Dashnor Kaloçi
Memorie.al publishes the unknown story of Ihsan Qereshnik originating from the village of Berat from which they inherited the surname, where his father Shaban Qershnik graduated from the Military Academy of the Order in the Ottoman Empire’s capital, Istanbul, for several years. served as Tripoli Police Chief and then as Governor-General of Libya.
Ihsani graduated from Fultz American Technical School in Tirana, in 1931 he was appointed lecturer at that school, and then King Zog appointed him as director of the Vlora Power Plant, then a lecturer at the Berat and Madrasa School of Education. from Tirana, wherein 1940 he went to Turin, where he specialized as a radio technician. Arresting Ihsan in 1947 along with 15 other persons, such as Niko Hajdari, Xhaferr Zoto, Stavri Bojaxhiu, etc, called the “Fultz School of American Agent Group”. The charges against Ihsan as “Fultz’s liaison with Mehmet Shehu” were at the time the Chief of Staff in the Ministry of Defense and his conviction, standing behind bars even after Major-General Mehmet Shehu came to the post of Minister of Internal Affairs… ?!
“At the time of the arrest, the father told State Security officers to look closely at the order they had received, as he was Fiqh Shehu’s uncle. But what his father told the security officers was not worth it, because the order for his arrest was given precisely because he was the uncle of Fiqh Shehu and her cousin Mehmet, he had a student at the Technical School. American of Fultz in Tirana. Two days after his father was detained in the Vlora investigation, he was brought to the Tirana investigation, where he was also charged with “acting as a liaison agent to Harri Fultz’s US agency with the Chief of the General Staff” Mehmet Shehun ”. Testimonies for Memorie.al Bruno Qereshniku, who tells the whole story of his father, Ihsan Qereshniku, a former student and lecturer of the Harry Fultz American Technical School and then a graduate of Italy, who is 1947, was sentenced to eight years in prison following a specially mounted charge of striking Mehmet Shehu. Who was Ihsan Qereshniku, where was he educated and what is his past? Who had ordered Koci Xoxes to arrest that group of intellectuals? Why was Ihsan Qereshniku summoned to the Koci Xoxe trial, and why did he continue to be held in jail even though Mehmet replaced Koci Xoxen in the post of Interior Minister? Concerning these and other facts from the life of renowned intellectual Ihsan Qereshniku, we know the testimony of his son Bruno, who until 1990 was suffering from family and siblings, the only fact that their father was considered reactionary. and the enemy of the people.
Ihsani, Fultz’s friend
In 1922 Ihsan Qereshniku began teaching at the Technical School opened by the American Red Cross in Tirana, which he completed in 1931 and, based on high results, the American principal, Harry Fultz, lectured there. For two years he worked as a lecturer at that school. During those years, he drafted and published four textbooks: Chemistry, Arithmetic, Physics, and General Textbooks for the Electrical and Mechanics departments, which were approved by the Ministry of Education at the time and were introduced into the teaching process immediately. In the preface to the book “On Electrical-Mechanical Work”, published in 1933, he wrote, inter alia: “One day when I was talking to Mr. Fultz, about the English system of measurements contained in school textbooks and Difficult to find graduates using this system in practical life, his master jumped in and told me: ‘Unless you start, you’ll never run out. Don’t seek to start with great things all at once. The printing house is here, you have German and Italian handbooks, there are tables and information in the English books on the metric system, so if you want, you can choose the most useful ones and so you can make a handbook. small in the Albanian language. This was true not only for graduates but also for others involved in technical work. ‘ From this advice of Principal Fultz, I undertook the design of this handbook.
King Zog appoints a Director in Vlora
Ihsan Qereshniku was one of the best-prepared students in the Electrical and Mechanical departments, and he was constantly praised by Principal Harry Fultz for his high scores. In this regard, his son Bruno Keresnik testifies: “In 1933, as the 5th anniversary of the Kingdom was being celebrated, the power plant in Vlora was demolished and King Zog asked Fultz to help fix it. defect in Vlora Central, in order not to fail the celebrations. Fultz sent his pupil, Ihsan Qereshnik, who immediately arranged it. After that King Zog appointed him Director of the Vlora Power Plant. In those years, besides the Vlora plant, the father also made a great contribution to the installation and commissioning of Durres and Berat power plants. After the closure of private and foreign schools that were in Albania in 1933, he moved to the city of Berat, where he taught at the Pedagogical School, with the same subjects he had taught at the Technical University of Tirana. In 1935 he returned to Tirana and was appointed lecturer at the capital’s Madrasa, where he taught until 1940. In 1941, Father went to Italy, studied for two years, and specialized in radio engineering in the city of Turin. After specializing in Turin, he returned to Tirana, where he opened a radio tuning lab in a building within the walls of the Toptana Fortress, where he lived in a rented house. During the period of the Monarchy and the fascist occupation of the country, his father never engaged in politics, but occasionally wrote and published various scientific and literary articles in the press of the time and especially in the magazine Man, published by the Muslim Community in Tirana”.
In ’47 he was arrested as Fultz’s agent
After the end of the war, Ihsan Qereshniku was appointed to the Ministry of Economy, headed by Minister Nako Spiro, who assigned him the position of Director of the Directorate of Registration and Confiscation of factories and workshops in Albania. During this time, he fell victim to a trap that would change the course of his life. In May 1946, when my father was Director of the Ministry of Economy, he was sent to the city of Vlora. During the days that the father was in that city, by order of Interior Minister Koci Xoxe, he was arrested and held for two days in custody. When arrested, the father was told to look at the order they received that they must have been mistaken, as he was the uncle of Fiqret Shehu, wife of Major General Mehmet Shehu. But it wasn’t worth it, because the warrant for his arrest was exactly that. Two days after his father was detained in the Vlora investigation, he was brought to Tirana, where a group of 15 former Fultz American schoolmates, such as Niko Hajdari, Xhaferr Zoto, Stavri Bojaxhiu, were arrested. ., who was called the “Fultz School of American Agents Group”. Along with this group, Mehmet Shehu was also scheduled to be arrested, and my father was brought in with them and charged as “Harry Fultz’s liaison agent with Mehmet Shehu”, whom he had a granddaughter’s husband. he and more than Mehmet had had his student in an American school. The arrest of the group was intended to implicate Mehmet Shehu during the investigation as “related to the American agent and Harry Fultz”. All this was a game designed by Enver Hoxha, who had planned to attack a section of the Political Bureau and some senior officials of the Central Committee, including Mehmet Shehu. But despite his father’s torture during the investigation, he refused to testify, implicating Mehmet Shehu with the American agent and Harry Fultz, who was told that he had been their courier since he had worked as a radio technician. “.
Sentence to 8 years in prison
Ihsan Qereshniku and the group of 15, after being held for two years in the investigator, were brought to trial. During the lawsuit, among other charges, the prosecutor told his father: ‘You have been the liaison agent between your group and the American agency’. After this accusation, the father replied: ‘America has set up some high-end antennas in Greece to hear’ Voice of America ‘in Albania, yet people could not hear it well. I don’t have any such antenna and with just one plum I have in the yard, I can’t connect to America. ” Following this father’s response, the prosecutor addressed him, saying, ‘You want to make us ignorant.’ Although none of his father’s charges were substantiated, the prosecutor demanded a 15-year prison sentence, while the court reduced and sentenced him to eight years in prison, charging him with “liaison with the US agency.” In the 1950s, when Koci Xoxe appeared on trial himself, my father was also called to testify about what they had been asked during his investigation. Although the process was considered to be timed and mounted by Koci Xoxe, the father continued to remain in prison and could not be released even though his niece’s (Mehmet Shehu’s) husband took over as Minister. Interior to the place of Koci Xoxes. Her father suffered the punishment in Tirana, where she worked as a radio technician for the needs of the Interior Ministry in her lab somewhere inside the Fortress of Toptana. While serving his sentence, many of his father’s friends told him to apologize, but the father never did, saying he had not blamed himself for apologizing. He was released from prison in 1954 after serving seven years and at that time opened a private radio repair facility at the Old Bazaar. While working there, Radio Station opened at Tech 7 November and Director Gjergj Canco requested to hire his father as a lecturer to teach at that branch, but it was not approved. After that, Canco addressed a letter to Mehmet Shehu, who issued a decree ordering his request to be approved, and his father worked there until he retired in 1962. Retirement years until he died in 1970, his father used to spend at home, mainly reading various books and under the company of Qemal Meidani (Qereshnik, father of former President Recep Maidan), who had an uncle’s son, ”recalls Bruno Qereshniku, the story of his father, who suffered for seven years in the prisons of the Communist regime, as a victim of Enver Hoxha’s intrigues, in the striking and eliminating he wanted to do to his closest associate, Mehmet Shehu.
Shaban Qereshniku, a Beratite who served as Governor of Libya in Tripoli
The early origin of Ihsan Qereshnik’s family is from the Qereshnik village of Berat, from which they have inherited the family surname. It is not known precisely at what time that family settled in the city of Berat, but it is thought that they lived in the “Murat-Çelepias” neighborhood before the 1820s. One of the first of this family to make a big name was Shaban Qereshniku, who was born around 1860 in the city of Berat. From the age of seven, Shaban was selected among many of his Berat peers and sent to Istanbul to study, where he came up with excellent results. After high school, Shabani graduated and graduated from the Military Academy of the Order of that city, and by special decree, appointed him Chief of Police in Tripoli, Libya. After some time in that position, Shabani was appointed to the post of Governor-General of Libya. During the time Shaban was a student at the Istanbul Order Academy, he married in Berat, a daughter named Hamide, and from that marriage, they had two daughters: Abllaja and Lutfija. After being appointed Governor of Libya, Shaban returned to Berat and took his family, wife, and two daughters with his family to Tripoli, where he subsequently gave birth to two sons and a daughter: in 1900, Mazer in 1902, and Zubaydah. in 1905. Shaban Qereshnik served as Governor of Libya until he retired there in 1910 and then returned to his hometown, Berat, where he died a few years later. A few years before his death, Shabani sent his two sons, n and Mazer, to continue their studies in Vienna, Austria, but since the family was in poor economic condition, he returned to Albania and continued his studies at the American school in Tirana. , otherwise known as the Fultz Technician. Returning to Albania, his other brother, Mazer, stayed in Austria, where he graduated from the Vienna Military Academy and then returned to Tirana, where he served as a military monarch until 1928 when he died in unknown circumstances. . Shabani’s eldest daughter, Lutfia, while working in Tripoli, worked as a French teacher, and when she returned to Albania, she no longer worked in education. The other girl, Zybejdja, was first educated in the Agricultural Technique that the Americans had opened in Golem, Kavaja, and then she came to Tirana, where she graduated from the “Mother Queen” school. After completing this school, Zybejdja was appointed a teacher in the elementary school of the village of Petrela in Tirana, being the first teacher in Albania to be appointed in the village. According to an instruction that came out in the 1920s, not to keep the village names surname, the Qereshniku tribe also changed it and took the surname Meidani. Former President Recep Maidan, whose father Kemal, was the son of Ihsan Qereshnik’s uncle, was the only one who did not change his surname since he was in Libya at the time. During the years of Enver Hoxha’s communist regime, Ihsan Qereshnik’s family was considered a “reactionary family” and persecuted, deprived of many rights. Of his children, only Adrian (until some years ago working at RAI 5 in Italy) graduated from high school, majoring in Electrical Engineering. This was achieved with the intervention of Beqir Balluk after Adrian had rescued from the flood, the Bistrica Hydroelectric machinery, while he was performing compulsory military service Memorie.al
