By Dr Jérôme aan de Wiel, School of History, University College Cork (UCC)
Cork, Ireland
In February 1939, Professor Mary Ryan, Ireland’s first ever female professor working in the university of Cork (UCC), visited Albania, just several weeks before the Italian invasion. Back home, she subsequently wrote an article in the journal Studies in which she shared her impressions of the country. She believed, correctly, that it was hardly known in Europe. In Durazzo, she noticed ‘a fleet of ramshackle buses and lorries’ although Tirana was ‘much more modern’ and that ‘Italian influence is more conspicuous’. Yet, she observed that ‘Albania, small as it is, is a very diversified country, and generalisations are correspondingly dangerous’. Modernisation and progress were limited, and ‘the country was not in hand’. Its population, she continued, was predominantly Muslim but there were Orthodox and Catholic minorities. Albanians were unfailingly courteous and very hospitable with a ‘strong sense of honour’. Ryan concluded with pertinent geopolitical remarks, writing that the small country had been a victim of great power play since the end of the First World War. Mussolini and fascist Italy had ‘untruly’ claimed that they had attacked Durazzo after ‘Italian lives and property had been in danger in Albania’. Certainly, that kind of pretext for invasions was nothing new and is still very topical. Ryan wrote that in fact ‘Albania was essential to Italy because of its geographical and strategical position’. The professor sounded much more plausible than Il Duce and his cronies.
Professor Ryan’s article constituted one of the very rare connections between Albania, the small mountainous country in the Balkans, and Ireland, the small Atlantic country on the fringe of Europe. And yet, as archives and photographs in dusty old boxes reveal, there was much more between them than Ryan’s article, even though it was only for a brief period after the Second World War.
During the war, Ireland had decided to remain neutral in a show of independence towards its former colonial master, Britain. Its leader, Éamon de Valera, had fought with the Irish republicans against the British during a rising in Dublin in April 1916, known as the Easter Rising. It was unsuccessful. After the First World War, the War of Independence began in Ireland in 1919 and ended in 1921 when the British granted a free-state status to Ireland. Yet, the country was partitioned as the British created Northern Ireland in 1920, a state for the Protestant majority in the province of Ulster, proud of its British identity. Partition was unacceptable for Irish republicans. The new Irish Free State was staunchly Catholic, with a powerful Catholic hierarchy, and rabidly anti-communist.
In 1932, de Valera became prime minister and set out to dismantle the Anglo-Irish constitutional framework. In 1937, a new constitution was adopted and Ireland was a republic but in name (it would officially become a republic in 1949). In 1939, the Second World War broke out and Ireland opted for neutrality. The Irish government condemned the German invasion of the Netherlands and Belgium. Yet, behind the scenes it was a different matter. De Valera’s government cooperated secretly with the western Allies, notably in matters of intelligence. At a popular level, almost 80,000 Irishmen and women volunteered to fight in the British army. Over 100,000 people went to work in British factories, thus participating in the crucial British war effort. Ireland’s economic ties with Britain were also strong. Plainly put, despite the centuries-old Anglo-Irish conflict, Ireland was part of the English-speaking world at large. It was in effect a ‘crypto ally’.
However, in 1943, de Valera sensed that after the war an attempt to isolate Ireland because of its official neutrality might be made by the Allies. Participating in humanitarianism might prevent that. But there were not only political calculations in the Irish government, but also a genuine desire to reach out a helping hand. Ireland had a strong tradition of Christian charity. It had not forgotten that during the Great Famine of 1845-1850 about one million people had died and hundreds of thousands had left the country, and that foreign countries and peoples had offered assistance. In 1944, the Irish Red Cross Society sent £5,000 to be shared between Albania, Greece and Croatia. After the war ended, de Valera announced on 18 May 1945 humanitarian aid worth £3,000,000 (approx. €126,000,000). The supplies were for free. All political parties and the Irish people agreed. If the government’s motivations to help were a mix of political calculations and genuine humanitarian feelings, the people’s motivations were purely humanitarian. Ireland had decided to make no difference between victorious and vanquished nations. In the memorably phrase of deputy James Dillon in parliament: ‘a hungry German is as much deserving of pity as a hungry Pole’.
Soon, the Irish government, people, Churches and voluntary organisations like the Irish Red Cross swung into action. For a small country of not even three million inhabitants, poor with limited economic means and plagued by high levels of emigration, its humanitarian action was out of the ordinary. In Normandy, near the D-Day beaches, the Irish set up a hospital in which the future Nobel Prize in Literature (1969) worked, Samuel Beckett. People made financial donations, collected goods and organised fund-raising events. Schools participated in the efforts. Hundreds and hundreds of tons of supplies were sent to the continent from the Netherlands all the way to the Greek islands: bacon, sugar, dairy products, clothes and medicines. Humanitarian aid for Europe in Ireland became a national task, like it was the case in Switzerland.
In May 1945, when the war ended, the European continent was in a desperate condition, millions of dead, millions of refugees and displaced persons, millions of orphans and large-scale destruction of cities, towns and infrastructure. Albania, a country of about a little more than one million inhabitants, was no exception. According to a report of the International Red Cross, southern Albania had been ravaged: ‘villages razed to the ground, crops burnt, cattle exterminated and fruit trees cut down’. About 13,700 people had been killed or were missing and there were about 170,000 homeless. Undernourishment led to an increase in diseases like malaria and tuberculosis. It was stressed in the report that ‘infant mortality oscillated between 25 and 40% (…) 5% of mothers could not feed their babies’. There were an estimated 300,000 people living in devastated regions, notably in Korça, Valona and Argiro Kastro. There were also 100,000 refugees. The International Red Cross concluded: ‘The most urgently needed supplies were medicines, condensed milk, food and warm clothes’.
The situation was rendered more complex due to the fact that it was difficult for humanitarian supplies to be transported to Albania. Some were shipped over from Bari in southern Italy to Durazzo. Others were transported by train from Geneva, where the headquarters of the International Red Cross was located, to Belgrade. From Belgrade they were transported to Bitolj (Bitola) in Macedonia. The supplies were then loaded on trucks heading for Tirana. These were the routes that supplies from the Don Irlandais, as Ireland’s aid became known in French in Europe, took to reach Albania.
Another difficulty was the regime change in Tirana. The communist leader Enver Hoxha had taken power. Soon, persecutions of undesirable elements began, including the Catholic and Orthodox minorities. Hoxha was extremely suspicious of foreigners as he believed they were plotting against him or elaborating invasion plans. The new regime had difficulties with the recently created United Nations Rehabilitation and Relief Administration (UNRRA) operating in the country. Relations between the two were strained to say the least. It is here that humanitarian supplies from distant Ireland were a better option for Hoxha and his followers (Ireland was not a member of UNRRA). Unlike UNRRA supplies, Irish supplies offered the advantage that they were not distributed by Irish officials on the spot, thus minimising possible foreign interference. The International Red Cross had difficulties with the regime too. It sent two missions to the country in 1945 and 1946 to check if the distribution of supplies was done properly. The reports it got from Albania were frequently very incomplete. From Hoxha’s point of view, dealing with the Irish Red Cross directly was a clever way to circumvent Geneva and its officials altogether. It would be easier for him to control the personnel of the Albanian Red Cross. The same was happening in neighbouring Yugoslavia.
It was in Geneva during a meeting of the International Red Cross in the autumn of 1945 that the Albanian Red Cross got first in touch with its Irish counterparts. Dr Elmas Konjari explained that he was most satisfied with the aid that Ireland proposed and it was extremely urgently needed as he detailed the disastrous situation in his country. He stressed the plight of children especially as orphanages were poorly equipped and also that newborns were dying because of a lack of milk. He made a moving appeal in French: ‘Il faut aider l’Albanie qui a déjà tant souffert!’ (Albania that has suffered so much already, must be helped!). The Irish Red Cross sent £500 to Geneva for Albania to buy medicines.
Irish aid began to be organised. In November, there was a problem to cover the transit expenses of the Don Irlandais’ supplies in Italy bound for Albania. Eventually, it was agreed that they could be transported free of charge. On 28 December, the International Committee of the Red Cross in Belgrade was notified that 20,443 kilos of sugar, 450 kilos of blankets, 1,321 kilos of socks, 1,155 kilos of biscuits and 5,000 kilos of sugar were on their way to Ljubljana in Yugoslavia. Vita Kondi of the Albanian Red Cross in Belgrade would then organise the transport to Tirana. Eventually, on 13 February 1946, the Irish government was informed that the supplies had safely reached the city despite ‘great transport difficulties’. The Albanian Red Cross was exclusively in charge of the distribution operations.
In April 1947, Qamil Çela, the chairman of the Albanian Red Cross informed the Irish Red Cross that dairy products from Golden Vein in Limerick (south-west of Ireland) were used to supply relief centres for the next three months. The Ministry of Public Instruction of the Popular Republic of Albania was participating in the distribution. Çela had included three photographs of grateful and smiling people who were receiving Irish supplies. There were many photographs sent from Albania to Ireland as they were evidence that the people were receiving the supplies. They showed many children but also women, being either mothers receiving supplies or Red Cross personnel in action.
Supplementary evidence were letters written to Ireland by the people, notably schools. In June 1947, Enver Dibra from Luigj Gurakuqi elementary school in Shkodra wrote: ‘when the schoolchildren of the New Albania did not have enough food because of the fascist occupation which ravaged our fatherland, you, fellow young people, had the generosity to send us food relief like sugar, milk etc. which arrived at the right time. We will not forget your gifts’. Some of the words in young Dibra’s letter reflected the new ideology in place in Albania and in all likelihood he had received help in writing the letter. Yet, the tenor of the letter written in French by the pupils in K. Kristoforidhi elementary school in Tirana to the junior branch of the Irish Red Cross was neutral: ‘Nous nous sentons obligés de remercier les juniors irlandais pour le soin amical qu’ils ont manifesté pour nous, enfants albanais, en nous envoyant une bonne quantité de sucre’ (We feel much obliged to thank the Irish juniors for having taken care of us, Albanian schoolchildren, in such a friendly manner by sending us a good quantity of sugar’.
According to a report issued by the International Red Cross, Ireland sent 10 tons of condensed milk, 50 tons of sugar, 450 pairs of tights and 550 blankets to Albania between December 1945 and March 1946, and 25.5 tons of condensed milk, 158.8 tons of sugar, 150 mattresses and 2,040 blankets between July 1946 and February 1947. It would seem that the sending of supplies stopped some time in 1947. Humanitarian aid became the object of a propaganda battle between East and West in the nascent Cold War. The Catholic Church and the government in Ireland believed that Irish supplies were hijacked and manipulated by the local communists in Eastern Europe and that local people were not aware that the supplies they got came from Ireland. But extensive research in archives proves that this was not the case in Albania, Hungary, Yugoslavia and the Soviet-Occupied Zone of Germany. The schoolchildren in Tirana, Shkodra and elsewhere knew where their sugar, dairy products and socks came from.
Finally, the three main explanations why Ireland’s humanitarian aid in post-war Europe is unknown is that the humanitarian aid of small countries was simply dwarfed by that of the United States, but which makes it no less important, that Irish historians have essentially focused on the history of Ireland’s relations with Britain and other English-speaking nations during the tumultuous twentieth century and that humanitarianism has been receiving attention from historians relatively recently. In September 1947, Éamon de Valera was in Paris for a ceremony to thank Ireland for what it had one for France. He explained that hundreds of thousands of letters of thanks from Europeans had been sent to Dublin and added that if a historian could read all these letters ‘a very interesting chapter might be added to the history of Europe in those terrible years’. It was done, some 75 years later.
Jérôme aan de Wiel
Ireland’s Helping Hand to Europe, 1945-1950; Combatting Hunger from Normandy to Tirana
(Budapest: Central European University Press, 2021, pp. 537)
