By SAMI REPISHTI
Part Twenty-Seven
Sami Repishti: – In Albania, the communist crime of the past has not been documented or punished; the “spiritual cleansing,” the conscious confession, and the denunciation of ordinary communist criminals has not taken place! –
‘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. At that time, I said “no” to the dictatorship and took the road that had no end, a sailor in a vast, shoreless sea. The rebellious act that almost 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 aware of his role in that time and place, out of love for the fatherland and the desire for freedom; simply, as a young man with a pronounced sensibility, faithful to himself, to a life of dignity.
Continued from the last issue
XXVI
When I thought of the friends who hanged themselves, who threw themselves from the windows of the State Security to commit suicide, who perished from hunger and gave up their souls under the weight of the wood and the kicks of the guards of the camps and prisons; the sight of the boy with his head crushed with a stone, the madman beaten to death… it was as if they had taken with them, like the steam of the wet earth under the fire of the summer heat, once and for all the faith I had had in myself, in man, and in the inspiring and constructive power of the motherland I called Fatherland! And yet, my friends, oh my friends, the warmth of their presence still nourished me and kept me alive!
The work on cementing the runway continued at an accelerated pace. The brigades of prisoners came and went across the wide field of the future airfield, without stopping, in long lines and with a persistence that knew no rest. We even took lunch in shifts, and when the concrete began to thicken or hardened in the wagons for various reasons, the lunch hour was postponed. Concrete, concrete was the new god…! The prisoners, the servants of this god, bowed down; every slowdown was paid for with countless sticks on the back, punishment without bread, without soup, without water, and often, even without sleep, in isolation cells, where the night was spent hungry and shivering like a dog in winter! The heavy ten-hour work and the unloading of cement trucks after working hours, when everyone else was in the camp, exhausted me so much that my legs shook when I lifted the bags of cement from the truck to unload them into the warehouse.
The constantly inhaled dust created breathing difficulties and, during sleep, heavy coughing. It was essential to return home in good health. A new, heavy, uninterrupted job awaited me in the “outside world.” This was the fate of all released prisoners: hard labor in construction, in brickyards, in loading and unloading. A strange feeling covered me. For the first time, I was seriously thinking about the possibility of “release” from prison. Every day, the idea of preserving my health was turning into an obsession and nagged me relentlessly. Instinctively, I began to save energy in every way and took advantage of moments of rest in every situation.
Meetings were shortened, and walks in the camp courtyard became rare. My closest friends visited me at my bed, where we held discussions, mainly about what awaited me after my release. Opinions varied; however, everyone agreed that “another wider camp” awaited me, and that my treatment in work centers would not differ much from the current one. Then came the countless “advices” and “orders” for their families. It was a difficult state that every prisoner went through in their final months. What caused me boundless pain was the request of young parents who had left behind young brides and unraised children. Burdened with long prison sentences, this legion of unfortunates suffered more than the others.
The idea that they would spend twenty years in prison, or more, away from their families, was in itself an unbearable, continuous torture. Their lives, shattered in prisons and forced labor camps, would continue again in a family that for twenty years in a row had been persecuted for his “guilt”: wives forced into heavy physical labor and children discriminated against and discredited in school and in daily life by a vengeful regime, until death. I was imprisoned young and without commitments. As soon as I was released, I would go to my family in the basement where they lived, and together we would face the hardships of life. Despite the fear of the future, the thought that I would help my family raised my morale. I couldn’t wait anymore. Every day seemed longer than the last; every night an interruption of the march of time. Spiritually, I was preparing to start a new life, under new circumstances and challenges.
During the meeting with my mother, I was unable to tell her the date of my release. The command considered this information a secret. I told her the day would not be far off and she should wait patiently. She did not answer, but in her eyes, the fear of my internment was clearly visible. I smiled with difficulty. She left deeply disappointed. From “Group 50,” people were released every day. Most were ordinary criminals. Some of them had lost all human sensation. Others were people of dignity, accused without guilt, or defenders of private property grabbed by the government. The command replaced them with others. By the end of June, I was the only one from the first group still imprisoned. Then, the doubt that I might not be released grew significantly, and it could be seen in the faces of the friends who visited me every evening in the camp.
One Saturday, the last day of June, after working hours, the camp guard stopped a prisoner and me in the field. At first, we didn’t understand. A few minutes later, two trucks full of cement stopped in front of the warehouse. The driver opened the tailgate, and the guard ordered the unloading. There were only two of us workers. In this state, one climbed into the truck and loaded the cement bags onto the back of the other, who brought them into the warehouse. Then, after twenty or thirty trips, the two together arranged the bags in regular rows. From time to time, when one got very tired from the transport, the one from the truck replaced him. But this method lasted a long time, and night fell upon us. The drivers did not want to spend the night in this place and began to complain. The guards approached and, angrily, insisted we quicken our pace. We were half dead, and this was clear to everyone.
Finally, the driver got into the truck and began loading the bags onto our backs. Now we were two porters, and the work moved faster. As the first truck was unloaded, the second truck approached. Looking at this monstrous machine approaching, I felt a desire to throw myself under its wheels. Without bread, without soup, without sleep, and working since seven in the morning, I had reached the final point of despair. My friend, as well. We looked at each other with disbelief, as if it were a bad dream. Then, we heard the voice of the camp guard: “Hurry up, you pigs! We won’t spend all night here!” We didn’t answer and continued the work in silence. But our bodies had no more energy. We began to sway, to hold onto the wall, to drop the bags on the ground, and to kneel. The guards went mad. We were silent. The driver looked on with pity and tried to help us. The last bags were unloaded around midnight, when the guard shift replaced the first guards.
No sound came from the camp. Everyone was in deep sleep. Even the return to the camp became a real torture. Legs, hands, and the skin of the back were raw from the friction with the cement. We walked with great difficulty. The guards pushed us. We fell. My friend refused to move. I tried to help him, but he had lost all strength. The guard began kicking him. He wouldn’t move. Then, we grabbed him by both arms to the big gate of the camp, brought him inside, and left him on the ground. I went for water, to drink and to clean up. I filled the canteen and brought it to the mouth of my fallen friend. He spoke with difficulty. With great effort, I brought him to the barracks, let him down on the bed, and left. Hunger pushed me to go to the kitchen for the bread and dinner soup. It was closed. I asked the guard for the day’s ration. “Tomorrow morning!” he told me. “Everything is closed now…”
I went back to the barracks where I had my bed. Everyone was sleeping. Only the friend who slept next to me, Et’hem, an idealistic former high school student, was still awake. What I saw shocked me. My mattress was ripped to pieces. Every rag was gathered in a heap, half of them torn or cut with scissors. This pile of rags made me laugh and cry at the same time. This was my entire wealth after ten years of imprisonment: rags, and now, torn rags. What do they want with my rags?! Deeply moved, Et’hem explained to me that this raid was done during the day by guards looking for something – perhaps writings, perhaps letters from friends for their families. Finding nothing, they had cut and shredded every shirt, every garment, the bed, the pillow, even the bread bag. Nothing compromising!
The wretched sight did not shock me as much as expected, because the need for rest at that hour of the night was greater than the concern over ruined clothes. I climbed into bed, told my friend in two words about the day’s experience, and fell instantly into the arms of a deep sleep. The next day was Sunday, a day of rest. Saturday evening, after work, while I was unloading the cement trucks, the sergeant of the command had asked for me. This was usually a sign that I would be released the next day. In the morning, I woke up early to friends congratulating me on my release from prison. I took my bread ration in the kitchen. I was hungry. I began to eat quickly, while a long line of friends wished me good luck. The emotions were strong, especially when I embraced the young ones, still unraised, and the elderly friends who still had long prison years on their backs.
It seemed to me that I would never see these faces again, so dear, that had not left my side for ten long years. The crier calls my name. Near the gate, a sergeant ordered me to fold my clothes. I did so. It was simple. Everything of mine fit into a sack that I filled, tied, and put on my shoulder. More embraces, handshakes, wishes, and many tears from me and others. At the gate, the sergeant took me by the arm to the command office, and after a careful search, filled out the “release” forms and informed me that the officer who had to sign was in Tirana for a day off. He ordered me to leave the camp and wait in the open field until morning. When I left the office, I saw the friends gathered inside the camp, following my movements. Some waved. I didn’t answer. I lowered my head and, with my clothes on my shoulder, headed toward a large tree outside the camp, where I decided to spend the first night in “freedom”!
July 1, 1956. – It was the first day outside the barbed wire of the forced labor camp. Sitting by the large tree, I looked with tears in my eyes at the enclosed camp, where nearly two thousand friends suffered, unable to break away from them. Evening was approaching. I took the piece of bread from the sack and started to eat. It wouldn’t go down. An uncontrollable sob choked my throat. I still didn’t believe I was outside the camp, away from ten-year-long friends, without guards over my head, and especially, away from the hands of Sergeant Ismaili. I smiled! Where would that dog be?! What would he think tomorrow when he didn’t see me at the workplace, again with torn clothes, loading gravel for the concrete mixer?! Such a thought made me laugh out loud. How absurd life was! I was a rag in the hands of a maniac who satisfied his sadism with our suffering. Who was he? A self-declared god, with no laws to restrain him, no moral rules to guide him. And yet, not free! And me? To him, I was no one and nothing!
Humiliated to such a point, I continued to live even with the fear of my physical destruction from a mindless hammer that threatened to fall on my head at any time, in any place, without any reason…! And yet, within myself, I was free! I heard footsteps approaching. I turned my head in fear and saw an old woman with sacks on her shoulders approaching with effort. I stood up and offered help. She accepted. Then, together we approached the tree, dropped our loads on the ground, and sat down. “The guard turned me back… now I have to sleep here, outside, and wait until tomorrow afternoon to see my son…!” I explained to her that I had been released that day and had to wait until morning. Without asking my name, she immediately started: “Do you know my son, Jusuf? How is he? Is he tired? How is his health? Does he have clothes? Tell me, please, how is he…?!”
When she told me her son’s name, a close friend of mine, I embraced her. “Listen, mother,” I told her, “I am his friend. We worked together; we spent a lot of time together…! He is in good health, he is strong, he has courage, he isn’t bored… and he often remembers you, because you, ma’am, live alone…!” – “Yes!” she replied. “I have a son and a daughter in Italy, while this one was caught by trouble here in Albania…! What can we do? Do you have a mother? Does your mother know you were released today?! Oh, how that poor mother will rejoice when she sees you! Thank God, son, that you got out of prison and are still in good health…!” She looked at me continuously, as if she wished to see her own son’s face in me. Then, with a parental gesture, she took my head, placed it in her bosom, and began to stroke me lovingly. I didn’t move until her tears soaked my hair. I stood up, embraced her again like my own mother, assured her that her son was well, and began to tell stories I had heard from him. “Yes, yes,” she would say. “I remember. Yes, that’s how it was!”
The conversation continued for hours with this mother, who replaced my own mother on that first night under the shadow of the setting sun and the stars that followed it all night. I was no longer hungry, and she didn’t want to eat. I told her about life in the camp, and especially events involving her son. She was burning with the desire to know as much as possible about that creature she adored. Finally, exhaustion overcame us both. We rested our heads against the tree and tried to sleep. The tired old woman fell asleep without difficulty, but I watched the lights around the camp and was lost in thought. Almost every scene of camp life began to appear vividly before me. Was it believable that for ten long years I had spent my youth in such conditions—imprisoned, tortured, forced to live and work in communist camps like the slaves of the pyramids? A deep, persistent need forced me to seek a reason and justification, or at least an explanation, for this catastrophe that had exhausted me and brought me to the brink of physical destruction and the risk of moral death…!
Under the beauty of the stars shining in the sky that July night, I couldn’t understand how it was possible for man to fall so low as to treat another worse than a mangy animal; how it was possible for an Albanian to treat his Albanian brother worse than the treatment of the fascists and Nazis during the occupation of our country?! “The foreigner,” as we had conceived him for years – the fierce and vengeful oppressor – paled before the reality created by communist tyranny, a regime with no respect for the country’s citizens, knowing only the obsession for absolute, uncontested, uncontrolled power, determined to defend it with violence, injustice, and lying propaganda; a regime that persistently desired “evil,” consciously causing unmerited suffering, and nourishing it with hatred born in the minds and hearts of the vengeful, indoctrinated to the point of madness. My friends, in the camp before me, seemed to me now like cannon fodder, food for the meat-eating ghouls, branded victims, to die from hunger, hard labor, and torture…!
My head buzzed with a thousand thoughts that troubled me because I found no answers. After all I had seen and witnessed during my stay in prison, could I say that only those who have compromised the moral principles of a civilized society – which they claim to represent! – have the chance to come out of prison alive? Often, during these ten years, I have been a witness to events that definitely imposed intervention, the taking of a stand, even at the risk of one’s life. Why didn’t I revolt, even though revolting was synonymous with death? Then, survival appeared as the result of a compromise with our conscience – an amoral (if not immoral!) life; and consequently, unworthy of anyone who claims to live for the defense of these principles…! Where does the field of civil heroism begin, and where does it end?! I survived the death camp! Today I am outside the barbed wire that shredded my free view for ten long years. How would I justify my future life, every day, every hour, every minute? Who should I be tomorrow, from the moment the prisoner of yesterday officially died? I had entered prison young and inexperienced; I was leaving prison mature and desperate! A great unknown, greater than me, confronted me! When I heard the guards’ whistle for the waking of the camp prisoners, I realized the night had passed without sleep.
Soon, a new day would break over my martyred land, with new victims in the hundred prisons and extermination camps that covered my fatherland in those days. The old woman woke up and couldn’t sit still out of the desire for the meeting. Around seven in the morning, the long columns of prisoners left the camp toward the work sector. The old woman was shocked by the large number of unfortunates and looked at me in amazement. I put my arm around her. Then, we both headed toward the camp offices. An hour later, I saw that she had sat on a concrete block and was waiting for the return of the brigades from work and the desired meeting with her son. I wished her a good day and the swift release of her son, and I left. She followed me with tears in her eyes. In the office of the officer who gave me the “Release Certificate,” they told me that during ten years of work, I had accumulated a reward of 1200 lek. – “Can I take them today?” – I asked without malice. – “Certainly!” – he said. – “They are your money. The people’s power pays for the work you’ve done…!”
I took the money and left. With quick steps, I followed the road that led from the camp to the main Tirana-Shkodra road. A few minutes later, an open truck approached. I signaled with my hand. It stopped.
- “Is there room as far as Shkodra?” – I asked. – “Not to Shkodra,” the driver told me, “hop in, I’ll take you as far as Mamurras.” – “Thank you!” – I answered, jumped for joy, and took a seat next to the driver. Without asking, he told me he was coming from Korça and that the work he did was not easy. “Long hours of work,” he said, and continued: – “Have you just been released from prison?!” – Clearly, my appearance and clothes showed that I came from the camp. – “Yes!” – I said. – “I was released today.” I looked him in the eyes, and with a light smile: “Ten,” I said. He was shocked. “Ten years? But you look young,” and he spoke no further. In Mamurras, the truck stopped. – “You have to get off here,” he informed me. “Wait for a taxi to take you to Shkodra. The bus has passed, and you’ll have to wait a long time…!” – “How much do I owe you?” – “Nothing, brother! How could I take money from you…?!” – And stretching out his hand, he added: “God would strike me… has a safe journey!” Memorie.al
To be continued in the next issue
