Albert Belay
# Albert Belay

Albert T. Belay (born May 24, 1925) is a Gottschee German cultural activist in New York City.

Belay was born in Livold (German: Lienfeld), Slovenia. He left the Gottschee region as a teenager, becoming a displaced person in Austria after the Second World War, and then emigrated to the United States in 1951, where he worked as a civil engineer. He married a fellow Gottschee refugee, Therese Erker, in 1953. Belay served as the president of the 1960 Gottscheer Volksfest in New York and headed the cultural committee of the Gottscheer Relief Association for many years. He is also the chairman of the Gottschee German Men's Choir in New York.

Belay authored the cookbook Hoimischai Khöscht (Home-Style Fare), containing 155 traditional Gottschee German recipes, and narrated the five-part CD series Eine Reise durch Gottschee 1936 (A Journey through Gottschee, 1936). His son, the Late Roland Belay 1955 - 2020, was a member of the board of Gottscheer Central Holding, which runs Gottscheer Hall in the Ridgewood neighborhood of Queens, New York City.

