By Vasil Qesari
Memorie.al/ The overthrow of the great totalitarian edifice in Albania would leave behind, not only the change of the system, accompanied by lots of hopes, mirages and cries of happiness but, unfortunately, also many wounds, dramas, victims, dust, milk and disappointments from the most different. Ten years and more after that event, which deeply shook society, completely overturning many previous codes, rules and concepts, people still continue to ask themselves such questions as: What really happened in society Albanian, during the last 50 years of the dictatorship? How was it possible that the system managed to warp everything? Why did people accept it? What was the totalitarian logic of the transformation of society and the individual? How were the structures of totalitarian mechanisms conceived and functioning: propaganda, secret police and the exercise of the ideology of terror? How did it happen that among all the communist countries of Eastern Europe, Albania was considered an exception or a special case? Why did Enver Hoxha remain blindly, fanatically loyal to Stalin until the end, turning the country into a prison where violence, fear and purges continued until the end of the 80s? Why was the country so insanely isolated, locking people up between bunkers and barbed wire? Why, then, did all the above phenomena happen…?! The book “Post-scriptum for Dictatorship” does not claim to provide definitive answers to the above questions, or the complexity of the reasons that brought and maintained the totalitarian power in Albania. Nor is it a complete, deep and comprehensive fresco of the life and suffering that people experienced during that system. Its author, perhaps, has the merit that together with the retrospective view of the totalitarian period as well as the zeal of a passionate analyst, he has tried to turn his head back once again, to give not only his personal memories and opinions, but also to return once again to the vision of that era with the simple philosophy of preserving the Memory and supporting the Appeal to never forget the well-known maxim, that…the corpse’s nails and hair continue to grow even after death! Ten years or more after the great revolution, the book in question has current value and we hope it will be appreciated by the reader because, as an Albanian researcher also says… the greatest evil that can happen to a people comes when he fails to analyze his own past. An amnesic people are forced to be constantly neuropathic and repeat their painful experiences…!
ENEMIES, SPIES, AGENTS…!
Free tourist exits in the city were extremely rare. However, sometimes you would see groups of foreigners walking with cameras in their arms around the Palace of Culture, in shops with artistic products or in the Central Post Office. In such cases, what stood out more were the timid looks, sometimes with curiosity and sometimes with fear, with which the citizens of Tirana accompanied them and especially avoiding any meetings or questions that might be asked of them was suddenly directed by them.
This is the reason why, whenever a foreigner approached someone to ask him, say, which way he should go to arrive at the “Dajti” Hotel or for any other reason, he would leave scared, not giving them not the slightest explanation. Everyone was afraid that if they did the opposite, that is, if they exchanged even two words with them, then they would have to deal with the civilians who were following them. Under those circumstances, it was natural that no one wanted to trouble themselves for anything…!
“I was walking on Broadway – said K.L., a friend from Tirana. – In front of me, there was a group of young foreigners who spoke French. I hurried my feet, after a while I was next to them. They were football players of the Algerian national team who, the day before, had played with our team. One of them asked me where he could buy a postcard to send to his family in Algeria.
I told him to come with me, and after a while we entered the nearest bookstore. When we got out, I said goodbye to him and left. But, without waiting, a civilian blocked my path. He grabbed my arm, telling me he was from the police. He behaved very harshly and asked me first and foremost what my name was, where I lived, who I belonged to, why I had met the stranger, what I had told him, etc. For several months in a row, I waited in fear to be called to the police or the dean’s office. But I was lucky. Maybe, since my father, he worked in the ministry…”!
Another interesting story happened with an elderly villager from Kashari. One winter morning, he had gone out by the causeway to go to a problem, in Tirana. Leaning against a tree, he occasionally raised his hand in the hope that some truck driver would stop and do sevap. After a few minutes, luck smiled on the old man, and what luck…!
A pretty car had stopped two or three steps in front of him and someone had signaled him to get inside. The poor uncle, who was riding in such a car for the first time in his life, sat in the back seat and thanked Allah for helping him not to wait long in the cold. But, his joy was cut off immediately, when he heard that his benefactors spoke a language that he did not understand and that they did not speak Albanian at all. Uncle had realized that he was riding in a foreign car. Frightened, he asked the driver to stop immediately, and then got off in a breath.
But, before he could recover, another car had braked in front of him. A boy came out of it, grabbed him by the arm and pushed him brutally into the cabin. The old man had turned from the rain to the hail..! This time, his new benefactors were two security men, who had been following the car with the CD license plate for some time. (Diplomatic body) Poor old man…! In the offices of the Security, the chunas had beaten him, insulted and cursed him, threatening that he would suffer badly if he did not tell how and when he knew the foreign diplomats, what he had given them and what orders he had received from them. After three days in the dungeon, the lonely villager was released and returned to Kashar, where his alarmed family was waiting for him.
But it happened, you weren’t too hurt. Many others, unlike Kashar’s uncle, have rotted in prisons, simply from the temptation or excessive courage to meet foreigners. My friend G. M. from Vlora told me the story of his misfortune: “In 1959 I was 18 years old. Growing up in an intellectual environment or as it was called then, in a ‘bourgeois’ family, (my father was the owner of a pharmacy, while my mother was a teacher), I was very interested in literature and especially in foreign languages. With a lot of work and will, but also thanks to the help of my 70-year-old uncle, who had finished his higher medical studies in Graz, Austria, I managed to learn three foreign languages very well: German, Italian and French.
But, because of my “biography”, I was not given the right to study to continue higher education. However, thanks to my talent in drawing and thanks to the intervention of a distant cousin who worked as an economist in the trade section, I was able to find a job as a designer at N.T.U.S., (Social Food Trading Enterprise). I spent the summer months well, because I was involved in the designs of beach bars and restaurants. At that time, relations with the Soviets and the countries of the former people’s democracies were still intact, and from them, especially during the summer, several groups of tourists came to Vlora.
One day, while walking on the beach, I met a blonde girl from East Germany. She lived in Berlin and her name was Gertrude. I spoke German and this helped us first to get to know each other and then to become friends. We spent hours by the sea talking about literature, fashion and western light music. She was an angel. Open, pure in spirit and full of poetic feelings. I felt that I was loving him with all my heart…
After a week in his company, I realized that I was overdoing it and I didn’t know what to do. I was blinded by love. I did not notice that, in every movement and wherever I went, I was followed and intercepted step by step by the Security people. One morning, as soon as I got off at the city bus station, a few meters from the entrance gate of New Beach, a civilian grabbed me and pushed me inside a Gazi-69. After a while, I found myself in front of two people, in one of the offices of the Internal Affairs branch. Without asking me to give any explanation, they pounced on me, punching and kicking me wherever they could. They shot and shouted: Despicable! Spy! Enemy…! You have to pay dearly…”!
Drowning in blood, after a while, I fell to the ground unconscious. That terrible day ended with me signing a statement where I confirmed that I had met a foreign girl several times in a row and that I had talked with her about fashion, foreign songs and youth entertainment in Western countries. Then, before they released me, they took me to the bathroom and told me to carefully clean any blood stains on my face and body. I reached home late in the evening. For four days in a row, I lay in bed to somehow recover from the pain I felt in every part of my body.
But my work did not end there. Now, I was constantly under the surveillance of the Security. After a year, with some false testimony and accusations, I was sentenced to eight years in prison, for agitation and propaganda…! Initially, the only ones who didn’t worry about the trouble they could have from contact with foreigners were the children. They often went behind them just to beg, (to see outsiders), rarely to ask for some candy, pen or chocolate. In Vlora, the word goes; it used to be common for tourists to be constantly accompanied by crowds of children, which for them was also a kind of entertainment.
But then, over the years, things changed radically for them too. Because the political education of the society and the intense propaganda of the Party were such that the foreigners presented them as spies and agents, who came to Albania only for bad purposes, to organize agent activities, etc. Not only in books and magazines, in radio programs about fates and pioneers, but also in the educational programs of kindergartens and elementary schools, I was very interested in literature and especially in foreign languages. With a lot of work and will, but also thanks to the help of my 70-year-old uncle, who had finished his higher medical studies in Graz, Austria, I managed to learn three foreign languages very well: German, Italian and French.
But, because of the ‘biography’, I was not given the right to study to continue higher education. However, thanks to my talent in drawing and thanks to the intervention of a distant cousin who worked as an economist in the trade section, I was able to find a job as a designer at NTUS, (Social Food Trading Enterprise). I spent the summer months well, because I was involved in the designs of beach bars and restaurants.
At that time, relations with the Soviets and the countries of the former People’s Democracies were still intact, and from them, especially during the summer, several groups of tourists came to Vlora. One day, while walking on the beach, I met a blonde girl from East Germany. She lived in Berlin and her name was Gertrude. I spoke German and this helped us first to get to know each other and then to become friends. We spent hours by the sea talking about literature, fashion and western light music. She was an angel. Open, pure in spirit and full of poetic feelings. I felt that I loved him with all my heart…!
After a week in his company, I realized that I was overdoing it and I didn’t know what to do. I was blinded by love. I did not notice that, in every movement and wherever I went, I was followed and intercepted step by step by the Security people. One morning, as soon as I got off at the city bus station, a few meters from the entrance gate of New Beach, a civilian grabbed me and pushed me inside a “Gaz”-i-69. After a while, I found myself in front of two people, in one of the offices of the Department of Internal Affairs. Without asking me to give any explanation, they pounced on me, punching and kicking me wherever they could.
They were shooting and shouting: ‘Scoundrel! Spy! Enemy…! You have to pay dearly…’! Drowning in blood, after a while, I fell to the ground unconscious. That terrible day ended with me signing a statement where I confirmed that I had met a foreign girl several times in a row and that I had talked with her about fashion, foreign songs and youth entertainment in Western countries. Then, before they released me, they took me to the bathroom and told me to carefully clean any blood stains on my face and body. I reached home late in the evening.
For four days in a row, I lay in bed to somehow recover from the pain I felt in every part of my body. But my work did not end there. Now, I was constantly under the surveillance of the State Security. After a year, with some false testimony and accusations, I was sentenced to eight years in prison, for agitation and propaganda”, concluded my friend G. M. from Vlora.
…Initially, the only ones who didn’t worry about the trouble they could have from contact with foreigners were the children. They often went behind them just to beg, (to see outsiders), rarely to ask for some gum, pen or chocolate. In Vlora, the word goes; it used to be common for tourists to be constantly accompanied by crowds of children, which for them was also a kind of entertainment.
But then, over the years, things changed radically for them too. Because the political education of the society and the intense propaganda of the Party were such that the foreigners presented them as spies and agents, who came to Albania only for bad purposes, to organize agent activities, etc. Not only in books and magazines, in radio shows about fates and pioneers, but also in the educational programs of kindergartens and elementary schools, the gogol of foreigners always symbolized external enemies and was constantly accompanied by moralizing about vigilance and denouncing their every action. Suspicious.
So, for example, in addition to numerous publications on this topic, a textbook for primary schools also included a story with the title: “How a saboteur was caught”. Through the commentary, the teachers told the students how, in a mountain village on the border, a pioneer who was herding sheep, had seen in the forest two suspicious people smoking American cigarettes and wearing clothes different from ours. The child immediately suspected that they were trespassers. After that, he had run to alert the border guards. The subversive agents were immediately captured and the pioneer was decorated with the ‘Medal of Bravery’…!
In another text, from elementary schools, a child who tried to do the same thing was caught by saboteurs who tortured him and threw him into an abyss. Whereas, in a book with drawings for children, a tourist on the beach was denounced for his suspicious actions, precisely by a six-year-old child (?). The tourist, then, was arrested by the police and had admitted that he was an agent. The moral and subtext of such stories was that foreigners should never be trusted, that they were suspicious, and that they only came to Albania for bad work…! Memorie.al
