From Prof. Assoc. Dr. Gjergj P. Titani
Part Three
Memorie.al / Starting with this issue, we are beginning to publish a long interview with the “Artist of the People” and “Great Master of Labor,” the distinguished composer Dhora Leka. The conversation with her started a long time ago, but almost nothing has been published because her wish was to complete her memoirs, compiling them into a special book titled; “Moments and Impressions from My Life.” The book has been revised several times and has been cross-referenced with both archival documents and her personal family archive. Today we are publishing the first presentation with the distinguished composer, which will continue for several issues.
THE FAMOUS ARTIST WHO WAS SENTENCED TO DEATH
Mrs. Dhora, how do you remember the events of those days?
After the forcible suppression of the Tirana Conference, the guilt for this “ugly anti-party crime” was also distributed. This time, “the sword was sharpened to get out of the situation,” and hundreds of honest communists were expelled from the Party, interned, or imprisoned. I will not dwell on this point any longer. This goes beyond the scope of a simple conversation. What concerns me is that for these anti-party tendencies, I was expelled from the Party on May 5, 1956, like hundreds of others. I had been a member from the very beginning. This persecution lasted for more than 30 years.
What were the accusations against Tuk Jakova in April 1955, one year before the Tirana Conference?
A new tragedy was descending on my life, and not just on my life, but also on my dear sister, Mita, who was the wife of the Albanian Deputy Prime Minister. The decision of the Plenum of the Central Committee of the PPSh [Party of Labor of Albania] regarding the so-called hostile and anti-party activity of Tuk Jakova, my sister’s husband and my brother-in-law, caused everything in our lives to be overturned and our tragedy of violent persecution to begin. In order to avoid speculation on this matter, I will quote the documents of that time that seem so relevant today.
Here is how Enver Hoxha expressed himself in that Plenum, intriguing with monstrous questions and manipulations. What did Tuk Jakova demand in April 1955 at the Central Committee of the PPSh? He insisted with great urgency, in a diversionary manner, and with arrogant and resolute persistence:
- To revise the Party’s and the First Congress of the PPSh’s decisions regarding the evaluation of the work of the Communist Groups before the Party’s establishment, as he considered that the negative aspects of the Communist Groups, as defined in the First Party Congress, were wrongly emphasized. Tuk Jakova claimed that the negative side of the groups should be softened to highlight the Shkodra Group, which he had led for a long time.
- To revise the political and organizational line of the party. According to Tuk Jakova’s “hostile” viewpoint, this line was not correctly defined, and he insisted that: the Party was founded by some foreigners; Enver Hoxha was not a founder of the Party; and the establishment of the correct Party line during the National Anti-Fascist Liberation War was not due to the Central Committee led by Comrade Enver Hoxha, but to some foreigners. These theses by Tuk Jakova were vile slanders and falsifications made with the hostile goal of liquidating the party. It is known that the PKSh [Communist Party of Albania] was formed by Albanian communists.
- To change the composition of the Political Bureau of the Party’s Central Committee, because according to the view of this anti-Marxist and liquidator, none of the members of the existing Political Bureau were consistent in leading the party except for Comrade Enver.
- To revise the Party’s line regarding the historical decision of purging the party ranks of Trotskyist, anti-party, and hostile elements, because according to Tuk Jakova’s hostile views against the elements condemned by the party for their serious anti-Marxist and anti-party faults. Tuk Jakova is for revising the Party’s line, with the aim of extinguishing the fight against anti-party tendencies. He is for turning our Party into a bourgeois and social-democratic party.
- To revise the Party’s line, according to Tuku, regarding class struggle, as grave extremist mistakes are allegedly being made.
- Tuk Jakova was tainted with a dangerous dose of localism, trying to stir up division.
What else did this document say?
Tuk Jakova presented these “hostile theses” to the April 1955 Plenum, where all members were revolted, with the exception of Bedri Spahiu.
So, along with Tuku, Bedri Spahiu was also being eliminated?
Of course. But I believe this issue is outside the scope of this interview. Look at how the idea of Enver Hoxha is expressed in this monstrous document: Based on the above conclusions, the Plenum of the Central Committee decided:
- To approve the report of the Political Bureau, “On the anti-party and hostile activity of Tuk Jakova and Bedri Spahiu,” presented at the Plenum by the First Secretary, Enver Hoxha.
- Tuk Jakova to be expelled from the Party’s Central Committee and stripped of the right to hold leadership positions and to be dismissed from all state functions.
- The Party’s organizations to strengthen revolutionary vigilance against anti-party manifestations.
This was roughly what finally buried Tuku as a leader and our families.
Dhora Leka: “THE TRUTH ABOUT MY INCIDENT WITH KADARE IN BERAT”
In prison, we lived in a hut with wooden beds; below me slept Musine Kokalari.
Mrs. Dhora, can you describe your first moments in the cell and something about your file that led you to this hell?
Complete darkness, a heavy smell that almost made me faint. Was all this a dream? No, reality. The dream was the facade: “Dhora Leka has gone to collect folk music on the Himara coast, the director had even given her a guitar… and 15 days of per diem, and of course, a service order.”… I don’t know how long I thrashed in this dark, filthy pit…, where the silence was broken by the noises of explosions in the distant bathroom pipes.
And then…?
Then I felt as if a noose tightened around my throat. When the bolt clattered, the door opened, and a ray of light crept in. I only felt someone shaking me. It seems the ray of light and the light air that had penetrated, and the shaking of hands, brought me back to consciousness in an instant. I didn’t know the person who was trying to revive me, and what did it matter who he was. A churning in my stomach made me vomit, splashing myself and the person who was trying to lift me up.
Did he feel disgust… pain… revulsion?! He took me by the arm and led me to the room across the hall. I remember there was a portable bed, a table with nothing on it, and a chair opposite. The person sat down as if on pins and needles. He motioned for me to sit. I put my hand on the chair’s armrest to move it a little. I said: “Strange! I didn’t move from the spot…!” – “You’ll find out,” he said curtly. He opened the drawer, took out a revolver, put it in his pocket, and left…!
And I was trying to solve the enigma…! Then heavy hours continued to pass one after another. Was it day or night, – what does it matter now? They were heavy… very heavy… very difficult. And each of us who has gone through this ordeal has experienced it according to the circumstances that brought them to the “laboratory” of unimaginable physical and psychological pressures. What mattered to those “tireless interrogators” was that the pages would be added one after another, even in silence.
On June 3, 1957, the person who had accompanied me these days led me to the second floor. A door opened. Seated at a table were two people. I didn’t know them. One of them said to me sarcastically: “Well, how do you feel?”?! – The one who would be my investigator ordered me to remove my earrings. I had been wearing them since 1936. He motioned for me to give him my watch, my ring; he took them and threw them on the table to the others, then sat down.
The one in charge, said to me harshly: “As of today, June 3, 1957, you are under arrest.” He motioned to the “companion,” who had been with me all these days, he was the one who had accompanied me from Gjirokastra all these days, my “travel companion,” who was in fact my investigator, Irfan Shaqiri; while the one in charge was Filat Muço, the chief investigator.
At that time, I had not read the novel “The Seventh Cross,” I don’t remember the author at this moment, but “The Seventh Cross” yes…! And when this file was full, they ordered me: “Read it!” – I shrugged, – “what does it matter if I read it or not?”?! – “You will go to Trial. Based on this ‘file,’ you will go to Trial, the judicial body will give the verdict. Do you want a lawyer to defend you?”
I couldn’t help a slight smirk. “Is there a lawyer who would come out to defend me?”! – I answered. “Strange! I haven’t heard of such a thing!” I looked at the file. I was curious what was written in there. I remember this: One day the investigators asked me a difficult question… and, I don’t know why, at that moment I felt the need to have a cigarette.
- “Is it possible to give me a cigarette?” One of the investigators took out a cigarette from a “Partizani” pack and a lighter. I instinctively reached out my hand. – “Oh, no, no, no! To smoke a cigarette?! No, no, no. You will smoke a cigarette when I want you to,” and he hit the table with his fist. From that day on, I never asked for a cigarette again. And, as fate would have it, in the courtroom (which was an old shack behind the courtyard) the Judicial Body of the Supreme Court would make the “Decision” of this trial… after the “Prosecutor’s” claim.
What does the name matter, he walks freely on the streets of Tirana? Then he said: “I demand from the Judicial Body of the Supreme Military Court, for the enemy of the people Dhora Leka, the death penalty: Execution by firing squad!” I was not surprised. He read dozens of pages in his “Indictment.” Oh, what serious crimes I had committed in my mind?! He said what he didn’t say, and I always repeated: “Strange! Strange! – I’ve done all this?! I must have been truly brave, in my opinion…”!
The prosecutor wiped the cold or hot “stream” of sweat, I don’t know which, and sat down, while the judicial body declared the session closed. They also removed me from the hall. The only one besides the judicial body present at this “trial in the name of the people.” When they returned me to the isolation cell, the investigator (who had not left my side for a single moment during my session), handed me a cigarette (it was the same one who had denied it to me). – “Light it,” he said, “smoke it because…!” I looked him in the eye. He couldn’t resist my penetrating gaze. – “I smoke a cigarette when I want to, by myself… and not when you want me to,” and I looked him straight in the eye again.
What happened to you after the sentence was given?
They spared my life as a fighter who had fought, not only with a weapon in her hand for freedom, but also for the partisan songs that had put an entire people on their feet. The decision was as follows: 25 years of deprivation of liberty, confiscation of movable and immovable property, removal of military rank (because I had been discharged from the army in January 1945, with the rank of “captain”), removal of all orders and doctorates, removal of copyright, removal of the right to vote for five years after serving the sentence. Not bad, 25 years of deprivation of liberty, just a word!
Today, “file-writers” or “file-makers” leaf through “authentic” files that are fabricated, distorted from reality, deceptive, and others, saying what they don’t say. If only these poor people knew what they are leafing through, what ugly “horror” scenarios these files are. Unfortunately, the “hunters” of files try in every way to bring them “to light.”
It is difficult to find Ariadne’s thread to orient oneself in this labyrinth and then get out of it. I am surprised how these journalists, or rather, “little journalists,” who have no scientific title or special specialization, dare to publish those files that even the former convicts themselves do not know for sure what is written in them, because they have never read those files.
How were the years in prison?
The sentenced women did not serve their sentences in prison, because the Ministry of Internal Affairs did not want to call that violent isolation a prison, but the “Central Artisan Workshop near the Ministry of Internal Affairs.” The years passed one after another. In the workshop, we worked in three shifts.
We sewed military uniforms in series, which the ministry needed. We beat cotton and filled mattresses and pillows. Initially, we stayed together; the political prisoners with the ordinary ones. They were a few hundred, while we, the political prisoners, were no more than 50 people. We lived in a hut and slept in two-story wooden beds.
The mattresses were filled with rags that we collected when we cut and sewed uniforms. I had to sleep in a bunk bed. Below me slept the wonderful Musine Kokalari. Whenever a highlander woman came, Musine would find an opportunity to ask her if she knew any fairy tales, legends, or the lyrics of a “Majëkrahit” [a type of Albanian folk song] song.
She was a specialist in wonderful folklore, and I am very sorry that all of her studies have disappeared! Across from me was Marie Dvorani (Medicina), a partisan nurse of the First Assault Brigade. Maria has now published several books, and we often remember each other on the phone.
During the difficult years in prison, before the forced physical labor, I would weave verses in my mind, which I would repeat every night like church prayers so that I wouldn’t forget them. Every day, our beds were unexpectedly checked, and if they found written verses, they would take strict measures and you would be resentenced. I want to recite one of them:
“I YEARN”
“I yearn for the Sun / And for the faint-lit Moon, / How long it’s been since I’ve seen them / How long it’s been since I’ve been alone! / I also yearn for the mountains / For the rivers and the plains and the wide sea / For the flowers, the trees, all that are / In bloom this spring! / I yearn for the song / To sing it with fire like once before / Sometimes with joy, sometimes with tears / Just as my heart felt it! / And for you, how much I yearn / To see you, to kiss you, to caress you / But you know that I am constrained: / And I can’t do anything but dream.”/Memorie.al
To be continued in the next issue
