By Ahmet Xhavit Delvina
Part Three
Memorie.al/ I am writing about this event, which I experienced as a “conductor” and which left me with unforgettable impressions because it is a fragment of our people’s lives, during that bad period of communist rule. It was the year 1954; I set off for Tirana from Burrel at 4 o’clock in the morning. I was a soldier in Unit 7620, working in the workshop as a car mechanic. On this occasion, I was taking a military truck – a GMC (“Jims”) type, Made in USA, for major overhaul – capital overhaul, to the Central Army Workshop. This type of military vehicle, I can say, was completely unsuitable for civilian transport because, construction-wise, the driver’s cabin was completely open with a canvas top. But in reality, on this one, the canvas and the front windshield were missing; they didn’t exist because it had been in a collision some time ago. The body was entirely metallic, with low sideboards 25 cm high, and it was uncovered, without a canvas or any side supports. It was the month of February, the peak of that harsh winter.
Continued from the previous issue..
It was enough to make you cry as much as it was to make you laugh when they entered my father’s study, which was set up in the largest and sunniest room of the apartment. This room was entirely lined with wooden, veneered shelves reaching up to the ceiling; it was my father’s personal library with books, large encyclopedias, magazines, etc. Father had also made a double stepladder with a seat on top. That ladder was very practical; it opened and closed as needed. He used it when he wanted to read books from the top shelves for a short time, or just to look something up without coming back down. He would sit beautifully on that seat.
The commission was surprised when they saw that multitude of books. Nevertheless, according to the orders they had received, they had to register them one by one. But what do you know; they immediately got stuck as soon as they started the registration, because on the shelves there were almost no Albanian books at all. They were all in old Turkish (Ottoman), Persian, French, English, and even an entire shelf in Esperanto.
So they turned to Sokrit for help, as “the most knowledgeable” person in that environment, but lo and behold, even he couldn’t provide a solution to this problem or predicament that had befallen them. Thus, after consulting with each other, and even asking on the phone, they decided on a very original method of registration, one that matched their cultural level. They began the registration by dividing the books into three groups: thin books, medium-thick books, and thick books. For good measure, they also wrote down the color of the covers.
But they got stuck again when they encountered a category of books that the head of the commission categorized as “very different” books, both in size and weight, such as: the “Treccani Encyclopedia” in many volumes, Virgil’s “Aeneid”, etc. These books, which they called “special,” they packed in newspapers they found there, from among those my father kept as the most interesting of the times. They tied them in bundles and sealed them with red wax. We never found out why they did this.
After they finished registering all the household belongings, they noticed a radio with a metal body, a handle, batteries, and earphones. This was a German military radio from the end of the war. When those foolish devils saw this, they jumped for joy, thinking they had found a military transmitter radio – or something like that – especially since it had a mottled military color, similar to their bags parachuted in by the British.
Therefore, they immediately notified the High Command. It wasn’t long before two German tricycles arrived, war trophy “Zundapp” types, with military radio specialists. But unfortunately, the “disappointment” was immediate. The chief specialist recognized that it was not a transmission base, but a special German military receiver complex. The chief specialist became curious as to how this radio complex ended up with us, because until then it had been a military secret. It was a “Radian” type radio, very rare and very sophisticated for its time. It had been perfectly installed here by a highly specialized person; the workmanship showed. They had even sealed it with a special seal, which apparently authorized us to use it, probably to preempt any possible inspection by German forces.
Mother explained how that radio and Ibrahim Biçaku’s letter regarding it came to be with us, clarifying that it was a gift from the prime minister of that time, her cousin, Ibrahim Biçaku. About a month before Tirana was “liberated,” he was transferred for security reasons near the “Dajti” Hotel, which at that time had been converted into a Military Hospital. He gave this gift to my father so he could listen even at night with earphones without disturbing anyone, and use it with its own battery when electricity was lacking.
They took note of mother’s story, pretended to believe it, and told us they would report our statement up to the Command for clarification, and they left, taking the radio complex with them. As they were leaving, Sokrat Bufi harshly addressed my mother: “Aren’t you ashamed, aren’t you embarrassed, keeping all this luxury at home, while the people suffered the worst hardships and didn’t even have bread to eat?! Pu… pu… what a shame, but well, you finally got what you deserved too. From bad to worse you’ll go, go to hell”!
After all these ordeals, they forced my mother to sign whatever they wanted. “Don’t sign if you don’t want to”! She, for the sake of that husband of hers who was in their hands, as well as for us three children, signed without any discussion, not knowing what she signed. They stole as much as they wanted, right before our eyes, and in the end forced her to sign whatever they put in front of her. Sokrat Bufi addressed mother again: “Don’t worry, in a couple of days, we’ll move you to a better apartment than this one and give you belongings as much as your heads deserve. But be careful, if you move any of the registered belongings, you’ll go to prison too, next to your brave man.”
Thankfully, they left that day and we got rid of them. But what do you know, the next day at 7:00 AM, the whole team came back with a “Fiat” truck, type 626. “Leading by personal example,” they worked like loading-unloading laborers. First, they loaded the book packages onto the truck. Then, surprisingly, with great care, they took the two paintings we mentioned earlier. They also loaded two uncut Persian rugs and 6 carved, leather-upholstered chairs, and set off for who knows where! It impressed all of us, and we never found out, how those ignorant fools managed to pick out the very best of our belongings, while leaving behind other items that were more showy or bulky!
All of these things I have described above, in the Western democratic concept, are called illegal and inhumane actions that violate human rights, etc. But in the communist system we lived in, they were considered completely normal actions. In fact, given the scale of implementation, they were considered privileged and mild, especially for our family, even though our mother was the sister of “Comrade Esat”. In fact, regardless of the fact that our father had not yet gone to trial and it was unknown whether he would be declared guilty or innocent, the planned persecution against us, as part of the family left without a father, continued normally, treating us exactly like the family of a convicted criminal.
The apartment we lived in consisted of 5 rooms, 1 kitchen, 2 bathrooms (one a laundry room), 1 storage room, a large hallway, and 2 basements. These spaces were full and furnished for a normal life for the whole family. But surprisingly, two or three days after the inventory was completed, they threw us out, putting at the family’s disposal a cart with two large wheels pulled by a horse, to load the household items we were entitled to according to the communist law of the time. The process of throwing us out of the house was carried out under the strict supervision of the new resident who would move into our apartment. He was the communist exemplar Mihal Bisha, also from Delvina. Many new neighbor residents, communists like Zija Shapllo, Dalan Shapllo, Emine Mezini, etc., saw us off, mocking us.
Very hard for us and unforgettable will remain in our memory the insult made by Mihal Bisha’s father, who, at the moment the cart started, shouted, declaiming: “Away with you, shitty rags, go to hell!”, etc., curses of this level. Imagine a young woman with three young children, being put in the middle of winter, in the rain, onto such an uncovered transport cart, with only two mattresses, two quilts, two blankets, some bowls and pots, along with two pillowcases stuffed with some clothes. This was all the wealth the Party gave us to start the “new life.” But the strangest thing was, we set off with the cart, but where were we going? Only we didn’t know; only our persecutors, who held our fate in their hands, knew that.
The communist reprisals after the so-called “liberation of the country” were truly unimaginable. They consisted of perfecting the very methods used by the Bolsheviks in 1917 in Russia. The predetermined social classes and categories that would undergo the process of declassification under the pressure of the fierce and inhuman communist dictatorship absolutely had to submit, in the full sense of the word, to true genocide. Arrests, swift express executions, disappearances of people based on decisions made on the spot, in the form of five-minute conversations by territorial partisan courts for mass executions, became commonplace.
All these deeds became more frequent and took definitive form on the eve of the country’s “liberation” and continued intensively at the same pace until they destroyed everything old or all social classes and categories that did not align with them. All these reprisals were accompanied by the eviction and expulsion from homes of women, the elderly, underage children, etc., confiscating everything they possessed in the name of the revolution, stealing everything they owned, and then sending them to live in abandoned warehouses, stables, or even some uninhabitable corner of some premises or private home on the outskirts of the city, so they would be easy to control.
These poor wretches, by recommendation from above, had to move suddenly within 2-3 hours, and this was done with the aim that they would be caught in such an economic situation that they would have empty pockets, i.e., no money even for a piece of bread, not to mention the other problems arising from these sudden, forced displacements. With such methods, they wanted to disorient and demoralize them, hoping that these victims would fall into a state of moral degeneration, or slip into depression and go mad.
As a result of this criminal program, our family also received its share. So during these cursed days, our family was provided with a cart with two wheels and a “white” horse to take us to a room (which I will describe later) on “Shëngjergji” road, today’s “Ali Demi” street! The “Blitz” attack on our family, we believe, was most likely by special order from our “friend” Enver Hoxha, because besides his other known weaknesses; he also had a sadistic soul, with quite considerable tendencies.
His greed for money, gold, and jewels, as we mentioned above, had spurred a maniacal desire for the total destruction of old, traditional, or wealthy families, and he didn’t care whom he struck – comrade, friend, relative, or whoever it was – as long as he achieved his perverse and vile goal. As for our problem, he had obtained information about the exact quantity of Hiqmet Bey Delvina’s gold coins, which my father was keeping, from sources within the family. But apparently, he had now decided to take them by force; the “friendly way” hadn’t worked, even though he had “tried” that way as a person or friend, back in 1940–1941! It was quite clear who the order-giver was in this terroristic-police operation against our family, but what could you do?!
Andrea Memës intervention with father’s suitcase was carried out personally by him, only him and father. Andrea acted very carefully, because it was understood that he was carrying out “Zeus’s” order. But unfortunately, during his meticulous check of the suitcase, he also got his hands on that damned receipt that Dragush Delvina, Hiqmet Bey’s son, and Inajet Delvina (Hiqmet Bey’s wife), had issued to our father back in 1945, after they had received all the gold that Hiqmet Bey had entrusted to our father for safekeeping.
This discovery was a disaster for both parties: our sick father and Doctor Dragushi, who held the rank of Major, a Doctor in the Gjirokastra Division. “That criminal Andrea seemed to calm down when he found the ‘delivery document’,” father used to say. In this whole story, only the “Monster” Enver Hoxha emerged victorious.
But this discovery also turned out well for Andrea Mema; he was praised as a specialist in criminal investigation. And our father was temporarily relieved from the tortures of the “Three Musketeers,” Andrea Mema & Naum Bezhani & Ymer Kaçani. After this, another trouble was planned for our father by the sadist Enver Hoxha. He was consumed by another curiosity, which he thought to resolve with father, so he ordered the start of an investigation into this new matter.
In the years 1940–1941, Enver would jokingly ask our father very often: “Hey Neki Bey, that Riaz Bey Vlora, your friend and cousin, the nephew or brother of Nuredin Bey Vlora? Who knows what kind of trouble he’s in, because I believe they’ve entrusted him with safeguarding his lineage’s money. He doesn’t seem like a smart man to me, let alone how difficult such a mission is today in these hard times?!” – “Come on,” my father would tell him, “why do you worry about the pashas’ wealth? They only know about those themselves. Why are you asking me? Am I their guardian or keeper?”!
However, surprisingly, in those very difficult circumstances for my father in the dungeons of the Internal Affairs Directorate, the “Three Musketeers” – Andrea Mema & Naum Bezhani & Ymer Kaçani – began an investigation to discover if our father, taking advantage of the close cousinhood and friendship he had with Riaz, could provide any information about the location of the Vlora family treasure here in Albania. The sadist Enver based this belief on seeing that poor Riaz, being a bachelor and elderly, found family warmth only at our home. He often had lunch with us, and even when it got late, he would stay and sleep. He had long conversations with my father, telling him, “You are the dearest person to me,” and Enver knew these things well.
“I understood immediately,” my father used to say, “that this meticulous investigation by those ignorant interrogators wasn’t their professionalism. They were exploiting the data from that criminal, sadist, and unscrupulous man who never got enough of stealing. This forced those pseudo-investigators to put me through a new cycle of torture over this completely absurd matter. So, out of the 16-17 months of arrest he served, he spent nearly a year isolated, in the Internal Affairs Section. He regretted that Riaz Bey slipped through their fingers, because that poor fellow found a very ‘original’ way to gain ‘freedom’.”
While they were interrogating him on the third floor of the building, tied up, he suggested to the investigator that he would talk, but asked to have his hands and body untied from the fixed chair because it was hot and he couldn’t concentrate. The investigator accepted the condition, but shortly after, he rushed to the open window and jumped headfirst, dying instantly. Thus, he took the mystery of the location of his family’s money with him to the other world. After this, the investigator was “eaten” (punished) for negligence in duty, and our father was left in Riaz’s place.
Father’s release from prison after such a long time left irreparable traces on his body and health. He was a large man, weighing over 100 kg, and suffered from chronic diabetes in an advanced stage. The most inhuman tortures inflicted on his body by the criminal “directors” Andrea Mema, Naum Bezhani, Ymer Kaçani, etc., had also opened up a severe tubercular process. Hanging upside down, tied by both feet with a rope passing through a pulley fixed to the ceiling, over a bathtub filled with the wastewater flowing from the sinks installed in the floor’s toilets, was where the interrogation took place, and simultaneously they satisfied their criminal lusts. “Those pseudo-investigators,” father would say, “would plunge our heads into the bathtub water up to our necks, and after a while, they’d pull us up and ask: ‘Well, well, are you going to talk, or are you going to die right where you are’?”
“I don’t know, I’ve been an investigator myself, but I never imagined anyone could work like them. Also severe was the food torture. The soup or broth they gave us, they made with a super dose of salt to provoke thirst, and then they’d leave us for days without water. They used this method a lot on me, because they knew I suffered from diabetes and that diabetics get very thirsty.” Thus, after a long time under these gangster-like regimes, they destroyed him physically, but never morally. We, as a family, knowing how the investigation was conducted inside there, took comfort just in hearing that he was still alive.
Very hard, especially for father and then for us, was his appearance before the court in Tirana. When we saw the ridiculous indictment attributed to him, it made us wants to cry and laugh at the same time. “Good for them,” because whatever business they had with him, they accomplished it perfectly, as I explained above. They took both sums of money, Hiqmet Bey’s and ours simultaneously. They were also convinced regarding the Riaz Vlora matter that our father had no knowledge whatsoever of the location of his money. Then, according to their practice at the time, they decided to stage a farcical and ridiculous trial, sentence him to time served (18 months), and release him in the courtroom.
The accusation made against him was very comical. It was alleged that in December 1945, he had changed four British pounds sterling into lek at his shoemaker, Adem Borova, and that this action was prohibited by their law – a fact disproven in that very trial, because at the time father was accused of this act, the law punishing this ridiculous act had not yet been issued! So, this accusation served to confiscate our movable and immovable property, and to subject us all to the sufferings I described above. Nevertheless, the situation forced us to remain silent and never complain about what happened to us; otherwise, they would channel our complaint under Article 55, for “Agitation and propaganda against the people’s power,” and we would be punished more severely because it would be considered a “Political crime”!/Memorie.al
