Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Anti-Communist Resistance







By Maks Velo
(Extract from the book “Spaçi", Pg. 151, 152, 153) 

            From the long lines of prisoners in the camp, one man, who always got in the unemployed line, really caught my attention. He was like one of Balzac’s characters. I do not know why this thought got stuck in my head, but he was slow moving, most often alone, and a man of few words. They told me he was Ceni, Hysen Shoshori from Tirana. It was clear he was an inveterate prisoner, lacking any outside support. At the end of mealtime, he would go over to the kitchen counter, and if there happened to be some leftovers, they would give him an extra tea ration. It was supposedly tea, but it was really more like cold water with no sugar at all.

                                                          Hysen Shoshori

            They told me his story. In April 1959, using a mimeograph, he typed up a flyer in which he exposed official propaganda. He distributed these flyers throughout Tirana, until he was caught in 1974. He would change up their scripts. During nighttime he scattered them under the doors of private houses and apartments, and stick them onto walls, pillars, and stairwells. He had even taken them to the Polish, Romanian, Italian, and Yugoslavian embassies, among others. He would toss most of them out onto parked cars while the embassies were hosting cocktail parties, or he would send them over the embassy walls. He did this from 11pm to 1am and make initial plans for distributing the flyers by changing up his neighborhood route. News about these flyers was broadcast from “Voice of America,” Radio Moscow,” “Radio Belgrade.”

            State Security was on their toes. They positioned themselves in places with clear views, from treetops to apartments used for surveillance. It is now I realize what happened to me in 1966. It was winter, January to be exact, a gentle January like it is in Tirana; it was delightful to be outside. It was close to 2 o’clock in the morning, and I was under a tree near the Gallery of Arts. I was with a girlfriend. We just had kissed when I heard a slight noise. I raised my head and looked up to find a man on top of the tree. Without saying anything, I quietly left.

            They caught him on August 16, 1974 in the alley across from the ambulance building while he was sticking up a flyer with two drops of glue. Ceni would place them either at the start of a road or at the end. Security had climbed on the poplars near the former War Museum. They jumped in front of him, laid him down on the ground, and beat him. Kadri Ismailati handcuffed him, shoved him into a “Warsaw” car, and took him directly to the Interior Ministry. There were special tools of torture in the cellars of the ministry. All of them were inhumane, skilled criminals – Kadri Ismailati, Ali Korbi, Koço Josifi, headed by Nevzat Haznedari.  “Tell us your friends…” but Ceni had no friends. They did not believe him. After the torture, they ordered Bujar Shkaba, the doctor to “Save him, otherwise he is going to leave with the investigation halfway complete”… “Urgently take him to the hospital…” The next day Ceni was taken to the new prison dungeons on the second floor. He was sentenced to be executed by firing squad. Death was salvation for him. However the door of prison cell opened, and it was communicated to him that his life was spared and he was to be sentenced twenty-five years in prison. They expected a thank you, yet Ceni was deeply despaired. He wanted to die. Ceni spent sixteen years in prison and was released in March 1991. He was among the last inmates who were released from St. Vasil’s camp in Borsh.

            What drew my attention most to Ceni’s story was when I found out Ceni’s sacrifice – the cause that turned him into an ardent enemy of the regime. He never forgave the communists for taking his small piece of land, a fertile soil there on the hills; it kept Ceni always dreaming. 

AAFH Translation

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