By Beqir Sina, New York
Memorie.al/ An entire family that during the communist rule went through terrible suffering in prisons and internment camps in Albania: Vilson Blloshmi – shot in 1977, Bedri Blloshmi arrested in 1977, released in 1991, Sami Blloshmi 15 years in prison, Hajdar Blloshmi , shot, Hasan Blloshmi, died in prison, not to forget the part of the exile. This is the story of the family of patriots, the Blloshmi of Elbasan, and their persecution as a tribe during the communist rule, which marked their name in history, and is narrated by the survivor of the Blloshmi, the father of the shot poet Sami Blloshmi, when he was approaching 90 -ve.
Mr. Blloshmi, your coming to America, is there any reason (motivation), and did you find in this country what you thought before?
There are several reasons: first, I have my son Selman Blloshmi here, together with his family, and my daughter, Lirije Xhydollari, with her family, and I also have my brother, Bukurosh Blloshmi, with his family, and the second I realized a long-standing dream, for which I have suffered all my life, and it was a dream for me to set foot in the Promised Land, the only and last hope that I and my family had, that we all had our eyes on life from America, and thank you that this day came and the great God made this wish come true.
You are a family that, although you had great human and material losses from that regime, you still survived the communist dictatorship. How did you get all this power?
First of all, respecting my co-sufferers – I have to admit that my family cannot be called special, although we also have our specifics, but I would say in answer to your question, that in Albania there have been many such families, who had great losses, but thanks to their high spiritual morals, family, their origin, and faith in God, faith in honor and justice, we as our fellow sufferers, although with great suffering, managed to remain existence, that is to stay alive.
Mr. Blloshmi, since you are a little older, the question is that; when your life would begin, do you remember what you experienced? What story do you remember?
I remember well the period of the Albanian Kingdom, which had a perfect organizational system, but mainly a very acceptable legal system, which made the people happy with what the Albanian King had decided at that time. We had our properties, which were protected by the constitution, there was freedom of belief, religion was sacred, order and peace were protected by law, so much so that one gendarme in a province, I can say, was enough. The Albanian lek was strong and people were paid better. What is the dream of every person today, the free movement around the world, at the time of King Zog the First, was a reality, the roads of Albanians with the passport of the Kingdom, to the whole world, were open and the money was guaranteed.
I also remember the black day of the fascist occupation, which not only occupied our country, but also destroyed what we had started to build so nicely and well. We paid for the occupation with a lot of blood of young men, who were true nationalists. Because of the arrival of the red mortar, which came during that war when the various parties in Albania were also formed, which unfortunately did not find a common language, but bloodied each other, in a fratricidal war. This evil, of course, that brought those wounds that have been causing three quarters of a century in democracy, that the political class in Albania, still has not had the will to close the wounds created during the period of the communist dictatorship.
Now when he remembers the dictatorship, he thinks that the word dictatorship gives us an idea of what to expect from that evil. After the most difficult struggle, Albania, which was admitted to the League of Nations, proved that it was the opposite of other countries. It represented a model for no one and a system that came to be degraded. The biggest consequence that communism brought was the stripping of people from their personality, dignity, even from individual national responsibility, towards internationalism, the party-state wanted and formed people, according to its model – as they preached; “The new man of the Party”.
45 years of Enver Hoxha’s rule were not only for me and my co-sufferers, but also for the Albanian people in general, the worst years that Albania and our people have ever experienced. The imposition of bad laws was the worst form of tyranny, expropriations to the point of pain, and the destruction of private property. God takes away your right to have a place in Albania. The class war went so far that the dictator even ate his own sons:,- And what more can I confess, I just pray that that time never comes again and, never hear your name, to those who ruled at that time.
Now, I’ve been living these two or three decades that efforts are being made to change from those consequences left behind by the communist period, for me in these years they have done, as I was told; “good came out with evil, right with wrong, as well as western and eastern mentalities”. Albanians should not stay at the same time, riding on two “horses”, because that way they will always have accidents! They had to get on that “horse” that Europe says and arrive at the destination. You are young, even with patience and effort, but you will manage to get rid of communist cancer.
How did your family’s tragedy begin and has it become known so far? Or do you have more to say….?! What do you think?
Our family has been known for many centuries, with national consciousness, with rifle and pen it has represented its territories in many national assemblies. My father, Selman Blloshmi, was a provincial mayor, as they called him in those days. He represented our province and Pogradec, in the Congress of Elbasan in 1908. He gave help for writing and singing the Albanian language. Even at that time, he attached importance to the education of his sons.
He sent his eldest son and our brother, Aziz Blloshmi, for higher military studies in Austria and when he finished he served in the administration of the Royal Albanian government. The advent of communism required the elimination of this framework with western culture, and that’s what happened. Azizi was shot by the communists in 1944, this is where the tragedy of our family began, which continued with the kulak designation and this brought about the complete destruction of our economy, which had been established for generations.
The communist persecution of our family would not end, they arrested our brother who followed Aziz, Hasan Blloshmi, on political charges, and deprived him of his right to freedom for 25 years.
Later they arrested me too. The law of agitation-propaganda (Article 55) did not require much effort to imprison a person, in Albania during the communist era. I was sentenced to 7 years of imprisonment. The communists had planned that the men from our house should all be in prison. In 1976, my two sons, Vilson Blloshmi and Bedri Blloshmi, were arrested, as the communist cadre in Librazhd wanted to eliminate them. They, the only crime they had committed, was that they loved literature – they read books in Albanian and foreign languages and wrote phrases and lines of lyrical and patriotic poems. We sentenced them both to death by firing squad. But thankfully, Bedri was given 25 years in prison. They killed Wilson, they took the light of my eye from my hands, exactly those who are in power today and get away as if they have done nothing. After they crippled us spiritually, they interned us by moving us from the house and on the same day of internment, they re-arrested our brother, Hasan Blloshmi, who had just been released from the first prison and he did not leave the prison alive, as he died there.
How long would you be persecuted and live in fear of the regime, deprived of your freedom and in prisons?
We as a family would live under communist terror, from 1944 onwards, until the West would triumph over the communist East and communist relics would be liquidated throughout Albania. The year 1990 was the year of the beginning of freedom, not only for our family, but for all Albanians. Now we are waiting for freedom and justice to be consolidated and for justice to come to light for which we were only hoping, both me and my co-sufferers.
All this suffering, it takes several books to write what you have gone through! What was the cause?
The reason was that we are a family known for patriotism, patriots, fighters, intellectuals and owners, it was the only way to fight all families like us, everywhere in Albania, from the North to the South, because that way they would stay alive and, would rule for 45 years in a row, remaining in power. They were convinced that we did not like communism as a system, and although they saw that we never brought them harm, on the contrary, we had helped them in the fight against the fascist occupier and Nazism, so we were more persecuted, as were many families. great Albanians who suffered the same fate as us.
The Blloshmi family, do you think it has received the appreciation and honor it deserves, during these two – three decades of the democracy period?
We can’t say no at all. A school in the city of Librazhd was named after Vilson, and in this city, a bust was placed in commemoration of Genci and Vilson, the two poets who were shot. The pen pals of Wilson and Genci have immortalized them, summarizing their writings in works. In their commemoration, television scripts have been written and they are broadcast on television screens, on commemoration dates.
It has been promised that Wilson’s birth house in Bërzeshte will become a museum! The President of the Albanian Parliament, his Excellency the late Mr. Pjetër Abnori, as well as the honorable former president, his Excellency Mr. Bamir Topi, as well as many ministers and deputies have visited the Wilson Museum room. These for me are significant moral amounts, but capital appreciation, still remains to be seen.
You don’t have any special pension, since your son Wilson was shot? What about his wife and children?!
I, as Wilson’s father, have not been given such an assessment until now. Neither Wilson’s mother, nor his daughter Annie, was treated with such a pension!
If I’m not mistaken, in the last 8 years: pre-compensation, you received as a political victim, which you were, right?
The previous government had planned to pay the reparations in the amount of Lek in many installments, which I can’t remember now how much they are, but I received only 2 installments, with small amounts for each installment.
We come to a case that has been reopened several times. Are you, to reopen the file of Vilson Blloshmi, what about the other files?
As far as I know, in the press and in books, many materials from Wilson’s file have been published, maybe not all of them have come out, and the names of those who led to Wilson’s shooting. But in vain, today’s politicians have clothed them with power. Even today politics in Albania, there is trust in this administration, people who have committed crimes, this is the biggest wonder in today’s democracy. Regarding the files in general, as you say, I think it is the darkest part of this country, that those files continue to be locked in the black cellars of this country, which is called the state.
Albania is the only country in Europe that persistently rejects any request for their opening. The political class today in Albania gives a message of calm to all the tools of the dictatorship, spies, investigators, torturers, saying on this occasion: “Keep calm, because you are protected from all sides”, while Albania is unprotected , from all sides.
Lord Bloshmi! Do you ever meet in Tirana or Librazhd, by chance, those who you feel are the cause of your tragedy?
Today, in democracy of course since the free movement, it is often up to us to see each other, but even if we don’t see each other physically, we see each other through the TV screen, this is their faces almost every day in politics or social life. They have a strange courage – and they walk away as if they are not at fault and have not been the ones who have brought misery to me and thousands of my fellow sufferers. In their eyes, I personally do not see any sign of feeling, or guilty conscience that they have done something, no sign of remorse…?! I would even say that:
“They show themselves arrogantly, as if they have done something good for humanity – and their eyes darken when they see us today, that our children, at least, have progressed and are successful. And now that they are in power, when they see us with a lot of arrogance, they are ready to tell us; “Here we are again and we are in power and you have nothing to do to us, just like you had nothing to do to us before”. I want to say that this is the most severe punishment that the politics of these two or three decades of the democracy period has given us today. Even worse, that their sons write, as if they feel sorry for our suffering…! What hypocrisy, which has not happened anywhere in the world!
How have you evaluated the election of Bedri Blloshmi, at the head of the Institute of the former Political Persecuted in Albania, as a repentance of the socialists for the Blloshmi family, or a political privilege, in the political bargains?
I think that the choice of Bedri at the head of that institution at that time, for me who know him well, because I have a son and I raised him myself, is that I cannot prejudice him. She was, I think, a selection of the new prime minister. In the programs that this government says it has for the former persecuted by the communist regime, I can call it a correction, for the realization of the program.
Bedri Blloshmi, in this case, does not represent only the Blloshmi family, but is meant to represent the whole class of those persecuted by communism, and if not for him, someone would be in that position, and this probably also applies to answering the question yours; “in terms of political bargaining”. Bedriu, as far as I know him as my son, has no compromising nature, which would be to the detriment of his own class. He, if I will see that the government will give him the signs of a “devil”, Bedriu is immediately one of those who denounces him. He is irreproachable, I would say, with all my conviction.
Do you think that enough has been done for the politically persecuted in Albania?
It has been two or three decades since the system of the communist dictatorship, it is said, does not exist and as such, with this layer, the Albanian political class should have finished work once and for all and this question no longer exists, because, to say it is not yet done enough, it is a serious question, for this country that claims to be a democracy, the question must now be addressed to the country’s political leaders, that: “When will the former persecuted class be integrated and why has it been de-factored so far, this layer?!
What message did you have for your fellow sufferers?
Thanking you for giving me the opportunity to communicate with the reader of your newspaper, after this age of over 90 years, I console all my fellow sufferers for the spiritual and physical pain we suffered from the communist red devil and I wish them patience , patience and patience, that the right will triumph over them, since; “It really delays, but it never forgets”! Memorie.al
