Israeli writer: “I was born and saved thanks to ‘Besa’ of Albanians”

Ita Bartuv, daughter of the book’s author, was born in Shkoder in 1943.  The other name that she likes is Drita Faraji, the name she was registered with when she was hiding in Albania to escape the holocaust. She remembered the stories of her mother for Radio Free Europe the words of her mother:

“My mother always told me that she and her family survived only thanks to the Albanian besa”, Ita says.

She reminds how her mother told her the huge trouble they went through when they travelled from Skopje to Kosovo, to finally arrive in Shkodra, where they received Albanian documents.

“Besa, and the defensive power of this word. My parents told me how they were saved, holding me in their arms as a baby and moving from one house to another, through a small garden door. During the walk, you could hear ‘I am giving these people to you under Besa”, she remembers.

The book was published in Albanian, Macedonian and English, by the Spiritual and Cultural Heritage Institution of Albanians in Macedonia.

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