An Albanian Jew escaped to Greece this week, bringing a rare account of the continued existence of Europe’s most isolated and repressed Jews.

Albania, a rigorously Communist country bordered by Greece and Yugoslavia, is almost totally closed to the world and hostile even to the other Communist nations.

After persecuting the Moslem, Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox faiths since it seized power in 1944, the Government in 1967 declared Albania by law ”the first atheist state in the world.” All houses of worship were razed, closed or diverted to worldly purposes, and clergymen and nuns were condemned to hard labor.

But the escapee, Samuel Matathia, said in an interview today, after a joint news conference with two other escapees, that in addition to Government persecution of their religion Jews are victims of a constant campaign of anti-Semitism by ordinary Albanians. ‘Contempt for Jews’

”The Government is the source, but the people make it a broad river,” Mr. Matathia said, speaking through an interpreter. ”Contempt for Jews is much worse than for anyone else.”

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The two other refugees, non-Jews, listened and did not disagree.

Because of the rigid restrictions on religion or any other nonofficial activity, Mr. Matathia’s Judaism is more a matter of his will than adherence to custom.

His mother was Greek Orthodox, but his father, he said, always taught him to think of himself as a Jew and honor Judaism’s traditions. He said he knew no prayer, nor has he ever seen a Jewish text or heard a Hebrew word.

Mr. Matathia, a 31-year-old former canteen employee from the Adriatic coastal town of Valona, said Jews were usually referred to and frequently abused on the street by the old Turkish term cifut, which a Turkish dictionary defines as a cunning, malicious and duplicitous Jew. Jews Face Discrimination

Mr. Matathia said Jews were habitually discriminated against in employment, education and housing. These are vital matters especially in Europe’s poorest country, where living space is exceedingly cramped and joblessness, although not officially admitted, is widespread.

Mr. Matathia did two years of obligatory army service, but he said many other Jews were sent to do labor instead. He said Jews never reached high positions.

So great is the fear of informers, Mr. Matathia said, that even if some Jews said prayers in the privacy of their rooms, no one else would be told of it. He said the only communal practice in his town and the capital, Tirana, were secret gatherings at which traditional Sephardic Jewish sweets are eaten in memory of the dead.

Mr. Matathia, a slight, undernourished man with an agile face and vivid gestures, spoke proudly of what he knew of Judaism – the great tradition of the Jews of Spain in the Middle Ages. Most of the Jews in this region were descendants of Jews expelled from Spain nearly 500 years ago. ‘A Great Honor to Be a Jew’

Since his parents, now dead, were of the Greek minority – his father, he said, came from a family of prosperous merchants – Mr. Matathia can claim to be Albanian, Greek and Jewish. ”I want to be called a Jew,” he said emphatically, ”because of my father and because I consider it a great honor to be a Jew.”

Mr. Matathia said he thought there were about 500 Jews in Valona and 2,000 to 2,500 in all of Albania, but emphasized that he could not be sure. An Israeli diplomat said he had not known of the continued existence of any Jews in the neighboring nation or heard of any previous Jewish refugee.

The Encyclopedia Judaica in 1971 estimated the total number at 200, but because of the Jews’ isolation within Europe’s most isolated country, estimates must rely on Albania’s last census, in 1930, when 204 Jews were counted. The events of World War II brought many Yugoslav Jews to seek refuge in Italian-occupied Albania, and survivors may have increased that number.

Mr. Matathia fled with Vladimir Lalaj, a 32-year-old Moslem farm worker, last Sunday. Mr. Lalaj was freed last year after serving nearly 11 years in prison for an anti-Government remark. They crossed one of the world’s most closely guarded frontiers after cutting the electric wire that is intended to keep Albanians out of the border zone.

They walked and crawled through the mountains for 18 hours before reaching safety.

Mr. Matathia said he had not decided whether to seek permanent asylum in Greece, the United States or Israel. He said he thought a half-sister, Toula Daskali, who escaped with her mother at the end of World War II, was living in Florida.

Surprised when told that as a son of a non-Jewish mother he was not a Jew under rabbinical law applied in Israel, he said, without sarcasm, ”I haven’t had the honor to know about such things.”