Berat (Albania) (AFP)

A new life was given on Sunday at the Jewish Museum of Albania, a country where almost the entire community was saved during World War II, a few months after the death of its founder, an Orthodox Christian anxious to leave a trace of this national bravery.

The "Salomon Museum" was founded in 2018 in a shop in Berat (south) by Simon Vrusho, a retired professor who wanted to tell how Albanians, Muslims and Christians, had sheltered hundreds of Jews during the Holocaust.

He had financed it thanks to donations deposited in a box at the entrance of the museum, as well as with his retirement of 180 euros monthly.

"The memories need to have a home for them," he told AFP, a few days before his death at age 75, in February 2019. His death had left the future of his museum in suspense.

A 58-year-old Franco-Albanian businessman, 58-year-old Gazmend Toska, decided to finance the place and move to a new and larger venue, inaugurated on Sunday.

"It was a blow of heart come after the echo that the AFP made of this museum", explained Gazmend Toska during a ceremony, in reference to a long article which had dedicated to him the press agency in March 2019.

The ambassador of France in Albania, Christina Vasak, for her part hailed "a beautiful story of rebirth" which rewards the dedication of Simon Vrusho.

The man had spent years gathering documents, photos and testimonies to tell the story of a community whose first members had arrived in Berat from Spain in the 16th century.

And their singular story deserved to be highlighted.

"Almost all the Jews who lived on Albanian territory during the German occupation, whether native or refugee, were saved, with the exception of one family," according to Yad Vashem, the International Institute for the memory of the Holocaust, which designated 75 Albanians as "Righteous among the Nations".

From a few hundred before the conflict, especially in Berat, Jews were more than 2,000 to the collapse of Nazi Germany. After being under the tutelage of fascist Italy, Albania came under German control in 1943 but the authorities refused to provide lists of Jews.

This museum is "a tree of memory watered with the love of all those who contributed to it surviving," said, moved, the widow of Simon Vrusho, Angjlina, 65, who will be director of the museum.

For the historian Yzedim Hima, this museum has above all a message to convey: "the love of people for other people, not the atrocities of a war".

© 2019 AFP