By Skender Murtezani
Memorie.al / In a report by the Albanian publicist, Eugen Shehu, which he presented in November 2004, at a scientific symposium held in Tetovo, for the first time a topic forbidden until then by the communist regime was addressed, which had to do with the events that took place from the end of November 1944, in the Tobacco Monopoly in Tetovo. At that time, Macedonian partisans gathered in Monopol more than 10 thousand Albanian men, old and young, a number of whom were mistreated and massacred. However, the anti-Albanian terror had started even earlier, especially from September 1944, first of all in the regions of Gostivar, Tetova, Kumanovo, Skopje and Kirçova, but very soon it had spread throughout the Albanian-inhabited areas of northwestern Macedonia.
The monopoly of Tetova in 1944
The main headquarters of the so-called; The Yugoslav National Liberation Army for Macedonia had begun its terror against ethnic Albanians, especially since the ratio of forces on the ground was in favor of chauvinist violence. The German forces had almost completely withdrawn from the Albanian Macedonian territories by the end of August 1944, so the partisan forces had a free hand to act against the Albanians, who in the years 1941-1944 had shown with words and deeds that they wanted to join their homeland.
The situation that preceded the anti-Albanian genocide
On September 8, 1944, the secretary of the Regional National Liberation Committee for Macedonia, Vidoe Smilevski-Bato, in a letter sent to the General Staff of the “Albanian National Liberation Army”, requested that Albanian troops be sent to facilitate combat operations. In an insidious way, he would praise the great role of the Albanian partisans, in order to help the plan of the Macedonian forces, for the liquidation of the “reactionary waste” of Xheme Gostivar and Mefail Zajaz.
Although it was expected that the communists of Tirana would take a reprimanding attitude towards the Slavic-Macedonian reprisals on the Albanians, they, with political servility and no morals, will also send partisans to the Albanian villages outside the political borders, such as in Tetovo and other cities of Albanian Macedonia, inciting the fratricidal war.
On the other hand, Skopje, in coordination with Belgrade, on October 24-25, 1944, will forcefully abduct about 40 girls from the Orthodox village of Volkovi in Tetovo, under the pretext that it will arm them and send them to the front of Srem, in the war against the Germans. Sadly, a few days later, their corpses were found on the shores of Vardar.
At the beginning of November 1944, units of the Yugoslav OZNA, in support of a complaint by a Macedonian villager, allegedly threatened by Aqif Reçani, will go to the village of Reçan in Gostivar, where they will shoot 21 people and burn 14 houses. They also acted in the same way in the village of Debreshë. The Yugoslav OZNA was also compiling several other lists of the liquidation of Albanians, who had not even fought against them, but only because they had respect for the forces of the National Front of Xheme Gostivar, Mefail Zajazi, Gajur Dërralla, etc.
The camp of violence against more than 10 thousand Albanians
The Macedonian partisans, being under the direct influence of OZNA, on November 19, 1944, had surrounded the buildings of the Tobacco Monopoly in Tetovo, where within a few days they gathered over 10 thousand Albanians from the city of Tetovo and the surrounding villages. The concentration of such a large number of people in a few days was done with measures of violence and terror never before seen in these parts. Men, old and young, were kidnapped from their homes and, at gunpoint, taken to the concentration camp, the Tobacco Monopoly in Tetovo.
During the stay in the most inhumane conditions of thousands of people in the dark rooms of Monopoly, many people had died, while many others, according to the lists prepared by the communist leaders, had been liquidated without trial and without any guilt, throwing their lifeless bodies in some canals not far from the warehouses of this Monopoly. All those who raised their voices against such genocide were shot in the head.
Precisely in these difficult days of the massacres against Albanians, not only in the Monopoly facility in Tetovo, but also in Gostivar and Kirčovo, they were turning into mass death camps for innocent Albanians, while some of the Albanian leaders of the partisan aradhes had raised their voices in the face of this situation, but the highest political authorities in Macedonia, especially the Headquarters of the First Macedonian Corps, declared that the fate of the Albanians imprisoned and tortured in the Monopoli of Tetovo, as well as thousands of other Albanians, was only in the hands of the Yugoslav OZNA.
There is some evidence that the representative of the Supreme Headquarters of the National-Liberation Army of Yugoslavia, Svetozar Vukmanovic-Tempo, not only did not want to stop this mass extermination, but in the capacity of the envoy from Belgrade, he demanded the fastest possible cleansing of the “enemies”.
According to some archival documents, on November 20-21, 1944, although there was no room for the large crowd of people locked inside the rooms in the Monopoly facilities in Tetovo, some 700-800 other innocent Albanians also crashed there. Not far from this concentration camp, on November 23, 1944, there is evidence that around 300 Albanian men and young men from the villages of Tetova were shot at night.
Despite the strict measures to keep secret the barbaric actions of the Yugoslav OZNA in the Tetova Monopoly, the Albanian nationalists had again realized what a tragedy was happening inside this camp, so they had made several attempts for some combat action to approach this extermination camp, but this was impossible due to the concentration of large forces led by General Ilic, commander of the 48th Yugoslav Division, who had surrounded Tetova with 17 thousand armed soldiers and authorized to open fire against any Albanian.
In the first days of January 1945, officers of the Macedonian military units had entered the Monopoli camp in Tetovo and had chosen about 500 young Albanians capable of rifles, who would fight in the formations of the Seventh National Liberation Brigade on the Srem front. In the first opposition shown by two young Albanians from Tetova, they opened fire.
Macedonian political and military authorities did what was possible so that the events in the extermination camp of Tetova are forgotten and never commented on. The massacre of the Tobacco Monopoly in Tetovo, however, even today cannot amnesty the perpetrators of the genocide. The organizers of this massacre, even after so many decades, must be in the trial of their conscience, but also in the history of inter-ethnic crimes.
Nexhat Agolli helped free the Albanians
Nexhat Agolli from Dibra, who had a high position in the communist hierarchy and in the new government, together with his brother, Qemal Agolli, as well as other communists, such as Haqif Lleshi, Sali Lisi, etc., had raised their voices to the Serbian and Macedonian leaders, such as Svetozar Vukmanovic-Tempo and Lazar Kolishevski, for the release of ten thousand Albanians who were kept locked up and under torture in the facility of the Tobacco Monopoly in Tetovo without hope of salvation.
According to some data, in one night from Monopoli, more prisoners were taken and liquidated in the vicinity of Tetova, just as it happened in Gostivar, Kirçovo, Dibër and elsewhere, only because they were Albanians and were accused by the new Macedonian government of being “collaborators of fascism”.
Nexhat Agolli’s intervention to the Serbian-Macedonian political leader was quite brave and was a great patriotic act, because it had saved thousands of Albanian lives from certain death. Many Albanian families will never forget this gesture of his, calling it the savior of their lives.
For such a patriotic activity of Nexhat Agolli, the new communist government took notice of this fearless patriot. Very soon, the Serbian-Macedonian UDB will arrest him in his apartment, putting him under the most inhumane torture, to force him to betray the sacred national cause and his illegal comrades in Pristina and Skopje.
Nexhat Agolli was not one of those who could remain indifferent, neither to accusations nor to anti-Albanian crimes. He had a broad national vision and noticed everything that was happening against the Albanian population. He had raised his voice for Albanians to be given the promised rights and freedoms, national equality and their historical symbols, the right to use the language and the right to educate the Albanian masses in their mother tongue, equality of representation in the legislative, executive and linguistic power.
With special dedication, he ensured the opening of the Albanian pedagogic course in Skopje, alongside those that were opened in Prizren and Prishtina and were assisted by several dozen teachers from Albania. In 1945, he opened the elementary school “Liria” in the Albanian language, while later in cooperation with his comrades-in-arms, he will publish the newspaper in the Albanian language; “Flame”.
The figure of Nexhat Agolli becomes even bigger through the confrontations with the government between 1946-’49, being part of the anti-Albanian plans of the Serbo-Yugoslav ruling circles. His thoughts and attitudes were not closed in themselves, they found their reflection in the organization of illegal and programmed activity, the essence of which was and remained the nationwide Albanian union. Nexhat Agolli, having strong connections with other prominent patriots in Kosovo, had attracted the attention of the central UDB of Yugoslavia.
For this reason, in May 1948, he will be dismissed from the executive functions of the Macedonian government, while at midnight on April 15-16, 1949, he will be arrested in his apartment, while ten days later, on April 27-28, the police will execute him in an insidious and barbaric manner in prison, while after midnight his lifeless body will be taken out to the Skopje square, where he will secretly barrage of bullets that he had allegedly killed on the run, for which a formal record will be made of the event that had been staged, will remember this bright figure, the fighter and professor Shaban Braha from Tirana, in a symposium on the occasion of the 56th anniversary of the murder of Nexhat Agolli. Memorie.al
