Hi, my name is Besmir Ymeri, I am an Albanian born in Tirana but have been living in the United States (Boston) since 1998. I am attending Boston Collage, majoring in Political Science and History. When my Political Science Professor told me about a book that has the fist part of my name as the title I did not know what to expect. Never the less I immediately bought the book and was blown away by it. By the and of the book my passion to become a politician in Albania became even more clear to me. As a politician I feel that I can help the Albanian country and other countries peoples like Israel.
I was very touched by this book, because my father`s family comes from a small town called Peza which is between Tirana and Dures, my father has told me stories when his grandfather had hidden two Jewish families from the Germans. In the book there is a part when you talk about when the Albanian families took in the Italian solder`s. My father tells me that his grandfather had taken in two Italian solder`s. When the Germans came in, they started to kill any Italian solder`s that were still in Albania. Some how the Germans had find out that my great grandfather was hiding Italian solders, then the Germans came to the house and rounded up about 17 man all from my family and made the dig there own graves and shot them in the head one by one. They left my great grandfather for last and they asked him one last time "tell us where you are hiding them or we will kill you like the rest of your family and your family will be erased" but he never told them. My father says that he was hiding the two Italian solder`s in the next town with a good family friend of his. The only two people in my family after that day was my grandfather and one of his cousin's. This is how much a mans honor mattered to then back in those days, that is real BESA to me.
I think this story is why my grandfather named me BESMIR which is the same thing as BESAMIR, mir means good.
I am very grateful to you for righting this book and hopefully opening peoples eyes to see that there are places in the world where people of all religions live in peace. Sometimes I feel that people in industrialised countries feel like that they have not to learn from third-word countries like Albania. Hopefully your book will help some people to see the word in a more understanding, accepting and honourable view just like my great grandfather did. I know that people all over word have Albanian BESA inside them, hopefully they start to express it more and more for every ones sake.
Thank you very much and I would love to see a movie about this.
--Besmir Ymeri
