By Jozef Radi
Memorie.al / On the day she turned 33, Viktori Radi addresses a letter to Enver Hoxha. She has just been released early from a ten-year prison sentence. She has served five and a half years, and has been released by decree as a tuberculosis case, since the days of her life are numbered…! Meanwhile, while she is in prison, her mother (Katerina Vushmaqi) has sold her gold necklace and bought her (by order from abroad) the penicillin cure. And the mother saved that woman’s life, but also saved her from the remaining years of prison.
Now outside the walls, Viktoria decides to go and live (voluntarily) in an internment camp among the mountains and forests of Kurvelesh, where her husband has been for two years, and also among 100 educated men from all over Albania. She is the only woman living among them. After 10 months in the camp, she is also a new mother. But now three human breaths, on one ration of 600 grams of bread a day.
It is the terror of a life, of a family and of an infant without any help. In the fifth month of the infant, the woman thinks of writing to the dictator. He too has children, and perhaps this innocent infant pains him too. Perhaps some trace of humanity has remained even in these creatures who most often appear as beasts!
And she sits down with the pain of a mother in distress, with the words of a woman, of a citizen, of an educated person, with an exemplary ethic, with a more than admirable calligraphy, with the rationality of a noblewoman, and addresses him sometimes by name, sometimes by the title Commander, and sometimes in the name of the Party, as Mother of the People, to save her five-month-old infant…! She asks nothing big, only that her husband be sent to another camp, where they can work and keep that family alive, which was being reunited after 12 years…! Nothing excessive, nothing impossible in the state where Njishi [Hoxha] rules with an iron and murderous hand…!
And her letter… is passed around the offices of Power, and just when the infant has reached almost one year old, the NO! Of the Dictator’s Power has come! Meanwhile her infant is on the threshold of death, reduced to skin and bone, and after endless vomiting only death is expected. They have nothing with which to cure it, nor to wrap it, nor to feed it…! Husband and wife thus head to head over it, weep for their fate in the fate of that infant that is ascending to heaven. There are also 100 men who live with deep pain the death of that infant.
But No! There is always a divine force, a divine hope, a divine joy, that enters where man cannot! Suddenly as if by magic that finished infant disregards death, regains its place day by day little by little, and becomes strength and faith for those two parents who loved life even when they had been plunged into hell…! Now I wanted to explain something small to you too…! Before you are these four documents of this truth. Precisely from these four pages that I present today first of all, I have never been able to love or be well-disposed toward the dictator’s party, because from them I have only death.
But what I wish to emphasize and what immediately catches the eye even after reading these documents, is the war of humanism with the inhuman. It seems as if in these four documents the inhuman has triumphed! No! It is not true at all! Humanism has won! That woman has won who with humility addressed the dictator, and pleaded for the life of a five-month-old infant, and asked nothing more than to work in other camps (as they did) and raised beyond that infant two other children and went in peace, there in heaven where they are today!
Because even where death seems all-powerful, do not forget that the hand of a God appears who sees everything!
And He gives His hand to Life, to Man, to Faith!
So that Evil may never win over the World!
2 February 2018
Viktori Radi writes to Enver Hoxha
Kuç, 12 June 1957
Comrade Enver,
A mother with a five-month-old infant at her breast, I address you as a parent, as a father of children, but also as a father of the Party and of the state. You will certainly know how to recognize the hand of a mother with a five-month-old infant, and not let them die on the roads.
I am the wife of Lazër Radi, who in 1945 was sentenced by the People’s Court to 30 years in prison. That same year, with the November amnesty, the power pardoned 20 years. In April 1954, he completed his sentence and was released. However, immediately after release, he was sentenced to 5 years of internment in Kuç.
To ask for his release seems to me too great a boldness, for certainly the Power has its own reasons for this measure, but in the name of humanitarianism, in the name of that boundless love that you show for small children, I will ask of you, Comrade Commander, to transfer my husband to a place where he can work, such as Lushnje or Fier, or even some other place. I am incapable of physical work, so the infant and I await only the work that my husband can do.
The infant’s life is in danger. Here in Kuç there is no work and we have no means of living, since no help comes to us from anyone. If this infant can be saved and grow up, it will be saved only thanks to your intervention, and for its life it will be grateful to the Party.
It is superfluous to say that every moment and every hour risks the infant’s life more. An intervention by you as soon as possible would be salvation for it.
I have faith that the Party, the mother of the people, will also think of my five-month-old infant.
Awaiting a positive reply, I remain with respects
Viktori Radi
Kuç, Vlorë!
Reply to the letter that Viktori Radi sent to Enver Hoxha
Registered, Central Committee
No. 4661 dt. 1.7.1957 (pages 71-73)
Viktori Radi – Kuç – Vlorë
No. 518
To the Administrative Directorate R-29-6
She is the wife of Lazër Radi. They are interned in Kuç. They are in a bad economic situation and have no income, since there is no work there.
They ask to be sent to Lushnje or Fier, where her husband can work to support the family. They also have a 5-month-old child, who must be fed, and this pushes them further to seek their removal.
Note: As for what citizen Viktori Radi requests, who has gone voluntarily to live with her interned husband in Kuç of the Vlorë district.
The Internment Commission will examine it at its first meeting, and may (deleted – will) grant them the transfer to come (deleted – to come) to the camps of Lushnje or Fier.
Dep. Dir. Admin. Dir.
Vilson Pecani
(Note in green – aa)
The Internment Commission convened on 25/XII/1957, in the examination of the request of Viktori Rodi (should be – Radi), the wife of the internee Llazër Rodi (should be – Lazër Radi), who has gone herself to live with her husband in the camp in Kuç of Vlorë and asks for transfer from there to Fier or Lushnje, did not take it into consideration.
Lazër Rodi (– should be Radi) is one of the most active elements of hostile work, speaking sharply even in the camp where he is.
The reply was returned with the date 7/1/958, that the request for the transfer of her husband is not taken into consideration, while she herself is free to go even to Shkodër to live, near her people.
Director of the Administrative Directorate
Llazi Stratobërdha
To Comrade Hysni
We think A/a
Fh 22.1 – (29 approximately)
