15 Facts About Xhafer Deva

Xhafer Deva was a fascist Kosovo Albanian politician during World War II.

Xhafer Deva worked as an assistant supervisor at the mailing department of Stanford University in Palo Alto until his retirement in 1972.

Xhafer Ibrahim Deva was born in Mitrovica, Kosovo Vilayet, Ottoman Empire on 21 February 1904.

Xhafer Deva was the seventh son of Ibrahim Deva, a wood merchant from Gjakova.

Xhafer Deva graduated in 1922 and traveled to Egypt, where he briefly worked for a bank in Alexandria.

Xhafer Deva studied forestry in Vienna before returning to Mitrovica in 1933 and setting up a lumber business that lasted until 1941.

Later that year, Xhafer Deva worked with the Balli Kombetar and the Germans to establish a pro-German Albanian government in Kosovo linked to the Albanian nation.

Xhafer Deva quickly became the Balli Kombetar's most powerful figure.

Between 4 and 7 December 1943,400 soldiers of Kosovo Regiment commanded by Xhafer Deva surrounded Peja and committed mass murder of local Serbs and Montenegrins, killing at least 300 people.

Xhafer Deva subsequently placed the newly established units of Balli Kombetar under the command of the Germans.

Later, Xhafer Deva began recruiting Kosovo Albanians to join the SS Skanderbeg.

Xhafer Deva refused to hand the list over to the Germans and rejected their requests to gather Jews in one place, purportedly because of the Albanian besa custom of hospitality.

Xhafer Deva informed the leaders of the Jewish community that he had successfully refused the German request afterward.

In 1947, Xhafer Deva moved via Italy to Damascus in Syria, where he helped publish an exile newspaper entitled Bashkimi i Kombit.

Files released after his death showed that Xhafer Deva was one of 743 suspected fascist war criminals recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency during the Cold War.