“In 1939, the Italians occupied our country, and then in September 1943, the Germans came,” Elida translates as her grandmother speaks. “Right away, it became clear they were hunting the Jews who lived among Albanians, my grandmother says. Albania, you see, had become a refuge of sorts for Jews fleeing from Macedonia and Kosovo, and from as far away as Germany and Poland.
“In 1943, several Jewish families came to our small town of Kruje, seeking refuge,” Elida continues as her grandmother tells her tale in her native language. “My grandfather was one of the townspeople who offered to take in refugees. The family who came to stay with them, my grandmother says, were the Berensteins, from Mati, Germany. She can still remember them.”
Elida pauses then, and her grandmother says in slow, careful English, “Ezra Berenstein, the father. Bracha Berenstein, the mother. Two girls. Sandra Bernstein. Ayala Berenstein.”
Elida nods. “Yes. The Berensteins. The girls were very young, just four and six. The family had fled at the start of the war and had been gradually making their way south, in hiding.”
Elida’s grandmother begins to speak again, and Elida resumes her translation. “My grandmother says that she and her husband were poor, and provisions were very low because of the war, but they welcomed the Berensteins into their home. The whole town knew of it, but when the Germans came, no one betrayed them. Once, the Germans came to the house, and Mr. and Mrs. Berenstein hid in the attic, while my grandmother and grandfather pretended Sandra and Ayala were their own children, Muslim children. After that, they dressed all the Berensteins in peasant clothing, and my grandfather went with them and helped them move into the mountains nearby, to a smaller village. After a time, my grandmother followed. They lived there with the Berensteins, helping to protect them, until 1944, when the Berensteins again began to move south, toward Greece.”
I realize there are tears in my eyes as I listen to the story. I glance at Annie and see that she looks equally moved.
“What happened to them?” I ask. “The Berensteins? Did they make it out safely?”
“For a very long time, my grandmother did not know,” Elida says. “She and my grandfather prayed for them every day. After the Germans were defeated in late 1944 in Albania, the country was taken over by Communists, and Albanians were not allowed to communicate with the outside world. It was 1952 when my grandparents received a letter from the Berensteins. They were alive, all four, and living in Israel. They thanked my grandparents for what they had done, for extending Besa, and Ezra Berenstein wrote that he had sworn an oath to repay my grandmother and grandfather, should they ever need help. My grandparents were not allowed to respond, and they feared the Berensteins would think they had died, or worse, that they would think they had not remembered them.”
Elida’s grandmother says something else and Elida smiles and replies to her in Albanian. She turns back to Annie and me. “I told my grandmother I know the rest of the story, and so I can tell you,” she says. “I was twenty-five when Communism fell in 1992, and our country was once again open to the world. But Communism had destroyed us, you see. We were very poor. There was no future for us in Albania, but there was no money to leave. I lived with my grandmother and my parents. My grandfather had died years before. One day, there was a knock at our door.”
“Was it Ezra Berenstein?” Annie interrupts eagerly.
“No, but you are close,” Elida replies with a smile. “Mr. Berenstein had died some years before, as had his wife. But the daughters, Sandra and Ayala, had never forgotten their time in my grandparents’ home. They were in their fifties by then, and they had been working to get my grandparents declared Righteous Among the Nations, which is a title given to those people who helped save Jews at the peril of their own lives. Now they were at our door, nearly fifty years after they first came to Albania for shelter, wishing to repay what my grandmother and grandfather had given to them.
“My grandmother explained to them that Besa isn’t to be repaid,” Elida continues. “Not on this earth, anyhow. She told them that it was her duty to help them, her duty to God and to her fellow man, and that she was very glad they had lived and gone on to happy lives. Ayala lived in America by then, and she had married a very wealthy man, a doctor named William. She had converted to Christianity, and they’d had two sons, she told my grandmother. She said she owed my grandmother everything, because without their help, she and her family would never have survived. She told my grandmother that she wanted to help us get out of Albania and bring us to America. And a year later, after securing visas for us, that is exactly what she did. My parents decided to remain in Albania, but my grandmother and I moved here, to Boston, to begin a new life.”