Category: Albanian – Righteous Among the Nations

Nuro Hoxha was a well-respected teacher in the village of Tërbaç, near Vlorë in Albania. In September 1943, when the Germans occupied Albania, Hoxha went to warn his long-time friend Ilia Solomoni of the danger to the Jews. Solomoni had nowhere to go and did not know what to do, so Hoxha offered to hide Solomoni and his family in his two-storey house in Tërbaç.

In 1990, the first Albanian received the Righteous Among the Nations award. In 1991, when the Communist regime was overturned there, more stories came to light.

In 1943, when Refik Veseli, a photographer’s apprentice, smuggled his mentor Moshe Mandil and Mandil’s family across Albania to escape the Nazis, he didn’t see himself as particularly heroic.