By Petro Marko
The first part
Memorie.al / Confessions of the well-known writer Petro Marko, former fighter of the Internationalist Brigades in the War of Spain and Tirana, tell the behind-the-scenes of what is known as the Anti-Fascist National Liberation War and why Koçi Xoxe hated Enver Hoxha?! Sejfulla Maleshova’s order: “This is a terrorist party; don’t open your mouth, because you will suffer…”! Why was Petro Marko sentenced and who were the ones who prepared his arrest and who helped him after leaving prison, etc. Selected parts from the book “Interview with myself”, by the well-known Albanian writer Petro Marko, published in the early 90s after the collapse of the communist regime, a book which had a great echo in the press of the time, after it was published and reprinted several times, and setting a sales record.
Memoirs of Petro Markos:
CALVARY BEGINS
I later learned that mass arrests were made on May 15. They stabbed me in the Old Prison. There, in the dungeon of the lower floor, I found three people: Asim Abdurahmani, whom I knew to be Bedri Pejani’s son-in-law; Grandfather Deda, a Shkodran; Aslan Ypin. As soon as they saw me, they were surprised: “You here too!”
Asim told me:
– I told my wife to come to you so that you would be interested in me. They sentenced me to death! I do not know why…?! I could not deny Babush (Bedri Pejanin), because I have him as a father-in-law…! Then, why am I a representative of the German Pharmaceutical Company “Bayer”, it is not a crime…!
There were four of us in a dungeon. Each showed his own. There, I heard Asllan Ypi tell us about his and Enver’s life in France…!
Then he also told about Tirana:
– One day I passed there and saw him posing at the door of the “Flora” store, where I met some communists. I said to him in French: “What about you, Enver, what are you doing here with the reds?”
– And he in French: “I am here, in order to… the mother of all communists. No one will let me down.”
And, as we will see, he really started to eliminate the early communists from then on.
– What about us who are not communists, – said Grandfather Deda, – why did he arrest us and sentence us to death?
I thought: “I have been in other prisons, with friends sentenced to death, and I have always been in a very deep sadness…! What has man done! What a way of crime, torture and degeneration, he found to punish himself! I remember that, they said in the prison of Bari, that the engineer who built the prison, after finishing it, killed himself. Prisons are the graves of the living. Man, in some democracies, has found the way to punish guilt or crime: isolation in distant places; they have created communities of criminals, who work and live isolated from the rest of the world, but they are in society, they see the sun, they just live a life, without wings to fly…”!
– Here is an inhumane scene: The four of us were eating bread together; we had laid out what our families had brought us in the sefertase. My wife, Safoja, brought me food regularly every day. He was helped by his mother, Shazija, who cooked very well. We put the dishes together and the four of us, cross-legged, began to eat. Not a few minutes passed and the door creaked open. Two Security officers entered, Haznedari and Stavri, eager for the most inhuman insults and tortures. They didn’t tell us: “Have a good lunch,” but:
– You, Asim Abdurahmani, and you Grandfather Deda, stand up!
I don’t know how I dared and spoke:
– Let’s finish lunch…! Now we just got laid!
– Rest, dirty agent! You get up, because you finish your lunch in that world.
Stung. Grandpa Deda, brave, said:
– Asim, gets up! Let’s get rid of this evil brood, which was born in this unfortunate country, occupied by Tito, who has Enver here as an executioner!
I wanted to scream when I saw Stavri kick him in the head and curse him.
– Get up!
Grandpa Deda said to Asim:
– Don’t faint. Keep it man, because we are part of the sacrifices, those thousands of sacrifices, that Enver Hoxha slaughtered for his god, Tito.
Again Stavri hit him hard. He dragged her away. Asim and I hugged with tears in our eyes. I heard:
– In dalci alive here, say that we die innocent!
The door closed. Asllani and I sat with tears in our eyes, while the radio broadcast loudly through the megaphone placed in the prison yard: “Hilarious Hour” and made those who listened to it laugh.
This was also one of those thousands of macabre scenes that I have seen throughout my life.
Question: – Did you spend a lot of time in the Old Prison with Asllan Ypi?
Answer: – No. They soon put us in the New Prison. In a hall on the second floor, where there were more than twenty people, all convicted as: “agents of foreigners”. There were people of different characters and backgrounds. There were also some White Russians, from those officers of the Tsar, who escaped the revolution and fled. They were among those White Russians who were recruited by Ahmet Zogu in Yugoslavia and together with other Bashibozuks and Bajraktars, entered Tirana on December 24, 1924.
They became Army instructors and Zogu treated them well. They told about their life in Petersburg and how they danced with the most beautiful ballerinas. One of them said that he had also danced with Carina and that she had liked him very much, which is why he often invited her to the Palace in the evening. His friends called Rasputin. All this was probably fantasy.
Finally, they separated me from them and put me in a dungeon on the first floor, tied my hands behind and my feet. Only when I ate bread, my hands were picked and when I went to the toilet at the appointed time. Hands and feet tied from behind, without any layer of cover, they pressured me daily, to show, to affirm what they wanted. They came in groups. In a group, I recognized an investigator who had been in the quaestura, during the fascist occupation, and I said out loud: “I’m glad that he is also an investigator, because it seems to me like I am in the fascist quaesta.”
The investigations began to become tougher, more brutal. They said strange things to me and changed their tone by adding. “Speak for the good of the Party”! And I would answer: “Which Party?” I was a member of the Spanish, French, Italian party until the first days of liberation. Now tell me: does the Albanian Communist Party agree to slander and accuse people who have done nothing and whom I do not know”?! Often, the hammer beat here: to declare that Mehmet Shehu has been an agent since Spain! I was not surprised that many of those who had graduated from the American Technical School had been arrested as American spies.
Many of those who had been exiled or imprisoned in Italy had been arrested as spies. And I remembered that meeting we held on the island of Ustika with the communist groups, with the aim of taking the island, because in front of us, in Tunisia, was the Anglo-American Army. And we had in mind to kill the guards, hijack a motorboat and go to Bizerte, tell the Americans to come and save us. I accepted this plan, but a friend from Slovenia, Dushan Kermau-neri, insisted: no! And convinced us:
“The Americans came and saved us, where will they take us? In one of their camps in Africa. And, when we return to our homeland, when we return, they will accuse us of; Anglo-American spies”! He convinced us, he was right and he was very smart. I am of the opinion that the types of inhumane torture should not be written, that they can serve dictators or other executioners. But I will tell, about a joke I made in that hell. At the door of my dungeon, one of the Myzeqeja was guarding, his last name was Priest.
He read the newspaper aloud, as if he were chanting in church, so I, more or less, understood what was going on. It was July 10, Army Day. I heard the guards talking at the door of my dungeon: “How do you drink beer, warm or cold?” They had been given a small float of beer for the party. Some said to drink it warm, some said to drink it cold.
The one who was reading the newspaper as if he was chanting and who was sitting at my door, said:
– Do we ask this journalist, because he knows a lot of things…?!
The door opened and I saw four guards. My doorman spoke to me:
– How to drink beer: cold or warm?
I told them:
– Beer is drunk warm!
– How do we heat it? We have a small boat…!
– Put it in the middle of the yard until lunch. The July sun will make it hot. Then drink it…!
And so they did. They put the buoy in the middle of the yard until 12 o’clock. Then they pierced it in the dining room. They opened it with an iron and it exploded and splattered the ceiling, they barely held it in half. And they started drinking it scalded. Everyone started crying…! When the officers found out, they came to me and beat me to the wood, saying: “Saboteur! You poisoned our guards. Agent”! Never mind, what I got out of it later! I found out that the case reached the ministry: “Agent Petro Marko, he poisoned our prison guards”!
Then, after they closed the door, leaving me lying on the cement, they sang the international songs, which were sung during the war, which I had adapted into Albanian and which before, they were taught in the Tirana prison, then they went to Peza, and then to all the partisans, such as: “Vanguard”, “Fusha, you field”, “Comintern”, “Song of a friend”, and many, many others, which mobilized the youth in the war. Those were the songs of the International Brigades.
They removed me from that dungeon and took me to another one.
The pressure was on. They hung me to the bars of the window and put a fifty-pound chain on my shoulders, so that my chained hands supported the weight of my body and the chain. He could not bear this kind of torture. My hands were shaking, I felt like I was on fire. Fantastic hallucinations: It seemed to me that my wife Sappho came, with a glass of wine and wanted to approach my lips…! I opened my eyes: a great storm in the dungeon, as if trying to tear the bars of the window. This torture continued. The investigator came with a statement: “Sign it, you will be saved! You are young. You have a new bride waiting for you at the door…”!
I don’t believe in dreams, but there are times when they happen to me: when I see eggs in a dream, I will have some great boredom; when I see wood in a dream, I will get money; when I see in a dream that I bathe in the sea, I will get sick and so on. When I was hanging and shadows and skeletons of people appeared before my eyes, I saw my fellow villager, Petro Koka, as if he approached me and had a package of American candies in his hand. When I opened my eyes, I thought: I will be very sad. To my surprise, after a while my interrogator entered the dungeon with a written letter in his hand and said: “You signed this, we will remove the chains…”! And read it:
– The undersigned, Petro Koka, declare that Mehmet Shehu has been an agent since Spain…!
I looked at him carefully and said:
– Yes! I sign this statement…!
The investigator removed the irons, freed my hand and I signed: Petro Koka. As soon as he took it, he waved it in the air and, going out into the corridor, shouted: “We also defeated the revolutionary of Spain…”
Many investigators came running and happily telling me:
– Why should you suffer?! You had already signed it…!
However, the chief investigator took the statement in his hands and called out in a rage:
– What did you sign here, Petro Koka! Who are you lying to? Who are you kidding? – and drove me to the wood. After gathering myself, I opened my mouth:
– It’s been six months since you tortured me, and you still don’t know who I am! – They started kicking me again and hung me by the window again.
I heard in front of me, a man from Shkodër being tortured badly, then, when the investigators ran away, he laughed loudly and said: “If these people come to Europe, they will become millionaires, because when I came here, I was bald and now I am with curly hair…! Who knows how much the bald people of the world would pay, to be tortured here like me, and then, hair would grow on their heads”!
One day the interrogators took me out of the dungeon and took me to an office. They put before me a deposition, or rather a very serious charge. I read it and with all the strength I had left, from those months of torture, I laughed. It was about a proposal that was made to me, openly, loudly, in the middle of everyone, at a table, to accept to become an agent of the Americans. I immediately remembered this proposal.
An American journalist had asked me to become a press agent from Albania for the newspaper where he worked. Then I said to the investigators: “How can you believe such an absurdity? How can I be proposed so openly, loudly, in the presence of twenty or so people, to become a spy for a foreign power? This is the height of wickedness and ignorance”! That’s all I said and they sent me back to the dungeon. I immediately found out who had made the deposit.
Question: – What was the worst scene that shocked you the most in the dungeon?
Answer: – In that dungeon, the third from the right of the first floor, I was hanging from the window with the heavy chain around my neck, which made me like Atlas, who carried the globe on his back; except that I did not carry the real earthly globe, but the globe of torments, as much as I seemed to myself, in fire and storm, as if I was surrounded by a giant waterfall of flames. Only when the door creaked open would I open my eyes and focus to see which investigator would enter, like an executioner with death in his hand. Once, what do I look at? A skeleton man roared inside the dungeon, like Gandhi, almost completely stripped of his skin and bones. They threw him inside with curses, then closed the door. I gathered all my strength to see better what that “man-cloth” was; after a while he raised his head, looked at me and to my surprise said: “You here too, Mr. Marko?! I had hope that you would intervene to save me…”?!
And this dialogue took place between two living corpses: one hanging from the bars, the other on the ground like a discarded rag:
– And who are you?
– You do not know me? I’m Professor Zuber…!
– Which one?!
– Zuberi. Do you remember when we went to Shkodër, together with Nako Spiru, your lady and Andrea Xega and we had a good lunch on the island of Buna? We used to go to Koplik, to see if we discovered water sources.
Then I remembered Professor Zuberi. Andrea Xega, also a geologist, and Nako Spiru, told me who Professor Zuberi was:
One of the world’s greatest geologists. First, Lenin took him to discover the wells of Baku – where they had also erected a bust – then, for his extraordinary abilities, the Anglo-Persian Society engaged him to study the Middle East basin (the Persian Gulf, Arabia Saudi, Iraq, Iran). He worked for many years and was the first to make a geological map of that area. Today, all over the world, geologists have as a guide his discoveries and geological treatises for that area, which turned out to be the richest in the world for oil. He worked for many years and, after completing all the work, the Anglo-Persian Society sent him to Albania.
He came here and worked, made the first geological map of Albania. The company first started working in Kuçovo, where the first oil came out, but, since that oil contained a lot of sulphur, the Anglo-Persian Company left it and sold it to Mussolini’s Italy, which was suffering from fuel shortages. The Italians started from work; Zuberi also discovered Pathos. The Italians had laid a pipeline from Kuçova to the Cold Water of Vlora, where the tankers of “Agip”, the Italian oil company, came and drove it to be processed in Italy. Zuberi, created the geological museum in Kučovo.
During the war, Kuçova was also hit by the bombings of the Anglo-American aviation and many people were killed, including Zuber’s wife.
After the Liberation, Zuberi was called as a Geology advisor to the Council of Ministers…! And in 1945, I also met him in Shkodër. He remembered me, that he knew I was in charge of the “Bashkimi” newspaper, and he had tried to write to me to save him and release him, that he was being accused of sabotage in Kuçovo.
And now here we were both: he a fistful of men, I a living skeleton, burdened with irons.
Question: – Now that you had a friend in the dungeon, would the suffering be eased?
Answer: – Alone, you get tired of flying in the space of memories and hopes, while with a friend, you live and lighten the burden of spiritual torment. When you live burdened by irons, your thoughts and the weight of the globe on your head become heavier.
With Zuber, we exchanged some words: he, lying on the floor; me, addicted He muttered all day long, and when I asked him what he muttered, he said:
– Now I am giving a lecture, about the reasons why some areas are rich in oil, like those of the Middle East…! Now I am praying, – he was a Catholic and prayed.
I teased him and said:
– How is it possible for an intellectual like you to believe?
– I believe in ideas that live and will live for thousands of years. You believe in Marxism-Leninism…!? But will this ideology live for hundreds or thousands of years? Religion has a very humane and universal function, it has a lot of value for man, because it makes him more human, makes him braver against evil and softens the wounds of the soul. Now, when I pray to Christ, I say: I too will endure and stand like you. That you gave us the example to smile even before death. Why does humanity believe? That there is a need for a source of hope, for this source of humanity, for this sedative, especially in cases like ours, in which we are now.
Two investigators entered the dungeon: one lifted Zuber and took him out of the dungeon, the other sat with me and said:
– Without asking this enemy, does the Albanian land have peace? He made the geological map, but he did not mark anywhere, where there is gold…!
I laughed to myself and said to the investigator: – If he had gold, who did he hide it for? If it was for the Italians, he would have scored!
If it was for the Germans, he would have scored. Who did he hide it for?!
– These agents… are diabolical… If you were asking, there is no way that there is no gold in this whole land!
Again I laughed bitterly to myself and promised him that I would carry out this “patriotic duty”, that’s what he told me: “this is a patriotic duty, what we are charging you”!
When he returned to the dungeon, Zuberi lay down and laughed.
– Why are you laughing? – I told.
– They force me to say why I haven’t marked the areas where there is gold in the Albanian land! And I told them there isn’t. They kicked me and called me a “sold agent”.
– Really, does Albania have gold?
– If there was, I would definitely have noted it, like all rare minerals. Indeed, there is in some areas, but it takes twenty times as much fiori to extract that amount. These are ignorant. When I made the geological map, I did it as a geologist and not as an agent or a spy. What are these we are hearing?!
And again our thoughts and imagination took different directions. The prison resounded with screams. At night, they took and shot prominent intellectuals, specialists. “Do you know? – Zuberi told me one day. – Here, here is Enveri, here is Koçi, they are foreign agents, I believe from Yugoslavia. That they did not leave intellectuals alive, in order for them to bring their own”! Memorie.al
The next issue follows
