Memorie.al/publikon some rare photos of educational institutions of the United States of America, which were opened in Albania in the ’20s -‘ 30s of the last century. These very prestigious American educational institutions, where American-Albanian staff served, would play a major role in the education and training of Albanian students who would be educated there over the years.
The American schools that opened in Albania in the period of the 1920s – ’30s, were respectively: the School of Protestant Missionaries in Korça (otherwise called the ‘Kennedy’ school), the 8-year American school in Elbasan, the High School Technical – Agricultural of Golem of Kavaja (otherwise known as Charles Erikson School), Dako School in Kamza (administered by the Qiriazi sisters), and Tirana Technical High School (otherwise known as the School of Harry Fultz-it)
In addition to the educational side in the formation of Albanian students, these prestigious American institutions would serve as a very important catalyst for the introduction of the Anglo-Saxon spirit in the Albanian education of that period.
Unfortunately, these schools would cease their activity during the Nazi-fascist occupation of the country in 1939 – ’44, but the greatest tragedy would begin with the coming to power of the communist regime of Enver Hoxha at the end of 1944. throughout the communist regime (1945-1991), these institutions would change their name and their past as the “American school” would be strictly forbidden to mention.
And it would not end like that, since from 1947, (with the departure of the American military mission from Albania), the communist regime would very soon launch a denigration campaign for the American administrators and their staff, describing them as “camouflaged employees” of the United States Intelligence Service (OSS), later known as Harry Fultz.
In an even more tragic way, the students who had studied in these schools, mainly those of the American Technical School of Harry Fultz in Tirana, would end up, who immediately after the end of the War, in the years 1945 – ’47, almost the most most of them would be labeled and accused of being Fultz agents and end up in the communist regime’s camps and prisons. The harshest measures would be reserved for them, with arrests, imprisonments, internments, and often executions as “enemies of the people.” The accusations against them were stereotypes and for everyone equally, being labeled as “recruited agents” by their professors like Kennedy and Fultz, an accusation which even the Prime Minister Mehmet Shehu could not escape, where immediately after the event of 18 December 1981, (where he was found dead in his bedroom), Enver Hoxha declared him a “CIA-recruited polyagent since the 1930s” when he was studying at the Fultz School in Tirana./Memorie.al
