By Uran Kalakulla
Part forty-six
Nazism and communism
Memorie.al / Nazism lasted 12 years, while Stalinism lasted twice as long. In addition to many common characteristics, there are many differences between them. The hypocrisy and demagogy of Stalinism was of a more subtle nature, which was not based on a program that was openly barbaric, like Hitler’s, but on a socialist, progressive, scientific and popular ideology, in the eyes of the workers; an ideology that was like a convenient and comfortable curtain to lie to the working class, to lull the sharpness of intellectuals and rivals in the struggle for power.
One of the consequences of this peculiarity of Stalinism is that the entire Soviet people, its best, capable, hardworking and honest representatives, suffered the most terrible blow. At least 10-15 million Soviets lost their lives in the torture chambers of the KGB, martyred or executed, as well as in the gulag camps and others like them, camps where it was forbidden to correspond (in fact they were prototypes of the Nazi death camps); in the mines in the ice of Norilsk and Vorkuta, where people died from cold, from hunger, from crushing work in countless construction sites, in the exploitation of forests, in the opening of canals and during transportation in leaded wagons, or in the flooded barns of the death ships.
Continued from the previous issue
Direct threats of family internment in the most desolate places. Threats of rape of women, girls, sisters by the pigs of the State Security, even mothers. Calling in the family members to the investigator, beating them and threatening them with imprisonment and other punishments. Putting the defendant in a coffin and keeping them there indefinitely, of course in certain basements (like those of the headquarters of the Ministry of the Interior itself).
Here, these were exactly the “buried alive”, real candidates to die there. And it is clear why and how. Is there more, oh great God? Isn’t this enough? Such tortures have taken away my fellow sufferers during the 47 years of the rule of the communist dictatorship. I do not say, there may be other forms and methods of torture. But the communists had learned a strong lesson in this regard from the tortures of the Hitlerite Gestapo (or the latter had learned from the Bolsheviks of Dzerzhinsky and the executioners of the Soviet Lubyanka). And, the latter, had also learned from the inhuman and sophisticated tortures of the Chinese executioners.
The whole country was one big prison. And “small” prisons, literally, were created all over Albania, from North to South. Among the worst and most dangerous prisons, there were two: that of the Gjirokastra Castle (a medieval prison, indeed), and that of Burrel, which have eaten many people’s heads. Then, every city (at least the main ones) had its own prison and, sometimes, even two or more, as happened in Tirana (the New Prison and the Old Prison), in Shkodra several prisons, so much so that even churches were converted into prisons. In this, of course, the dungeons of the investigation of every Internal Affairs Branch or police station, in every part of the country, are not counted.
After the prisons, came the forced labor camps, where political convicts (even ordinary ones) worked. In this book, I have called these “prison camps”, which seems more right to me, given their very composition and their very purpose. They were like the Soviet “gulags”, now known all over the world, I would even say since the time of the tsars. The Bolsheviks “perfected” these camps, greatly increasing their numbers, especially in Siberia. As is known, the Nobel Prize-winning writer Solzhenitsyn wrote about them, especially in “The Gulag Archipelago”.
The Hitlerites learned from the Bolsheviks to set up death camps, mass extermination camps. The Albanian Security learned from both sides, just as a beast learns to tear its victims apart from another. It is not for nothing that the dictatorships resemble each other, which is why they have a common name. Even Italian fascism, especially at the beginning of the anti-fascist resistance movements, set up such camps (just like prisons), but not like the Bolshevik, Nazi or Albanian Security camps. But these (fascist) camps in our country were few, and as far as I remember, only two, Porto Palermo in the South and Porto Romano in Central Albania.
Communist prison camps occupied almost all parts of our country, from South to North: the Vloçisht prison camp for the drying of the Maliqi swamp, the Varibob, Karavasta, the Salt and Caustic Soda in Vlora, the Vajgurore Bridge in Berat, the Gjirokastra Hospital, the Juba in Durrës, the Levan Canal, built to dry the Karavasta swamp, the Varibob, Kafara, the Tirana Camp (in the Lana area, for the construction of the Shallvara palaces and the one opposite them), Camp 303 of the Meat Plant, Camp 309 of the “Puna” Block (near today’s Tirana Court), Camp 307 nearby, the “Dinamo” stadium, the Tirana Sanatorium, Ballshi, Fushë-Krujë, Elbasan (the latter two for the construction of their respective cement factories), Laç, Kosovo, for agricultural work (for women), (somewhere between Peqin and Elbasan), Zadrima, Bulqiza Mine, Reps, Spaç (in Mirdite), Qafë-Bar in Puka, Rubik (Copper Smelting Plant), Rinas Airport.
Here it is, without end. The whole country has seen the grueling work of political prisoners, where along with sweat and blood was shed. Thousands of souls, tens and hundreds of innocent victims, have given their lives in those terrible prison camps. And the beautiful thing is that the “democratic” governments, after the fall of the red dictatorship, cynically mocked this suffering, the sweat and blood of the former prisoners. They were “rewarded” with the so-called “securities”, which the whole people mocked, just like with the “privatization bonds”. And the former political prisoners themselves laughed and continue to laugh bitterly, at the new and hardened drama. I will close this chapter with a dramatic sentence:
“Where the causes of such centuries-old suffering and innocent victims are not punished, there is no true democracy. There there is only a bitter and cynical mockery. There democracy has its roots in injustice, in shame and in blood. It is a miserable plagiarism of democracy, therefore a pseudo-democracy, and a true historical shame”!
And what can I say then about the endless places of internment, not only of the convicted after their release from prison, but also of their families?! Even these internment camps were nothing more than prisons or prison camps; sometimes with barbed wire, sometimes without wire, but with the same ugliness, with the same suffering, horrors and victims, from the North to the South. That is why we say that Albania was a huge prison, divided into dozens and hundreds of other prisons, in which violence and torture of all degrees were practiced. The author of this book has experienced all three different fields of the exercise of this cruel violence: prison, prison camp and internment. And he is by no means the only one.
The anxiety of the approaching day of liberation
After a series of years of imprisonment, the day of release does not at all resemble the light of morning, after a terrifying, torturous night in complete darkness. Not even in the legal prison of democratic countries, when the convict is an ordinary person and has really committed a fault, or rather a crime does the opening of the prison door cause a kind of shock for him, more or less like the light of the eyes when he immediately emerges from darkness into bright light. It is clear that, as in animals, the immediate, rapid change from one state to another brings with it a kind of perversion, surprise, bewilderment, if not a new suffering in man.
Whoever has had the opportunity to meet a convict who has just been released from prison, has noticed this surprise, his unusual behavior, his fear in his movements, in his gestures, in his words, even in the way he looks at objects and people around him? What about after the communist prison? This whole complex of feelings, looks, movements, speech, is based not only on uncertainty, the inability to adapt to the immediate and rapid change, but also on fear! In the communist regime, it was not at all certain even for today and even less so for tomorrow, just like in prison. In the communist regime, the calmness of life, its routine, was just a coincidence, not to mention fate.
Thus, the approach of the day of release, for political prisoners, was necessarily accompanied by anxiety. You had no idea that after leaving the iron door, the “Gas” of the Sigurimi could be waiting for you, which, indeed, had brought you to the prison door, but had no habit of returning you to the door of the house where it had taken you!
If he was waiting for you, then, at the exit, you knew very well that he had come there for two purposes: either the newly removed shackles would be put on you again, to take you to the dungeons of the investigation, to a new sentence, or, among some policemen, the path of exile, perhaps eternal, would await you.
True, the approach of the day of release, along with anxiety, has in itself a feeling of joy, a spirit of hope to escape the hell of prison once and for all. But this joy was never complete; it is not as bright as the first ray of dawn, full of brilliance, after such a long night in darkness, in suffering and torture. Very much the expectation of that day resembles a faint dawn, like that of a sad autumn day, with clouds and fine rain, which cools not only the body, but also the soul.
A multitude of thoughts and questions torment the soul: “Will they punish me again? Will they internecine me? And if these things don’t happen again, how will I find the house where they have crammed my family, after they have expelled me from the one I left behind? What kind of house is it, a hut or a basement? What city, village, neighborhood, street is it? Who are the other people nearby, the neighbors? And how will I find the people in the house who are still alive?
How are they financially and health-wise? Will the people in the neighborhood, the Front, the Security leave me alone? Will they give me a job? What kind of job will it be? Will I be able to earn enough to feed myself and my family, at least enough to fill my stomach, and not only not be a burden to my family anymore, but to support them?” Here, in short, this is the anxiety that torments you when the day of your release approaches. Anxiety and fear are, as we know, sister and brother.
I have always had the opinion that the shadow of danger that awaits you and hangs over your head like the sword of Damocles is even more disturbing and frightening than the danger itself. A man who thinks about the end is rightly afraid of the unknown, like a man who walks in the forest at night and does not know where a wolf or a wild animal might come from. I have not said in vain that more than death itself, the idea of it, the great surprise, is more frightening to man.
When a man is faced with danger, and the least brave man, if he has some dignity in himself, tenses his body, clenches his teeth and tries to look the danger in the eye, trying to face it, or at least endure it as best he can. That classical or romantic bravery of ancient or medieval knights seems to me to have long since faded, even if it was ever true. I have long held and continue to hold the opinion that true bravery is not at all in the sword and the strong muscles of the body, but in its heart and soul.
During my time in prison, I saw not men, but men who had physical ailments and in front of a dwarf captain, they would draw blood! Just as I saw boys who were not only physically average and sometimes weak, so much so that a strong wind could carry them away, but when it came to the danger of torture, they gritted their teeth and stood like real men.
A man, with reason, necessarily, the first thing he does is try to avoid danger as much as possible, especially when he knows that the balance of power is not at all in his favor. In this way, he does not do any service to trouble. On the contrary. And in the communist prison, one of the troublemakers was the language. Because the communist government, with the party at the top, had the absurd, even idiotic, claim that you were also an “enemy”, but you should never open your mouth against your political enemies.
So even though you are in prison, for words and actions hostile to the party and government, and there among the “enemies of the people”, as you yourself were an “enemy”, you should not have maintained a hostile attitude, spoken “hostilely”, but either become a vuv (meaning mute), or, if you wanted to speak, you should have said: “Long live the Party and comrade Enver who put me in prison, and made me a mother”!
Thus, knowing very well this “philosophy”, how vile and idiotic, I have been very careful throughout my imprisonment to never step on rotten wood. This means, not to babble up and down and among the millet where there were also fuchsias, words that upset the stomach of the command, the ministry, the government, the wool and the hammam.
Of course, I talked, like everyone else, because the sun was not covered with a sieve, but I was very careful to talk and vent with people I already knew well, proven, serious people, with a clear head and a formed character.
Thus, I avoided, as much as I could, useless risks. All my life, I have been annoyed by talkers and have always tried to avoid them and not give them any reason at all. More than noise, they have irritated me all my life. And talkers are exactly like the wooden heads mentioned by the classic Italian satirical poet, Giuseppe Giusti: “Le teste di legno, fan sempre Del chiasso!” (Wooden heads always make a fuss!).
I also reached that period of communist prison, where those who spoke out, even those who tried to organize political groups, were not punished, as a rule, politically, but were either thrown into the “disciplinary” dungeons, where they were beaten in peace, or transferred to the Burrel prison. But now the sadism of the security forces had taken on a new dimension: re-sentencing in prison. Here, I was wary of this, like the devil from incense. Because re-sentencing, for me, was certain death.
Of course, when we came up with the plan to re-sentence you, you could never speak out and they would re-sentence you again, with false witnesses, or prison spies who had sold their souls to the devil, not even for five lek, but had given them for free. So even with these elements I stayed as far away as I could. So, even if they re-sentenced me, at least I would no longer have the right to bite my tongue, which I couldn’t keep in proper control.
Do you want a concrete example? A couple of years before I was released, in Burrel prison, among others, they arrested a fellow sufferer of mine, the intellectual Abdulla Sollaku. And they sentenced him to seven years for “agitation and propaganda” in prison! In fact, Dulla (as we called him there), could not keep his mouth shut for a minute. And although I had advised him several times, on the one hand he admitted that he was wrong, but on the other hand, he continued as before. And when I insisted on mine, he would answer me:
– “I know, brother, that you are right. But you don’t know one other thing…”!
– “What don’t I know, Dulla”?
And he calmly answered me:
– “Everyone who has yeast, has it where they have it. And I have it on the tip of my tongue”!
What could I say to my charming friend?!/Memorie.al
