“It was not my wedding! I dressed in a white dress and took a walk around the camp, through the doors of the co-suffering families there, while Fatos…”/ The sad testimony of Klara Merlika

By Ermira Isufaj

“In Berat, over 20 children died in one night, and I will never forget a woman from Shkodra, her name was Cuklina, whose twin babies died”

Memorie.al / It is the story of Klara Merlika, the symbol of survival in the internment camps, where she went as a child and spent 45 years of her life, where she saw her peers die. Where she fell in love and wore her white wedding dress, where she left her mother forever. A white dress and a walk through the doors of interned families, are the few moments that Klara Merlika remembers, on the marked day of her life, that of marriage.

That day would not make any difference from the usual days of her hard life in the internment camps, from Berat to Tepelena and to Savër…! He had arrived at the internment camps when he still had his elementary school apron and left there 45 years later.

They have called it a symbol of survival, since they planted it in almost all the internment camps of Albania. She is Klara Merlika, the daughter-in-law of the son of the former Albanian prime minister of the period of the Italian occupation of the country, Mustafa Merlika Kruja. It is one of those that has suffered the most from communist terror, since it was a child.

This is how she remembers her childhood in the internment camps, where many of her peers tragically lost their lives.

“Being part of big families, at the beginning and at the end of the camp were the bathrooms, and we of the Mirakajs (my uncle’s wife, she was a minister’s wife), together with Bardha Gjon Markagjonin, were placed at the end, in a space out of all conditions normal…! You couldn’t even call it survival.

It took a lot of effort from my mother and uncles daughter-in-law to clean the place around until it got an acceptable look. We stayed in Berat from 1944 to 1949, almost five years. Malaria, typhus, and small children died one after another in the camp.

Over 20 children died in one night, and I will never forget a tall woman from Shkodra, Cuklina was her name, whose twin babies died of typhus. I have the dry lips of those children in front of my eyes (crying).

I stayed with my mother and my family all the time, while my mother did her best to enroll me in the fourth grade, in a school near the camp, just to spend a few hours of the day.

I remember that several times in a row I accompanied my mother to the Kuçova Prison, because the Kozarë-Kosovo canal was being built nearby by the prisoners, while they also took people from other internment camps”, says Klara.

Yes, in exile Klara also experienced the most solemn moment in a person’s life, what practically should be the most unforgettable moment: the white dress and the wedding, even the birth of grandchildren.

The marriage with Fatos, the son of the former Prime Minister Mustafa Merlika Kruja, would make her sentence heavier, especially after the threat that Mehmet Shehu himself had made to her husband in prison. It’s been 45 years of exile, and today 90-year-old Klara Merlika (Mirakaj) has a lot to confess…!

“It was not my wedding! I dressed in a white dress and took a walk around the camp, through the doors of the co-suffering families there. The next day we immediately went back to work and just one day after the wedding, Fatos was forced to go to work in the Gradishti swamp.

During the day, a Security officer knocks and, pleased with the decision to deport my husband, asks me if I would leave him or follow him wherever the state would transfer him. I was married to Fatos, and I had decided to follow him wherever he was assigned.

In the internment camps, I spent the most beautiful and saddest moments of my life. Marriage is just a chapter…! My mother died in the camp, we buried her there. My daughter was born in the camp and Fatos and I decided to have only one child, so as not to take revenge on life, suffering…! You couldn’t torture yourself and the child in the conditions we lived in,” says Klara. Memorie.al