside the Reich, and those made up of non-Germans, iDivisions der
SS, Divisions of the SS.
On September 27, 1939, Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler as
Chief of German Police consolidated the Gestapo, Kripo, and
SD under an SS Main Office of Reich Security, or the RSHA.
The RSHA was the actual body entrusted with the overall
administration of the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem,
what became known as the Holocaust. The SS Economic and Administrative
Main Office, or WVHA, ran the concentration camp system. Nazi
concentration camp personnel and guards, although not under
the command of the Army or the Kommandoamt der Waffen SS,
nevertheless, wore Waffen SS uniforms and received Waffen SS
paybooks. Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler oversaw a
program that resulted in the extermination of millions of men, women,
and children. Himmler was the architect of genocide and of the
Holocaust and the Waffen SS was his iprivate armyi, the
iblack angelsi. As part of the Skanderbeg Waffen SS
Division, Kosovar Albanians would play a role in the Final
Solution, the Holocaust. Kosovo Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies
would be victims.
In June, 1944, the Skanderbeg Waffen SS Mountain Division
engaged in large-scale field maneuvers in the area between
the towns of Berane and Andrijevica in Montenegro ( Crna
Gora). Garrisons of the Skanderbeg division were established
in the Kosovo towns of Pec, Djakovica, Prizren, and Pristina.
Further training of the divisionY continued in August as new recruits
were inducted in the division. An artillery battalion of the
division, consisting of two batteries, was located in
Gnjilane.
The first major action of the division occurred in August,
1944 in Kosovo. In September, 1944, the Skanderbeg Division
occupied Macedonia, then denoted as southern Serbia, and
helped to garrison the region. The Skanderbeg Division was
ordered into the areas surrounding the towns of Skopje,
Kumanovo, Presevo, and Bujanovac. Skanderbeg operated in the Stara
Srbija (Old Serbia) region, in the Kosovo-Metohija towns of
Pec, Gnjilane, Djakovica, Kosovska Mitrovica, and the
Macedonian towns of Tetovo and Gostivar. The city of Tetovo
was a major base for the Skanderbeg Division.
In November, 1944, when the German armies in the Balkans
were retreating from Yugoslavia and Greece, the Skanderbeg
Division remnants were reorganized into Regimentgruppe 21.
SS Gebirgs iSkanderbegi and was transferred to Skopje,
according to an account of the movements of the Battle Group.
This SS Kampfgruppe iSkanderbegi, along with the Prinz Eugen Division,
defended the Vardar valley. The Battle Group iSkanderbegi
and Prinz Eugen held the Vardar area because it was the sole
corridor of escape for the retreating German armies in
Alexander Loehris Army Group E, which was then retreating
from Greece and the Aegean Islands.
The Skanderbeg Battle Group along with the Prinz Eugen
Division retreated to the Brcko region of Bosnia-Hercegovina
by mid-January, 1945. At this time, the remaining Skanderbeg
personnel were incorporated into the 14th SS Volunteer
Mountain infantry Regiment of the 7th SS Division Prinz
Eugen. The remnants of the Skanderbeg division fought in this
formation until the end of the war, retreating to Austria in May, 1945.
The Skanderbeg Division engaged in a policy of ethnic
cleansing and genocide against the Serbian Orthodox
population of the regions under occupation by the division
in Kosovo-Metohija, Montenegro, and Macedonia. Balkan
historian Robert Lee Wolff, in The Balkans in Our Time, described the
genocide committed against Kosovo Serbs by the Albanian 21st
Waffen Gebirgs Division der SS iSkanderbegi as follows:
In the regions annexed by the Albanians, their so-called
Skanderbeg division,
made up of members of the Albanian minority in Yugoslavia,
massacred Serbs with impunity..
Historian L.S. Stavrianos, in The Balkans Since 1453,
described the genocide committed against Orthodox Kosovo
Serbs by the Skanderbeg Division in these terms:
Yugoslav Albanians, organized in their fascist Skanderbeg
Division, conducted an indiscriminate massacre of Serbians.
The Skanderbeg Division played a role in the Holocaust, the
genocide of European Jewry. In Kosovo: A Short History, Noel
Malcolm noted that in the Djakovica region of
Kosovo-Metohija, the Skanderbeg Division engaged in ithe
round-up and deportation of 281 Jewsi to the
concentration-extermination camps in May, 1944. According to
Malcolm, ithey took part in the most shameful episode of
Kosovois wartime history.i p310 Skanderbeg rounded up scores
of Jews in a group of approximately 500 Kosovans deemed enemies
of the Third Reich when the Division occupied Prizren in
Kosovo-Metohija. The division sought to create an ethnically
pure Kosovo, ethnically cleansed of Orthodox Serbs, Jews,
and Gypsies,Y the untermenschen (subhumans), not part of the
so-called West, who were targeted for extermination.
According to Miranda Vickers in Between Serb and Albanian: A
History of Kosovo, the Kosovo Albanian Skanderbeg SS
Division ethnically cleansed an estimated 10,000 Kosovo
Serbian families, most of whom fled as refugees to Serbia
while Albanian colonists from Albania entered Kosovo and took over
their lands and homes:
Until the first months of 1944 there were continued waves of
migration from Kosovo of Serbs and Montenegrins,forced to
flee following intimidation....TheY 21stSS eSkanderbeg
Divisioni (consisting, as already mentioned, of two
battalions) formed out of Albanian volunteers in the spring of 1944,
indiscriminately killed Serbs and Montenegrins in Kosovo. This
led to the emigration of an estimated 10,000 Slav families,
most of whom went to Serbia...replaced by new colonists from
the poorer regions of northern Albania.
The Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal declared the Schutzstaffel
or SS a criminal organization and every individual member of
the SS was found to be a war criminal guilty of iplanning
and carrying out crimes against humanity.i The Albanian
Kosovars in the 21st Waffen Gebirgs Division der SS iSkanderbegi
committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic
cleansing, and genocide against the Orthodox Serbian
population of Kosovo.This genocide would contribute to the
Kosovar goal and policy to create an ethnically pure Kosova,
in a attempt to create a Greater Albania.
During World War II, the Axis powers dismembered and
occupied Yugoslavia and created a Greater Albania by
annexing Kosovo-Metohija to Albania. During the occupation
of Kosovo-Metohija by Nazi Germany, Germany formed an
Albanian Kosovar Waffen SS Division, the 21st Waffen Gebirgs Division
der SS iSkanderbegi which engaged in a policy of ethnic
cleansing and genocide against the Orthodox Serbian
population of Kosovo. The result was that with the
Albanians, with the help of Germany, were able to either
kill or drive out entire Serbian families and to round up and
deport Kosovo Jews to the extermination camps, thereby creating during
World War II an ethnically pure, Nazi German-sponsored
Greater Albania.
end
More about the Nazism among Kosovo Albanians in WW2
http://www.kosovo.com/hist2.html#fascist