By Keida Kostreci
Born and raised in a small Jewish community in Albania, Anna Kohen has a special relation with her hometown, Vloren. Her new book “The Flower of Vlora” as she herself says, is a present for the next generations of her family but also a way to honor the Albanian family that sheltered her family during Second World War, as well as all Albanians who saved the Jews. In an interview with the “Voice of America”, Dr. Anna, as she is known in her Albanian- American community, her beautiful memories but also the sad ones, as well as about the Romaniote Jews, a not very well-known community. She talked with the colleague Keida Kostreci on the verge of her book’s publication.
The Voice of America: Dr. Anna, what inspired you to write the book entitled “The Flower of Vlora”?
Anna Kohen: I thought about my nephews and nieces. I want them to know the place I come from, the history of my life, because I myself had no memories, no one had told me anything about my grandparents from my mother’s side, who were killed and taken during the Holocaust from Janina and Greece. I don’t know anything about them. That’s why I wrote my history for my nephews and nieces. And then, I understood that this history can have a broader audience. And so I continue to write these memories for the others.
The Voice of America: Can you tell us more about your extraordinary history that goes from Albania and Greece, for your identity as a Jewish child in Albania and then as an adult in the United States?
Anna Kohen: The history starts in the year 1938 with my parents. In that time, my grandparents and my father, a young boy, went to Albania and found some other Romaniote Jews families, that went from Ioannina to Vlore. It was a small community and they became part of it. When the communists came to power, they couldn’t leave even though they were Greek citizens, so they stayed in Albania where four children were born, after the war.
The Voice of America: Tell us more about you childhood and the years as a young Jewish girl in Albania…
Anna Kohen: I was a Jewish girl and I was proud that I was Jewish. On the other hand, my closest friends were a Christian and a Muslim. So, us three were best friends. My childhood was beautiful. We had fun. We communicated very well with each other even though we had different beliefs, but however the religion was not practiced in Albania. But us, the Jews of Vlora, practiced our religion secretly, under the nose of the Security.
The Voice of America: What are the main things that you wanted to show in this book?
Anna Kohen: When my parents came from Greece to Albania, it was a time of war. In fact, my father went to Ioannina to marry my mother and brought her in Albania. So, during the war, they had to hide somewhere and went to the village “Tre Vellazer”, a village with Muslim population, close to Vlora. And they were sheltered from the Lazaj family. I wanted to honor this family, as if it were my family, and to honor all other Albanians for their generosity, for what they had done for the Jews in Albania.
The Voice of America: And your memories are focused on the family but also on its challenges during the communist dictatorship. Can you tell us about your memories of that period?
Anna Kohen: When I got accepted in the faculty of medicine, I had to go to Tirana, but we weren’t Albanian citizens, we were Greek citizens. As a foreign in that time, I had to go to the police and tell them where I was going, that I had to go to Tirana. If I wanted to visit my cousin in Kavaja, I had to go to the police and tell them. This part was desperate. But we lived in a communist country, and we couldn’t do anything.
For this reason, this book will show the Americans or citizens of other countries that haven’t lived under communism, who have inherited freedom, how it is possible to live without any freedom, including freedom of speech.
The Voice of America: You consider yourself as a daughter of Vlora, as much as you consider yourself a daughter of Jewish parents. What is Vlora for you?
Vlora is my birth city. I love Vlora and I call her “My Vlora”.
Vlora is beautiful and it has a history with the Jews, which is mentioned in this book and that many people may not know. Jews had come to Vlora since the time of the Spanish Inquisition in 1492, in very early times, and I explain this in the book.
But in short, the book contains my memories of my life and that of my parents, it shows how we left Albania and I believe that everyone will want to know how we left. But besides my memories, it is also an educational book. People will read the book and learn about Besa. Then there is also the history of the Jews. Everyone knows that there are Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews but not much is known about Romaniote Jewish. And Ioannina is one of the cities with the most Romaniote.
The Voice of America: Doctor Ana, tell us more about this community, the Romaniote Jews…
Anna Kohen: Even I didn’t know that I was Romaniote, so when I came for the first time in America, I was telling people I was Sephardic, that I came from Greece, where my parents were from. But then in the 80s, I was reading a book on the subject and realized I’m Romaniote. What does this mean? The Romaniote are a very, very old Jewish community, dating back to the Byzantine period. And they were settled in parts of Greece like, Ioannina, Vollos, Arta, Kavalla, all these little towns.
I describe their history in details in this book.
The Voice of America: You mentioned the fact that you have a Greek citizenship. But even today, you don’t have an Albanian citizenship, even though your relation with Albania has continued all your life…
Anna Kohen: It is very true. I was born in Albania, and I consider myself always as an Albanian Jewish, Albanian- Greek Jewish. However, we lived in Albania as Greek citizens and I didn’t have Albanian citizenship and not many people knew about this and this was something I wanted to include in this book and to explain that even though I do so much for Albania and Albanian people, I am not an Albanian citizen.
But what I do, is a reward for what the Albanian people had done for the Jewish in general.
The Voice of America: As you mentioned, your connection with Albania still continues even today. Can you tell us how you keep this relation between life and your activism?
Anna Kohen: I have been the Chairwomen of the Organization of Albanian- American women “Motrat Qirjazi” for more than 25 years. I have been in connection with the Albanian community (in America) from 1990 and is a community that I love, a community that I help, a community that even today I organize activities for information programs, education programs for Albanians and I have been in contact with Albanians all over the world.
I cannot forget what the Lazaj family had done for my family and what other Albanians had done for other Jewish families.
And we all knew that the number of the Jews in Albania after the war was greater than before the war and this was thanks to the generosity of the Albanian people. So, I have a very close connection and whenever I get a call for help, I help whether I know the person or not.
The Voice of America: What does your history tell about identity since you have all these different identities embodied in you as a person?
Anna Kohen: In Albania we lived as Greek citizens or foreign. We left Albania and went to Greece, the Greek people didn’t recognize my parents as Greek, nor us as Greek. So, we lived in Greece and didn’t have any citizenship.
It’s not a good thing to live without a citizenship, however we lived as such, until we came to The United States. My parents left earlier from Greece but I wanted to stay there to finish my stomatology studies. When I came to America, the first thing I did in airport was put on the Jewish star and thought: I have come to a place that will give me the freedom I never had. I will put my Jewish star, a thing I could not do in Greece.
I came to a place where I finally got my citizenship. I became American citizen five years later. So, this is the only citizenship I have had my whole life.
The Voice of America: What kind of message would like the reader to take from your book?
Anna Kohen: I would like to say to all that to write about yourself, to share your history is something that not everyone does. But I did it because I felt that reading this book might inspire the others, this would be a great achievement.
To write “The Flower of Vlora” was a challenge, it was a journey and a work done with love.
The Voice of America: The book will come out in September. Will it be also translated in Albanian Language?
Anna Kohen: By the way, the book is in English Language and can be pre- ordered via amazon.com. The Albanian version will come out on time for the Book Fair in Tirana (in November). The book will be published by the Albanian Institute for International Studies (AIIS).
