BY SAMI REPISHTI
Part Twelve
Sami Repishti: – “In Albania, the communist crimes of the past have been neither documented nor punished; there has been no ‘spiritual cleansing,’ no conscious confession, and no denunciation of the ordinary communist criminals!” –
‘Under the Shadow of Rozafa’
Memorie.al / During the 30s and 40s of the last century, with the descent of the unstoppable fascist and communist storm over Europe, and sooner or later over the entire world, “fate” seized the Albanian nation by the throat. Like all young people, I found myself at a crossroads where a stand had to be taken, even at the risk of one’s life. It was then that I said “no” to the dictatorship and took the road that had no end – a sailor in a vast sea without shores. The act of rebellion that nearly killed me simultaneously liberated me. I am an eyewitness to life in the fascist and communist hell in Albania, not as a “politician” or a “personality” of Albanian macro-politics, but as a student, as a young man who became conscious of his role in that time and place, driven by love for the fatherland and the desire for freedom; simply, as a youth with heightened sensibility, faithful to himself and to a life of dignity.
Continued from the previous issue
The highlanders of Malësia e Rranzave or Postrriba, who never increased in number because they were extinguished in the struggle for the land they loved with their souls – though it did not extinguish them, save for keeping them alive?! The citizen of Shkodra, whose shoulders are bent by the weight of thirty centuries of history that makes him proud?! Perhaps the man from Kruja, Kavaja, Shijak, or Elbasan, heirs to an epic that does not allow one to be broken, frightened, or humiliated to the point of killing one’s own maternal uncle, nurtured by the oldest breast of the Balkans?! Which enemy?! The brothers and sisters of the towns and villages of Toskëria, who believed in the glory of the rifle-battle in defense of trampled hearths?! An “enemy” of this people cannot be one who shared good and evil with this people, one who was born and lived among them, who honored the graves of their parents and nurtured hope for their children’s future, one bound by heart and blood to these creatures seized by the throat by cruel fate. The “enemy” of this people can only be the foreigner, and those who served the foreigner because Albania was not enough for their eyes or their pockets…! Our group faced a great moral dilemma.
Winning over a comrade, clarifying a mind darkened by daily propaganda, “liberating” a person from the pangs of fear that nailed them in place, was for us a joyless virtue. Because, in our minds, we were certain that every hard-won victory would cost blood, suffering, and often both together. The victory achieved would bring the youth into prisons, into torture, long years of sentencing, and executions. That “victory” would create families left in the streets, children raised as orphans, parents sent to concentration camps, spouses and sisters forced by hunger to take the path of humiliating acts imposed by “the power” upon persecuted families. A victory? Yes, a victory of human dignity without a doubt, a victory of man’s most typical uniqueness, of his necessity and will to be as he himself desires, and without fear. Sacrifice was a high price, but not too high when it came to being free – free from every artificial restriction and authoritarian control. But how advisable was the educational work that prepared the youth for such a possibility and such suffering? The question remained unanswered!
September 9, 1946. After midnight, the city’s sleep was broken by a sudden burst of gunfire. It was the villagers of Postrriba, defending their land with all their soul. The new “power” threatened nationalization. A large, brave, but unorganized group of them attacked the city, military barracks, and government buildings, but without success. The clash with the “Security forces” (Sigurimi) continued until morning, when the attackers withdrew. The consequences of this self-sacrificing act proved catastrophic. The “Postrriba Movement,” as it was called by everyone, did not leave many victims on the battlefield but claimed many victims in the days that followed. In a field near the city, twenty-eight villagers were executed. Dozens of houses were burned, and their smoke was clearly visible from the city. Arrests were made en masse and beyond any control! The “Movement” became the cause to “cleanse” the entire city of Shkodra and its surroundings of “enemies of the people” elements. Within a month, the city had eleven temporary prisons and more than one thousand two hundred detainees. The heavy shadow of executions was everywhere! But at night, when the rifles began in the city streets, Shkodra was electrified.
The idea of toppling the “communist power” ignited everyone’s fantasies. The red, man-eating monster was wounded! From the window opened on that September night, the cracks of the rifles filled me with hope. Burn in flames, oh my old Shkodra, burn! For the criminal hand that reddens the stones of your streets with blood today is not unknown to your inhabitants. Nor is the weeping of mothers and wives unknown, which will shatter the hearts of parents and orphans tomorrow morning when the calamity of this night is announced! It is not a new melody for this people, who have been fed on blood and tears. From Rozafa, today somber and angry, on this night of martyrdom, the Zana (mountain fairy) counts the victims fallen for freedom, while on the three-thousand-year-old walls of the castle, legend forges their names for eternity. Our history, oh Shkodra, is the sound of the steel chisel cutting deep into the granite that shatters, and in the polished marble, forges the immortality of those who gave their lives – conscious sacrifices of free humanity. Burn in flames, oh my old Shkodra, burn!
Today, in the darkness that has covered you everywhere, freedom again needs nourishment: for boys not yet fully grown, for men whom mothers seek because they must feed children crying for bread and for a father who is no more. Raise the voice of the clarion call again, you city of Rozafa; scatter the reigning darkness, oh old Shkodra, and with the lit torch in the hand charred by the fire of freedom – burn, burn in flames, oh my old Shkodra, burn! The worsening of the situation due to police pursuits caused confusion among the population. During these heavy days, my office colleague informed me that near the city, two political fugitives were holed up in a cave and were in danger of dying of hunger. The old woman who supplied them with bread was poor and lacked the means to help. A small group was formed among us, and it was decided that a portion of our monthly salary would be allocated for aid. It was an undertaking that exposed us to an unforeseen, massive danger. But there was no other way! Often, events unfold without our intervention, and we inadvertently become the instrument of development. For nearly two months, this system worked successfully, until one day, through a banal accident, the old woman was discovered, the fugitives were surrounded, and in the fight with the pursuing forces, one was killed; the other was captured and executed later.
XI
On the afternoon of October 22, 1946, I was arrested in the office where I worked. At last, I fell into the trap of the dictatorship. My colleagues froze. It was raining in torrents. The streets were empty. Two armed partisans escorted me toward the State Security building – the inferno where people were killed every day with clubs and bullets. With handcuffs on my wrists, I began my life as a political prisoner, an opponent of the communist regime in Albania. “Open, infinite hell!” I said to myself. “In the very center of your fire, I march with persistence! In my heart, a warm flame – a breath that burns and gives life simultaneously – fills the chest of an Albanian youth whom Albania demands today for sacrifice. A soul that knows not the darkness of your lightless coals pushes me forward, even here, in this hopeless corner.” What could be nobler than this confrontation of a defenseless but brave being with the continuous and death-bringing threat of a blind fate that prevails only because it possesses the weapon of death?!
In a clash I cannot win, I raise my voice today, I bare my chest, and in the midst of a circle that mocks and despises me, I hurt my challenge: “I am a free man, master of my fate, for as long as I live!” At that moment, I did not yet know the road of Calvary that awaited me…! In the “chief’s” office where the partisan left me, I found three elegant officers. It seemed they were waiting for me. The chief asked me three questions about three people, two of whom were unknown to me. I answered. He did not believe me. From the desk where he sat, he threw with the full force of his arm a metal bell he took from the table, which passed by my left ear. Dissatisfied, threatening me with all kinds of torture, he approached and gave me a slap that darkened my eyes. “I will take your soul, you son of a dog,” he told me, “either tell everything, or we won’t torture you!” Then, he ordered the guard to escort me to the cell. The other officers did not speak. The word “torture” shook me! But the first slap must be the heaviest blow that wounds the prisoner’s dignity. I felt humiliated, unable to defend myself. Later, other “slaps” became somewhat tedious, only because they caused physical pain.
Perhaps this was the reason why, after the first shock, continuous suffering becomes an accepted and inseparable part of daily life. Perhaps this is the reason why even peoples, after the first blow, do not sufficiently feel the heavy weight of dictatorship and concentrate on securing work and daily bread with bent backs, easing as much as possible the suffering that covers and brings inevitable poverty and oppression. It is a kind of pact of coexistence with the plague… without hope of gain! In the cell where I was thrown, there was an electric light hanging from the ceiling, but no window. The guard, after binding my hands and feet tightly, closed the door, turned off the light, threw a filthy insult at me, and left. After a few minutes, I began to acclimate to the darkness. I was soaked to the bone from the rain, and the coldness of the cell forced me to shrink as much as possible. I pressed my arms against my body to warm up, took off my shoes full of water, and began to move my shackled feet. I trembled incessantly, unable to find a spot. In that miserable state, I could not help but ask myself: why did the guard curse me?
He did not know me, nor did he know who I was! Or had it become his second nature… harsh, malicious, an idiot playing with our lives. Exhausted from fatigue, wet and hungry, I sat on the cement of the cell, with both shoes under me. The cold froze my body even more, and it seemed as if the rainwater had turned to ice. My teeth chattered without stopping. I rubbed my hands bound in horse irons (handcuffs) and blew on them continuously, but to no avail. “I cannot continue like this until morning…!” I thought, “I will die!” Around midnight, the doors of several cells began to open. I heard the screams of the enraged guards and the feet of the prisoners running like horses, without a word. Then my door opened too: “Get up, pig!” the guard told me. He unfastened my leg shackles and ordered me to run: “Fast, fast, pig!” In the investigator’s office, I found three Security officers. They asked my name. I answered in a low voice, trembling with cold and fear. In my naivety, I hoped their information was wrong. It turned out to be the opposite!
This was a tactic that made it possible to start torture at the first meeting against the “stubborn” ones. With the first fists and clubs, the ground was prepared for a more regular investigation later. As soon as I gave the answer, a rain of slaps, fists, and kicks battered my body. In my state, this barrage was enough. I fell from the chair to the floor like a heap. My chest and shins were exposed to kicks and more kicks, given by one and then the other. I began to groan, and my eyes filled with tears. “I don’t know them, Mr. Captain!” I said in a pleading voice, “I swear to you! I don’t know them!” They laughed. “We have facts, evidence, witnesses that you know them well and have collaborated with them.” – “You are wrong!” – I replied. – “I don’t know them.” Then, the captain, a short but muscular man, took a piece of wood he kept on the desk and began to beat me incessantly, especially on the chest and thighs. At every blow, I jumped from the pain. I begged them to believe me, that I was speaking the truth. But no one answered. They lifted me from the floor, untied the rope that kept me bound to the chair, and sat me back on the floor. – “Speak! We will rip the soul out of you!” – They told me.
I insisted I did not know the sought-after persons. They acted as if they grew even angrier. One continued to beat me with wood on the back, while the other two, with their polished shoes, crushed my waist and damaged my kidneys. I began to lose consciousness, but I could still feel the pain. Lying on the floor, with hands and feet bound, I saw a guard enter the room. Without speaking at all, he cut my trousers with a knife. Before the officers, my genitals were exposed. I understood nothing. Two telephone wires tightened around the organs, and before I had a chance to speak, from a manual telephone apparatus, the electric current shook me from my place. The first shock created a feeling of internal fire; I clenched my teeth which were chattering, my eyes saw sparks, and my facial muscles were deformed. Every time the current came, I would tense up, and my head would rise and then slam onto the floor without control. I spoke no more, but tears flowed incessantly. It seemed as if they grew tired. For a minute, lying on the floor, bound in irons on hands and feet, with telephone wires on my genitals, clothes cut with a knife, and a battered body, I tried to understand my situation.
At that time, the office door opened. A man, whom I did not see, declared that he had met with me and held talks against the power. When he finished, they ordered him to leave. – “And now, you scoundrel, do you understand that we have witnesses? We know everything, but we want you to tell the truth.” Caught badly in a situation with no way out, I understood that nothing, neither admission nor denial, would help me in this case. I understood that their tactic was to shake the “accused” on the first midnight with a heavy dose of torture, in the hope that from the psychological effect of the terror endured, the “victim” would surrender, start the “confession” as they demanded, and make the process according to their devilish plans. “Mr. Captain!” I said in a voice that could barely be heard, and with tears in my eyes from the unbearable pain, “I do not know this man!” Before I could even finish the sentence, a new wave of rage was unleashed upon me. Before my half-closed eyes appeared the body of the officer who beat me incessantly, like a formless shadow trembling, which in the state blurred by pain, seemed to me like a tree shaking – not from the wind, but from an invisible force from the root to the tips of the branches. Not an inch of space was left on my body that was not struck with wood or kicked. At last, I lost consciousness…!
When I woke up, I realized I was in the cell. Near me, I discerned something formless. It was the bread ration that the guard had thrown through the small shuttered window of the cell door. It was day. When the guard ordered us to get up to perform biological needs, I told him I could not move. Without control, over my body, I had urinated in the cell, which stank terribly! With difficulty, I stood up enough to lean against the wall. Every cell of my body was a point of unbearable physical pain. I looked around in the darkness and saw a tin box that the prisoners used for personal needs. Without bedding, without food, with wet clothes cut by a knife, crushed by cold, hunger, and torture, I did not believe in the great change I had undergone within one night. Fear gripped me that after all these sufferings, surrounded by absolute silence in the cell, without the possibility of communication, one night, perhaps not far off, after a long and heavy torture, I would end in death, alone and forgotten. I was young, very young. This banal idea terrified me!
The next day, and for nearly fourteen months, the “investigations” continued – a metaphor for the tortures and the Security’s attempts to make a “process” (trial record) as they desired. Their main goal was not the “truth,” but the “process.” Through processes forced by torture and combined to fulfill their plans, the State Security would present before the public an “enemy organization” discovered by the “vigilance of the people and the Party.” Everything was artificial, a lie, dishonesty. It was enough that this lie served one purpose: maintaining absolute power through violence! The investigating officer tortured me at night, after midnight, in a small room where it was only he, I, and the instrument of torture. I trembled with fear! “If only there were another person,” I thought to myself, “I would endure everything with courage. But not alone!” It was a figment of my fantasy because “another person” also meant one more torturer…! The idea of torture in solitude, and in the full silence of midnight, as well as the possible death again alone, repeated incessantly and tormented me, as much as the uncarved wood that crushed my bones, as much as the wires that tightened around my genitals.
“Just not to die alone, not to die alone. The rest I forget…!” I repeated to myself. One night, the “major” called me – a Security officer I had known before – and told me he wanted “to discuss” with me. I replied that in my physical state, I was not capable of thinking. But he was not convinced. He had a great need to speak. The inferiority complex toward intellectuals and students was strong in most of them. “We know you despise us,” he told me that night, “because we come from the mountains and have no schooling. But we have the school of our heroic party; we have won and you…!” The officers’ mockery of our student life, our relationships with girls, discussions, walks in the square, our “luxury,” a certain nonchalance, our indifference to the “authority” and the situation around us, had been enough “to convince” the Security officers that our goal was to show our “superiority” as an “intellectual elite,” our “intellectualism”…! “I spit on the ground before mentioning your names,” an investigating officer confessed one day.
“We cannot allow the current situation to change,” I remember the “major” saying that night. “Not only because in this way we would admit the failure of our ideals, but mainly because our methods of proving the accuracy of our ideals are such that they leave no room for discussion, much less for compromise…! We have decided to exterminate you. You see it! Between us and you, a no-holds-barred war is now unfolding. We have nothing to hide… just like during the war…! Furthermore, from whom should we hide? From you, the object of our terror? From the broad masses who have shrunk in fear? Or from the members of our party, who have been subjected to a political education that prepares them to accept everything… you understand what I mean by the word ‘everything’… on the altar of the victory of our people’s revolution?” I remained silent out of fear and the amazement that covered me from this unexpected confession. I knew the Shkodran “major” from the time he had been “underground,” and we had not harbored hostile feelings before.
Then, putting the tip of the stick on my forehead, he pushed me lightly, as if wanting to draw my attention to the words he was preparing to say clearly, slowly, and with the pleasure generated by uncontrolled and unlimited action. “Listen here!” he told me, “there is no way back for us. Either you… or us…! As long as we have the power in our hands, it will be us and you…”! He did not finish the sentence; he shrugged his shoulders. He put the stick on the desk, approached the window, and without speaking, looked outside at the city streets. At that moment, I had the impression that the closed and criminal world where he had ended up was killing him too. The doubt of the crimes committed seemed to have reached his conscience. He protected himself superficially to cover his own internal defeat. A few minutes later, he turned toward me, and with an uncertain voice, asked: – “Why did you rise against us, you scoundrel, why against us? You were an anti-fascist…”?! He was no longer the previous “major.” Something deep had changed in him. I understood it from the tone of his voice.
Then, I took a little courage and replied: – “Mr. Major, given the situation you have created, even today in this state where you have brought me…, I see no other way for me…! Thus, regimented, there is no place for a middle way: either with you or against you!” – “How is it possible that you take the side of the Catholic Clergy?!” – “Mr. Major! I have no connection with the Catholic Clergy…”! – “The participation in the Archbishop’s funeral in May… we have the photographs… shall I show them?!” he said with a certain pride. – “No!” I told him. “But half the city was at that funeral…!” He did not answer. He paced the room and asked me again: – “Do you remember the French Revolution?!” His question came unexpectedly, and I did not answer at all. “The French revolutionaries were against the aristocracy, not against the clergy,” he continued his monologue. “But when the clergy refused to separate from the aristocracy, then the people said: Let the clergy burn too! Historically, the Catholic Clergy has caused itself the damages it suffered. As yesterday, so today. They attack us, we defend ourselves…!”
After a short silence, he continued: – “You all believe in the military superiority of America…! The atomic bomb? Ha! Do not worry! Within a short time, the Soviet Union will have its own bombs, bigger, more powerful…! Meanwhile, for now, we will avoid conflict, but we will provoke it when we feel strong from favorable positions, at the time and place most suitable for us…!” And with a boast he completed: “We will win the final war…!” He was enthusiastic and clearly repeating the lessons learned in hours of ideological education. How much did the “major” believe such a presentation, whether of past history or contemporary? I did not understand! For me, the subject was heavy, and in my state, very heavy. But it did not fail to leave me with the impression that a deep indoctrination, which politically prepared the cadres for the “new war,” was on the agenda…! “A Third War,” I thought, “and the Second War has not yet ended properly…!” Memorie.al
To be continued in the next issue
