From Street Names to Textbooks, WWII in Kosovo is Not What it Once Was

In history textbooks published in Kosovo during the period 1990–2025, cooperation between Albanian communist Partisans in Kosovo and Serbian or Yugoslav communist Partisans gets no mention whatsoever.

Meetings, agreements, and cooperation between Albanian and Serbian political and military representatives are entirely absent.

Only the resolution issued during the Bujan Conference is mentioned, but even then, only the first part of the sentence stating that “Kosovo wishes to unite with Albania”.

The remainder – stating that “the best way to achieve this is through joint struggle with the other peoples of Yugoslavia against the Nazi occupier” – is omitted. No other aspects of the resolution are presented, despite its reflection of the spirit of ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ with the Yugoslav peoples.

Current textbooks make extensive mention of Albanian nationalists, who were once portrayed as “collaborators of the occupiers” and “enemies of the people” but are now presented as “patriots” and “national heroes”.

In some cases, the authors of these textbooks are the same historians who, prior to 1990, depicted Albanian nationalists as “enemies of the people”.

These textbooks also discuss the Tivar Massacre and other crimes committed by Yugoslav Partisans, often citing inflated casualty figures.

Addressing the different ways in which important events from WWII are commemorated in Kosovo, Anna Di Lellio, a sociologist and professor at New York University, said: “In Kosovo, different memories are presented as the only true memories of the war: there exists a memory of anti-fascist resistance, a memory of the ethnic killings of Partisans, just as there are also mythical narratives of life under Italian and German occupation, portrayed either as idyllic or as tragic.

“Each of these, at different times, became the official memory, thereby leaving other memories under the radar,” Di Lellio said at the opening of an exhibition entitled Under the Radar – Memories of the Second World War in Kosovo , held in 2015 by the Kosovo Oral History Initiative in Pristina.

“There is not only one historical truth about Kosovo during the Second World War, nor does only one group – whether Albanians or Serbs, nationalists or socialists – possess this truth,” Di Lellio said.

“There are no truths in homogeneous memories based on an abstract notion of ‘the people’. Homogeneous memories are untrue because they are uncritical and deny uncomfortable truths, such as war crimes committed by one’s own people.”

The political currents in Kosovo during WWII – nationalist and communist – are presented in current textbooks under the umbrella of the ‘Albanian national movement’.

Thus, neither the differences nor the clashes between these two currents are addressed, nor is it mentioned that the communist current was divided into two groups: the Partisans led by Polluzha and those by Hoxha.

These textbooks omit the fact that Polluzha’s Partisans were liquidated by those of Hoxha and the Yugoslav Partisans, assisted by Partisans from Albania. They also fail to note that the nationalist current withdrew from Kosovo together with the German troops, while part of the communist current participated in the 1945 Assembly of Prizren, where they unanimously approved the resolution for Kosovo’s annexation by Serbia.

Changing names

Street names and primary and secondary school names similarly reflect Kosovar society’s approach to commemorating WWII.

Of the 43 primary schools in the capital, Pristina, seven bear the names of WWII figures: Asim Vokshi, Emin Duraku, Meto Bajraktari, Zenel Hajdini, Ganimete Terbeshi, Tefik Canga, and Ramiz Sadiku.

Primary schools that previously bore the names of non-Albanian WWII figures, such as Miladin Popovic, Vladimir Nazor, Aca Marovic, and Tito, have been replaced with the names of Albanian national figures.

Of the 11 secondary schools in Pristina, only one bears the name of a WWII figure: the Xhevdet Doda Gymnasium. Another gymnasium, which under Yugoslavia was named after the Croatian Partisan hero Ivo Lola Ribar, now bears the name Sami Frasheri, an Albanian writer and prominent figure of the Albanian National Awakening.

Likewise, the technical secondary school in Pristina, formerly called ‘19 November’ in honour of the liberation of Pristina, is now called ‘28 November’, in memory of the 1912 declaration of Albanian independence.

A similar trend is evident in street naming. In terms of WWII figures, names associated with the anti-communist resistance, once banned, now dominate, while the names of communist Partisans have almost entirely disappeared.

The same can be said of WWII monuments, most of them having been removed, relocated, or partially or completely destroyed after 1999. In some cases, only the foundations or abandoned structures remain and are no longer included in any institutional commemorative narrative. These monuments have effectively been excluded from public space and no longer serve as ven…