By Marcel Lela
Memorie.al / Ilia Thereska has chosen not to be in the media cyclone. Interviews are a foreign thing to him. The fact that he decided to speak for Politiko.al, you can consider coincidence, persistence of friends or even luck. Perhaps even an impulse of one who has lived an unusual life, to leave a testimony. We meet in his apartment, on “Fortuzi” street. Flutura, my wife, a charming and cultured lady, welcomes us with the door open and welcome. As soon as you enter the salon, many books in different languages, paintings by Sali Shijak and other well-known Albanian painters, as well as family photographs catch your eye.
Ilia Thereska is in the studio, where she spends hours, being informed about the newest publications or the latest scientific studies. He comes out and waits for us warmly. Lively eyes and curiosity about life immediately show the youthful spirit of this 85-year-old man, which could not overcome even the 35 years he spent in the terrible circles of communist hell.
Ilia is the son of an Orthodox priest, Vasil Thereska, while his mother comes from a noble family in the city of Berat. She was the great-granddaughter of the great patriot and activist, Baba Dudë Karbunara. His father died young, when he was 43-44 years old, in 1947, leaving Ilia very young, while his mother was forced to do various jobs, as she was left alone.
In the school year 1948-’49, Ilia Thereska finished the 7-year school with top marks and, as was the practice of that time, he was selected among the 100 students who were sent to Yugoslavia. Then, Thereska wins a scholarship to the gymnasium of Gjirokastra where she continues her studies. In the second year of high school, a child’s play would cause Ilia’s life to take an unimaginable course, and he would be labeled by the system as one of the “enemies of the homeland”.
He says that he was distinguished from others by his good clothes, because his aunt’s husband used to send him a package of clothes from America. Also, Ilia was a chap by nature and loved songs. He even tells us a story that Dritëro Agolli had told him, after the fall of the regime. Ilia Thereska studied in the same school, parallel to the writer Ismail Kadare, while Dritëro Agolli was two classes above.
“The other villagers used to look at you and say, this one, the priest’s son, dresses better than us”, Agolli had confessed during a conversation.
Thereska says that when he was in the second year, his friend, Thanas Dhespa, would go to his village, for the feast of “Saint Thanas”, on January 16-17. The road that he would walk to the village passed through a forest and was dangerous, so an officer from the same village as Thanas, who met him by chance, gave the latter a revolver to have for self-defense. Thereska tells where he returned to the “Asim Zeneli” school dormitory, he showed the revolver to a classmate and jokingly told him that he intended to kill someone they knew.
“When he finds out where he hid the revolver, he comes out during the lesson and takes it and takes it to the State Security. During the break, this friend was asking me if I had seen the man, who had told him about the gun. I asked him what had happened and what weapon it was about, and when he told me how it was, we searched all over Gjirokastra, until 10 o’clock at night. Thanas decided to wait for him not to come, while I went to the dormitory”, Ilia remembers.
The first sentence
“After midnight they wake me up by force and when I open my eyes, I see that there were armed policemen in the dormitory room. All the students were alarmed. They immediately put the irons on me. Meanwhile, I also had a friend from Shkodra, Bajram Mesi, they also took him. He knew nothing about this conversation. After mak, they also took Thanasi. They put us in the Security car and after hitting all three of our heads once, they put us in some narrow dungeons, one and a half meters long, where you could neither stand nor sit”, Ilia remembers his arrest. from the State Security
During the investigations, a defense lawyer addressed them with a letter, as the defendants and the lawyer were not allowed to meet. In the letter he told them that the whole class wanted their release, so they had to accept whatever they were told. “It was January 1952, I was 16 years old and this lawyer was a cousin of mine, so we agreed to sign in the Internal Branch, what they gave us”, confesses Thereska.
After six days, he and the others are taken to the fortress of Gjirokastra. Thereska tells that the Castle had several cells, which at that time were made of cement. These cells were washed daily by the prisoners. There were about 15 cells, on one side, and 15 on the other side, while in the middle, there was a long sidewalk. These cells were full of detainees and from them, from time to time, dead people were taken out. “Woe to the one who was at the castle of Gjirokastra”, remembers Thereska while recalling the horror of those scenes.
“Get in there,” the policeman told me. It was winter, it was snowing and I was wearing some thin wetsuits. As soon as I saw space I was happy and lay down. When after a while I saw that my body was wet, because the water entered the rooms, when the outer courtyard was being washed, but those that had no people, two of them, still held water. I had slept on water that night. I was horrified that the only hood they gave you was frozen on the cement,” recalls Thereska
After 5 months of being there, they brought him to court, where he and his friend were sentenced to 20 years in prison, the maximum that was then. “The prosecutor, – remembers Thereska, – told us that so little was due to age, ‘that if you were older you would eat the bullet in the head.’ After keeping them there for another six months, they set off for Kuçova, where they would build the airport.
Here Ilia Thereska remembers a sad episode, how the car stopped in front of his house. It was one after midnight and he, not even 17 years old, looked at the house and thought of the people sleeping inside, in the warmth. A warmth that he would have to spend many years, through the cold cells and galleries of prisons and forced labor camps, to feel the taste of it.
Thereska remembers that after two years in Kuçove, in 1953, they were taken to build the Rinas airport, which, according to him, was like an African forest at the time. There he met Jusuf Vrioni, Tomor Ypi, Sami Repishti, Foto Bala, Spiro Pisha and many other intellectuals. Then they transfer him to the Gjosh-Levan-Fier canal, to Spaç, Bulqiza, Burrel, to the prison of Vlora, to Skrofotina, to the lake of Narta, and to many other places.
Thereska had made friends with all the intellectuals, especially with Jusuf Vrioni, who saw Ilia as his successor in terms of the French language. “I started learning French when I was in the Berat camp, with a friend of mine from Kavaja, Naum Bidoshi, who, when he was cooking, I went there, because we didn’t have any other time: aman Naum, I have a couple of words, – huh , he used to say to me and blow on the fire”, remembers Ilia Apart from Vrion, Skënder Konica, the grandson of Faik Konica, has been a great help to Thereska in learning French. Thereska says that when they went out for air twice a day for an hour, Skënder Konica forced her to speak only French. When she said something wrong, he corrected her.
This continued for two years, while they were in the prison of Tirana, after two years later, they transferred him to the prison of Vlora. Thereska confesses that in Tirana prison, they slept face to face. 40-50 prisoners were put in a cell, the size of a room in an apartment. Everyone slept on cement, on mats, with a narrow space in between.
“Often, the police came twice a day and we were forced to turn the mattresses upside down, so that they could pass through and check with iron bars, not to open any holes”, says Ilia. This was the first sentence that lasted 13 years, until January 1965.
The second sentence
After leaving prison, Thereska works as a carpenter for two and a half years. At the end of two years, he is stripped of the category, clinging to a banal case. “I was picking up some boards in a sector of NSHN and I saw a discarded crate, which I took to make a case, where I worked. A driver reported and said, this one stole the cash register. They took advantage of the Chinese revolution, brought me out in front of all the brigades and accused me of stealing the box,” recalls Thereska.
Everything was getting difficult in Albania for Thereska, so he decides to escape, together with a friend, who had been a soldier in Kukës for some time, but did not know the border. Then, Ilia finds a map of Albania, from which he cuts the area of Kukës, through which he would pass.
Then he meets Tuk Jakov’s daughter, whom he knew because her school was close to where he worked. After finding a compass through it, he sets off with his friend towards Kukës. When they arrive there, they try to cross the Drin e Bardhë, but they can’t, because the river was too rapid.
They started on foot and reached Prizren without anyone seeing them, at the end of three days. After staying with a family for a few days, they decide to surrender to the UDB. But, unfortunately for them, the UDB turns them back and hands them over to the Albanian authorities at the border. Thereska and his friend guess that nothing but death awaits them there. He explains that these returns of fugitives to the former Yugoslavia were done in the form of an exchange.
“At that time, Tito was in power, he had overthrown Ranković, and many Kosovars escaped and came to Albania. Albania did not return them. So when they caught escaped Albanians, they exchanged them with Kosovars who had fled to Albania. When they returned the two of us, they took ten people in exchange,” Ilia recalls.
As expected, Thereska is kept in solitary confinement for five months and then sentenced to death. The security had conspired with several witnesses against him, to “cement” the indictment. The prosecutor also takes away the right of the last word, which Ilia would say in his defense.
At that time, it was October 1967, the defense lawyers were removed and the defendant had to speak himself, after the decision of the prosecutor and then the court decided. In order to respect this law, the judge decided to give Thereska the right to speak. He says that when he stood up to speak, he had brought up the injustices of the system in his first sentence.
“Von Paulus,” I told him, “led an entire army and when the Soviet army, led by Stalin, surrounded him in Stalingrad, he did not execute anyone, and he only sentenced him to 9 years in prison, and to this day he works in a flower garden of Hamburg. The Emperor of Manchuria was captured by the Soviets, sentenced to 10 years, served 5 years and is now in Manchuria. While I was not yet 17 years old, they caught me, put me inside, tricked me with the help of a spy, so that I accept all the charges. This is a shame and a great disgrace”, recalls Ilia.
While Thereska spoke, loudspeakers were set up outside and all the beratas listened. He remembers that even when he was given the title “Honorary Citizen of Berat” and a street of this city was named after him, many citizens of Berat remembered his speech.
“Then the court adjourned and after ten minutes returned, where it gave the final decision, sentencing me to death. My mother who was present fainted. During the time I was sentenced to death, three times during the night, after 01:00, the police came, opened my door and took me to the investigator’s office. The first time he asked me about Maksut Dërrasa, one of the best surgeons that Albania has had.
He was friends with Dhimitër Shyti, my mother’s first cousin, he was also a very good doctor, he worked at the Oncologist. “You talked to him,” he told me. “No”, I told him. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘that this forgives your punishment’. “No”, I told him, “I have not spoken to him”. ‘Sign here’, he told me, he had prepared the letter that said: ‘In the event that in the future, if my life were to be spared, it turns out that Maksut Dërsa admits that he spoke against the government with Ilia Thereska, we will take and to execute you’. I signed.
The second time, he asked me about Viktor Stratoberdha, he was my friend, we were in a prison together. Same for this one. I signed. In the end they asked me about my father’s sister, who lived in Shkodër and her husband, a big merchant, lived in Italy. They wanted to put my aunt in prison as well, she was 60 years old at the time.
After 18 days, the director of the prison came. “Choose”, he told the policeman. “Listen here,” he said, with narrowed eyes, the government has decided to spare your life, one was in your favor at the Supreme Court. I was sentenced to 25 years, which was the maximum at that time. I was released in February ’89. To be exact, I spent 34 years, 8 months and 3 days in prison.”
Thereska says that in prison she learned foreign languages, such as; French, German, English, Italian, as well as astronomy and astrophysics. In the Burrel prison, he stays with Pjetër Arbnor, with whom he learns both methods of German. Then, he befriends Simon Juban, Mikel Koliq and tenor Lluk Kaçaj.
“Often times, at 3.30, Radio Tirana gave an opera show, arias from the opera. Together with Lluka, even when it was raining, we would cover ourselves with a raincoat and sit under the loudspeaker, just to listen to them. Luke accompanied them sometimes. In the evenings, when we walked together, we would occupy a corner, because it was the big yard, and Lluka would sing opera parts. He was better than Kristof, the Bulgarian tenor”, remembers Ilia, about some of his co-sufferers in the Burrell prison.
In the arms of freedom
Ilia Thereska is released from prison in February 1989. He confesses that at that time, things were just beginning to move. The day the embassies were opened in Tirana, Ilia remembers that; “For hell”, he finds out at 7.30 from RAI. When he comes to Tirana, he hears that the Security authorities started issuing red passports to go abroad, but you had to have a guarantor to wait.
“When I talked to some friends who had been in prison, they tell me; ‘don’t think it’s a trap, to get you in’. Great work, I said, I have done 35 years, let me do another 50”, Ilia remembers.
After he gets his passport, a friend of his gives him the address of his sister, who lived in Yugoslavia, to use as a guarantee. But he couldn’t get into the Yugoslav Embassy, because there were hundreds of people there, and he entered the Italian one. There he meets the deputy ambassador and tells her that he wants to move to Italy, together with his friend, whose wife is pregnant with two children.
She gives them to fill out some documents and come back in two days, but during this time, something unexpected happens. His friend’s wife, who was pregnant, gives birth the next day, but the child had to be more than 15 days old to appear in the passport. Then the deputy ambassador gives them a solution: “Go outside, she says, find another child, a little older and take a picture, bring it to me.”
“After we did that, we got along with a fisherman. I had 20 thousand lek, which was a lot at the time, while my friend had people in Greece and had collected 120 dollars. All the way, we were afraid of being arrested, until we got to Brindizi”, Ilia remembers the vicissitudes of leaving Albania.
Here Thereska stops and tells a funny story that happened to an Albanian during the embassies. At that time, the building where the Soviet Embassy had been, had become the Ministry of Education. A man, who knew it was still an embassy, stepped over the wall and entered. “Where did you go, – says the policeman – enter if you want, but this is not an embassy, it is the Ministry of Education”. But he had thought that the policeman was lying to him and had stayed there for hours.
When she arrived in Italy, Thereska worked for about six months at the “Tolstoy Foundation”, which dealt with people who wanted to flee to America. Ilia took the data of the persons and after translating them, sent them to the American Embassy. When they saw the work he was doing, they offered him a job at the Embassy, as a translator. The work there also gave Thereska the opportunity to go to the United States.
In the first ten days of January 1991, Thereska arrives in New York. From there, he ends up at a Caritas office in Hartford, Connecticut, where he works in an electronics factory for a year. There he met Artur Liolini, a well-known priest in Boston, who had served in the church of “Saint Mary”, where Fan Noli had also served. Thereska says that Sejfi Protopapa, very well-known in the USA, where he worked as a professor, was also there.
Ilia says that they had been having lunch at the “Pier Four” restaurant of Antony Athanas, in Boston, where they had told him if he wanted to work at “Voice of America”. Ilia had replied that no one would approach him there, since he had not been able to complete more than two high school classes and only foreign languages were not enough.
But Liolini had insisted that he would talk to Elez Biberaj himself about this work. Sejfi Protopapa also spoke with Biberaj and then he asked to speak with Thereska himself. After listening to him, he was amazed at the accuracy with which he spoke English and sent a group of specialists to him to take him for an exam.
“They gave me a 5-hour exam, how to speak, how to translate, all that they needed. Then they asked in Albania, root and branch, and then Elez Biberaj took me and told me; in 10 days, I want you here. In February 1992, I started working at ‘Voice of America’ as a translator and speaker”, recalls Ilia.
Thereska has worked at “Voice of America” for many years, while in Albania, she returned in 2010. Regarding the reward for the years in prison, he says with regret that he still has half of the installments left to receive. “If the state had the opportunity, since there are no people who have served 35 years in prison, could it be a privilege for me to give what I have left, so that I can enjoy being alive,” he says.
Ilia speaks quietly, slowly, and no uncontrolled words come out of his mouth. He does not feel hatred, nor does he curse his persecutors and executioners. On the contrary, he says that he forgives them, leaving God to be their judge. There is something in his words that calms his heart, as his wife, Flutura, says with tears in her eyes, from emotion. She remembers a moment when he proposed to her.
“I answered that it was something that was not done, because I, even though I am humbled before your sufferings, have lived a peaceful, happy life, while you have seen horror with your eyes. Exactly for this, Ilia answered me, I will see in you, the joy that I have missed”. Memorie.al
