From Ali Buzra
Part Twenty-Nine
– LIFE UNDER PRESSURE AND SUFFERING –
(APPRAISALS, COMMENTS, NARRATIVES)
Memorie.al / At the request and wish of the author, Ali Buzra, as his first editor and reader, I will briefly share with you what I experienced in this encounter with this book, which is his second (after the book “Gizaveshi through the years”) and which naturally continues his writing style. The sincerity and frankness of the narrative, the simple and unmodified language, the accuracy and precision of the episodes, or the lack of a subsequent, intentional elaborative imagination or its non-utilization, I believe have served the author positively, who comes to the reader in his original form, inviting us to at least get to know unknown human fates and pains, whether by chance or not, leaving us to reflect as a starting point for awareness towards a catharsis so necessary for the Albanian conscience.
Bedri Kaza
Continued from the previous issue
Before August 1943, dozens of partisans were sheltered in the house of Nezir Muzhaqi. At that time, he communicated and collaborated with Petrit Hakani, Sami Baholli, Qemal Haxhihyseni, Kadri Hoxha, Ramadan Çitaku, Ali Myftiu, etc., regarding the problems of the war against the Italian fascists. He testified to these and other facts at the trial organized against him after the liberation of the country. Despite his stance and behavior as a determined patriot, the partisan commands acted foolishly in Polis. In early spring 1944, a partisan brigade, said to have been the III Brigade, during their march on a passage route to Polis, lost their way. Under these circumstances, they took two people as guides.
In Polis Qendër, the guides left, hiding. Later they found the guides, but as revenge, they killed two men from the Zaimi tribe. Their behavior aroused the anger of the villagers. The latter rose up, and fighting continued throughout the night. In these fights, several partisans were killed and others were taken prisoner, mostly wounded. Neziri was not there at the time. When he came the next day, he took the wounded partisan prisoners, sending them to be treated in Elbasan. Since there were also wounded Germans in the hospital, he told them that the wounded were from Balli [Balli Kombëtar]. This is another event that testifies to the figure of Nezir Muzhaqi, as a peace-loving, prudent, and humane man.
But partisan revenge would become a known fact in Polis. In May 1944, a battalion of the First Brigade came and attacked Polis. Neziri, fortunately, was not there again. The resistance against the partisan attack was organized by Qerim Muzhaqi, and Nezir’s brother, Kadriu, followed by some men who were in the village. After several hours of fighting, they were forced to retreat in the face of numerous partisan forces, which were very well organized and determined to destroy Vilan, causing terror and panic among its inhabitants. After committing this massacre, the partisans left Polis that same night.
During their departure, they stopped at a house on the edge of the village. They entered the house at night and took two brothers outside, Tahir and Shaqo Muzhaqi, one 22 and the other 24 years old. They tied them up near their house and killed both innocent young men. Today, the living witnesses, Ruzhdi and Sheme Muzhaqi, painfully recount the event in question, where the partisans burned about 30 houses of the Muzhaqi family, over 20 houses of Cekani, 5-6 houses of Allmeta, in Vilan and Qafë-Buall. Only 2 houses were saved from burning, one Tanush and one Muzhaq. Before the burning, they looted goods and livestock from houses, in the hundreds and hundreds of heads. In this terrible chaos, a chilling event experienced by the survivor Ruzhdi Muzhaqi, today 89 years old, is also worth mentioning.
At that time, almost a child of 13-14 years old, in the midst of bullets, fire and flames, he snatched the two-month-old baby of his brother Kadriu and ran towards the forest to escape the massacre, feeling the branches of trees cut by bullets falling over his head, as well as the screams of the crying baby. Fortunately, both survived. Today Ruzhdiu recounts the event, while 74-year-old Mit’hati also lives. There, on the hill opposite, most of the family members gathered, who fled in terror, searching and calling for each other in the forest? On that dark, ominous night, from there, the residents of Vilan watched as the flames of their houses, burned by the partisans of the First Brigade, rose to the sky.
This was the “glorious epic,” written in dozens of books from the communist era in Albania, which sang praises to the National Liberation War. It was accompanied by massacres of innocent populations in specific areas of the country. It is certain that during these actions with burnings, killings and looting, there must have been disappointments among ordinary partisans towards their commanders, who were the organizers of the massacres, ordered and initiated by the General Staff of the National Liberation Army, which was led by the Albanian Communist Party.
The next evening, Neziri came to Vilan with some members of his band. And what did he see? All of Vilan had turned to ashes and embers. Witnesses say the smoke could be seen from Elbasan. Family members left homeless moved away, settling with their friends in Labinot and other villages, while some built huts there to shelter their families. Gradually, the homeless and economically ruined families began to return and rebuild the burned houses. Some of them put roofs on the burned houses over the walls that had not collapsed; others built huts, while some rebuilt the houses from the foundations. The family of Met Muzhaqi, says Ruzhdiu, stayed for several months in a tent donated by Kasem Çerma, a friend of theirs from Elbasan.
In the autumn of 1944, the VII Partisan Brigade came to Vilan, seeking to mobilize the men of the village for war. Among several others, Nezir’s brother, Xheviti, as well as Daut Muzhaqi, son of Sherifi, were mobilized. They stayed there until the end of the war, and afterwards completed their mandatory military service. They were released in 1947. Qerim Muzhaqi, son of Sherifi, and Kadri Muzhaqi, Nezir’s brother, did not surrender. They went into hiding. Qerimi was still unmarried, but engaged, while Kadriu was married and had two young children. Kadriu sheltered for some time at a friend of their family in the village of Gostimë, Elbasan.
Being ill, he would shelter there at night, but leave during the day, because army checks were frequent. One day, burdened by illness, some passersby found him on the road. They took him and sent him to the hospital. After a few hours, he passed away. Qerimi sheltered at a friend’s house in Kavajë. It is said that he stayed there for several years and that he died there. The head of the household buried him secretly in the garden near the house. During the 45 years of dictatorship, for fear of persecution, nothing more was said about him. However, the time and place where he died remain an enigma.
In February 1945, forces of the partisan army went up to Vilan again and set fire for the second time to the rebuilt houses and huts where the families had taken shelter. Again, witnesses say, not a single Muzhaqi family home remained standing. After the last burning, some stayed there, while others left for Elbasan. Met Muzhaqi, Nezir’s father, was in Elbasan trying to secure some supplies for the family, but he was arrested there in early May 1945.
7.1 Nezir Muzhaqi, Believing in His Innocence, Surrenders Himself, but is sentenced to Death by Hanging
After the war, Nezir Muzhaqi surrendered himself. He did this action being conscious of his prudent activities during the war. He was a contributor to the war effort, but did not think that surrendering would be fatal for him. In prison, Neziri was in the same place as his father Mehmet (Met). During the days in prison, Neziri gave courage, not only to his father, but also to others who were there, moving from one to another. On May 14, 1945, his trial took place. The 28-year-old young man, educated and intelligent from the noble Muzhaqi family, had not imagined the ominous scenario prepared for him. In his defense speech, he argued with evidence his positioning and stance during the war in defense of the national cause in general, and of the Polis area in particular.
Meanwhile, the facts presented by his defense lawyers at the trial were also quite convincing, partially published in the newspaper “Elbasani” in October 2004. However, neither the dignified defense he presented in his speech, nor that of the defense lawyers, would be taken into account. The dictator made no concessions with the noble Muzhaqi family, just as he did everywhere with such families in Albania. Even more so, he would not leave alive the far-sighted Western-oriented intellectual and patriot, who could cause him problems on the path to establishing the communist regime and the reforms to be undertaken in the country. The decision of the judicial panel, established and ordered by the party-state, for Nezir Muzhaqi was death by hanging. With this form of terrorist execution, they sought to instill fear and terror among the people.
In prison, his father learned of the court’s decision. When they came to take Neziri, he begged the police, telling them to take him instead; “the son is young and innocent,” “kill me instead,” etc., but the executioners pushed him away and left. He died with anguish in his heart, before his son. On August 4, 1945, the sentence for Nezir Muzhaqi was carried out, by hanging, ordered by the dictator Enver Hoxha. He was hanged at the “Bobolla” Plane Tree in the city of Elbasan. Thus ended the life of the distinguished intellectual, as well as the far-sighted and modern young man, of the Muzhaqi family in Polis, Nezir Muzhaqi, who interrupted his studies abroad for the national cause of a free and democratic Albania without communism.
His family was now destroyed. His father Mehmet died in prison. Kadriu, in hiding, could not survive. Xheviti, who was mobilized with the VII Partisan Brigade, continued his military service. His mother, with her 14-year-old young son, Ruzhdiu, today a living witness, went to Elbasan from time to time to the prison to see her son, but in vain. The harshness and ferocity of the communist state exceeded the bounds of human reason. Nezir’s mother was not allowed to meet with her son, even before the execution. She could not embrace her son in these tragic moments for them.
“On the morning of August 4, 1945,” recounts Ruzhdiu, “we went with my mother to the ‘Bobolla’ Plane Tree, because they told us my brother was hanged there. Mother squeezed and kissed his feet, because she couldn’t reach his face. The executioners pushed her away, and she came back again, until they finally drove us away,” recalls Ruzhdiu. Oh God, how this mother’s heart suffered, who as she left said: “May they devour each other’s heads…”! And indeed, so it happened. God has accepted the mother’s curse.
7.2 The Calvary of Suffering for the Muzhaqi Families Would Continue for Years
The suffering and immense hardships for the Muzhaqi families would not end there. In 1946, Sadik Muzhaqi, one of the seven brothers of the large Muzhaqi family, was arrested. He was sentenced and sent to the Maliq swamp, where prisoners experienced some of the most inhuman tortures. They worked in water up to their knees, and sometimes the water came up to their waists. Without food or any means of protection, many prisoners died from exhaustion, suffering, and cold. Sadiku died there in harsh conditions, and today there is no grave for him.
For those families who, after the burning, had taken shelter in the city of Elbasan, an order was given for them to return to the village. And so it was done. There, family members tried to rebuild the destroyed economy. In 1947, Xheviti returned from the army. He stayed for over ten years in one family, together with his younger brother, Ruzhdiu. With work and immense effort, they rebuilt the collapsed walls and put roofs on the burned houses, while also buying some livestock. As is known, their problem was also marriage. Xheviti married the daughter of Musa Kullolli, from Poroçan in Gramsh, who came from a kulak family. Ruzhdiu married the daughter of Beqo Musai, originally from Kishta in Gramsh, but who lived in Dragot in Belsh, also a kulak family. All the families of Hasan Muzhaqi’s lineage in Vilan bore the title of Kulak.
The family of Sherif Muzhaqi would also be subjected to torture and inhuman genocide. This was also pressure on his son Qerimi, who did not surrender. I have taken the testimonies for this from the survivor Sheme Muzhaqi, now residing in Durrës, one of the seven sons of Sherif Muzhaqi. Like other survivors, Shemja describes quite a few chilling events and moments from life in the concentration camp in Tepelenë. His family, along with his parents, was interned in Berat in 1945. Shemja was only 10 years old, while the other brothers, all unmarried, ranged from 18-25 years old. They stayed there for nearly two years, until 1947. Men and women were sent to do hard labor.
Around the spring of that year, they were released and returned home. Initially, they built a hut just to have a roof over their heads, while they had no household furnishings to live with. They worked just enough to keep body and soul together. The same year, their brother Dauti was also released from the army. They mobilized to rebuild the house and the family economy, but they would not be left alone for long. In May 1949, the police went to Vilan and surrounded their family, ordering them to leave the house. They took some small belongings they had barely managed to secure and were sent to Librazhd. They were not allowed to take bedding. Thus began the senseless but cruel “wandering” of Sherif Muzhaqi’s family, consisting of three elderly people over 60, six brothers and five sisters, 14 people in total. They didn’t know where they were being taken.
They were to be sent towards the concentration camp in Tepelenë. Meanwhile, with them they also took the family of Ismail Kasa and his brothers, from Gurshpata, whose brother Rexhep Kasa had fled abroad for anti-communist activity. In Librazhd, they were held for about two weeks, until other families were gathered. They were sent to Tepelenë in a large truck, loaded onto the flatbed, where they were initially placed in the village of Turan. There were some barracks there, but unfortunately there was no space inside, as they were filled with people from other districts of the country who had arrived there earlier. From May until October, they stayed in the open air, within the camp territory, surrounded by barbed wire. For over 5 months they endured rain, scorching heat, and also the cold at night, without bedding or covers.
In October, they were sent to Tepelenë. Here too, they were surrounded by barbed wire and guard police. They were put inside barracks, given 50 cm of space per person. Beyond this boundary came the next family. Initially, they were given only 400 grams of dry bread. Even that was made with corn waste, often moldy. Deaths of the elderly and children began. Sheme Muzhaqi, 14 years old at that time, today painfully recounts the chilling sufferings of camp life. He remembers the macabre scenes when the dead were buried in pits, without planks, which the camp people themselves dug, forced by the police to throw the earth over the body, just as they were with their tattered clothes. There were deaths every day. A group of 10-15 men from the camp would form and dig graves.
“Since the number of deaths increased,” Shemja recounts, “a team of doctors came from Tirana for verification. It was said that the doctors concluded the deaths occurred due to lack of food. So, in the following days, they started cooking a soup with rice, bulgur, and occasionally beans, without fat, which had a foul smell. Worms could be seen in it, which people would remove and then swallow the soup hungrily. Deaths continued en masse. The number of graves increased daily. Relatives would place a stone on them, as a sign to remember them. Us school-age children,” he says, “they started teaching us, but without books or school supplies. For some time, they turned an area inside the camp into a ‘classroom’, where we had a teacher who was one of the internees; later they continued lessons in Tepelenë.” / Memorie.al
To be continued in the next issue
