My Life in the Albanian Gulags

Rudina Dema was a political prisoner in Communist Albania from her birth in 1945 until she emigrated to Italy in 1991. Except for a few periods when she was released on parole, she had always lived in forced labor camps. Her moving testimony provides a glimpse into the most ferocious, paranoid regime of the former Eastern Bloc.

PART I
The rusty entrance gate opens onto two buildings crumbling to bits. Farther along, we come to a large clearing of dusty ground and dried-out, yellow grass burnt by the sun. The clearing is bordered by a few more buildings, also stripped bare over time—no doors or windows remain, and broken bricks dot their interiors. We are at the former concentration camp of Tepelenë, in southern Albania. Originally built by the Italian army during World War II, the Albanian communist regime subsequently held hundreds of families in these buildings. They now lie in ruin, but from 1949 to 1954 the mothers, brothers, wives, and children of men who disagreed with Enver Hoxha, the dictator in Tirana, were imprisoned here.

Prisoners lived in large common rooms, and slept on hard wooden boards. Summers were stiflingly hot, winters freezing cold. People were forced to do back-breaking labor, clambering up the mountains behind the camp, sawing down trees, loading wood onto their backs—heavy bundles for women, large logs for men—and carrying it back down into camp. Hygienic conditions were atrocious, and malnutrition exacerbated the hardship. Many inmates lost their lives, including 300 children. A small memorial of white stone in the middle of the clearing pays tribute to the victims.

This particular camp was dismantled after the United Nations denounced the inhumane conditions in which the over 3,000 inmates had been kept. But, once out, their fate wasn’t much different: they were shipped to other camps, many near the city of Lushnjë, in central Albania, and exploited further.

Rudina Dema, born in 1945, managed to survive an infernal imprisonment at Tepelenë. She was first sent to the camp in 1949, and stayed for two years. Her memory of it has faded, but some episodes remain etched in her mind. “We lined up, cup in hand, just like in the films about Jewish prisoners in Nazi camps. We were served durum wheat soup, and sometimes we found maggots in it." She remembers playing with the other children there, too: "We made mud balls and threw them at each other. At night we slept side by side, packed into the shacks, tight as sardines."

I met Rudina in Tepelenë on August  30, 2017, during a commemoration organized by the Autoriteti për Informim mbi Dokumentet e ish-Sigurimit të Shtetit 1944-1991 (Albania’s “Authority for Information on Former State Security Documents”), the government agency that, since 2016, has been delving into the repressive history of the most paranoid and violent regime of Communist Europe. The regime sentenced hundreds of people to death, erected forced labor camps and prisons all over the country, and established a repressive state security force—the Sigurimi—with a vast network of collaborators. Everyone spied on everyone, and countless skeletons were found in the closet. As a result, the collective memory—and how to preserve it—remained a delicate topic even after the end of communism in 1991. The regime’s victims remained on the sidelines, keeping everything bottled up inside. Only now can they begin to publicly voice what they endured.

The suffering Rudina Dema had to endure did not end at Tepelenë. She spent a significant part of her life in forced labor camps or on parole. In 1984, when she was 39, her parole was broadened to all of Albania—her previous periods on parole had carried much stricter geographic limits. The following year, Hoxha died, and the political situation loosened. Ramiz Alia, Hoxha’s successor, opened things up a little. But Rudina still had reason to fear the regime would come after her again, so in March 1991—as many of her fellow Albanians fled to Italy—she, her husband Haxhi, and their three-year-old daughter Megi boarded one of the cargo ships sailing from Durrës to Brindisi. Albanian communism was collapsing, which was precisely why they were able to board that ship—the government was no longer in control. But Rudina suspected the new regime might regain the upper hand and unleash another wave of mass arrests. Italy was an opportunity to start over, and she wanted to take it.

Later that same year, just a few months after landing, Rudina, Haxhi, and Megi settled in Rieti, and haven’t moved since. Today, they live in modest public housing along with Megi’s ten-year-old son, Tommaso.

Rudina briefly shared her life story with me in Tepelenë, but I wasn’t familiar enough with the history and politics of Communist Albania to fully grasp all of the details. Nonetheless, the strength evident in her words and her eyes—slightly sad, yet also piercing—convinced me that her story deserved to be heard. So I went to Rieti, twice, to better understand and contextualize it.

She was one of five children. Her father, Hysni Dema, had been a colonel in the army under King Zog I. When Fascist Italy conquered Albania in 1939, Dema was exiled to Tuscany. He returned home in 1942, and gained a prominent position in the Balli Kombëtar ("National Front"), the nationalist organization that attempted to prevent Hoxha’s partisans from taking power by forging tactical alliances—first with the occupying Italian forces, then with the Nazis, who invaded in 1943. The attempt failed. Hoxha liberated Albania in 1944, and then became an autocrat. Hysni went into hiding and found refuge in Greece, where he died in 1954. The circumstances surrounding his death remain unclear.

"My mother was pregnant with me when my father escaped. I never met him, and I have no idea what paternal love is. When I hear Megi call Haxhi "Dad," I think, “What’s that? What does that mean?" I was fatherless and angry. I had a miserable life, no toys, no fairy tales, no freedom. I told my mother, Vasfie, that a good father would never have left his wife and children all alone. That irked her, she lashed out at me and shouted, “Shame on you!”

Hysni Dema was the "crime" Rudina, her mother, and her siblings were guilty of—they were imprisoned for being related to him. Rudina was the youngest; Tefta was born in 1927, Vera in 1930, Ali in 1933, and Sazan in 1935. Under Hoxha, Hysni was deemed an enemy of the people, a conspirator, and his status tainted the whole family.

“After taking power, the Communists knocked on the door of our large home in Tirana, requisitioned it, and kicked us out. My mom, visibly pregnant, left in her nightgown. She took Vera, Ali, and Sazan to the home of Tefta and her husband, Shaqir Muça. That’s where I was born, on February 20, 1945." A few months after Rudina’s birth, the Demas were transferred to a forced labor camp in Berat. Their former life, quiet and comfortable, was a thing of the past. “They loaded us onto the truck like watermelons, and took us away. They spared Tefta, but only because she was married, so she wasn’t considered part of our family anymore."

Over the next three years, Vasfie and her children were sent from camp to camp: Porto Palermo, 4 Rruget Shijak (near Durrës), and Krujë. Then, in 1949, they were sent to Tepelenë. It was a whole other world—an atrocious one. Tefta had visited them in all the other camps, but wasn’t allowed to in Tepelenë. Rudina still remembers how much she missed her older sister’s visits. But she doesn’t remember all the children who died there—"All I heard was their mothers’ desperate cries."

At the beginning of 1951, the regime decided to release all children from Tepelenë, along with a few of the less politically compromised prisoners. Rudina was allowed out, but had to leave the rest of her family behind. "Mom arranged for me to stay with a family in Krujë—they had already been released from prison. It was early March. They put us into military trucks and took us to Tirana. We arrived at night, it was cold and rainy. They took us to Skanderbeg Square, right in the center of town, and unloaded us in front of the mosque. We slept there, out front, sheltering under the eaves. Early the next morning the imam arrived, and the father of the family from Krujë—I’m ashamed to say I no longer remember his name—explained to the imam who I was, and asked him to take me to Tefta." The imam assured him that he’d do what he could, but first he had to recite the prayers. As soon as he was done, he took Rudina to the bazaar, which was held along one side of the square back then. They stopped at the stall of a hat vendor, a former neighbor of the Dema family who knew them well. The imam explained the situation, and the vendor sent his son rushing off to find Tefta. "While we waited, he gave me a cup of milk with some bread soaking in it. I was so hungry, I scarfed it down like an animal." Tefta arrived soon after, and Rudina ran into her arms. "My sister took me straight to the barber and had all my hair cut off—it was full of lice."

The two sisters were reunited, but Tefta couldn’t fully rejoice. She had fallen on hard times. Just a few days before Rudina’s release—on March 1, to be exact—Leone Cieno, the Italian engineer who had become her partner after her marriage to Shaqir Muça had ended, had been deported to Italy. Cieno had come to Albania during the fascist occupation. After the war he stayed, because skilled technicians were needed for reconstruction. His life changed on February 19, 1951, when a bomb exploded in the courtyard of the Soviet embassy. That set the stage for the regime to purge Albania of all Italian intellectuals and residents, accusing them of being agents of Western imperialism. Cieno was exiled and Tefta was left alone, eight months pregnant. On March 31, a boy was born. She named him Pierino.

Leone and Tefta stayed in touch for a few years. She sent him photos of Pierino growing up, and he sent her money. But then Albania grew even more isolationist, and all communication with the outside world was cut off. Leone heard nothing more from Tefta and Pierino. He never forgot them, but he began a new life in Sardinia, with another woman. Like Rudina, Pierino grew up fatherless. "Pierino only met Leone in 1990, the first time he went to Italy, before moving there permanently in 1991. Tefta, on the other hand, never saw Leone again. He died shortly before she emigrated, in 1993."

After Leone was deported Tefta was on her own, with a son to raise, and Rudina to care for. Technically she was a free woman, but the Sigurimi kept an eye on her. It put her to the test, too. "One night some agents barged into the apartment. They asked a few questions. One of them lit a cigarette, which glowed in the dark. They left after a while, but life became increasingly heavy for Tefta. She was convinced that, sooner or later, the regime would do real harm to her, me, and Pierino. Emotionally drained, she made a drastic decision—toward the end of 1954 we joined our mother and siblings in Plug, near Lushnjë, at the camp they had been transferred to after Tepelenë was shut down." As soon as they arrived, the authorities told Tefta she could stay, but she’d have to check in for attendance every day, just like all the other inmates. In other words, she had to give up her freedom, as did  Rudina and Pierino. "My sister knew what we were in for, but life had become unbearable with the Sigurimi constantly on her back. She figured that, if we had to suffer anyway, it would be better to suffer alongside our loved ones, sharing their same fate."

PART II
"It seems so strange to me that we made it to Italy, that we own a car, and that we have running water and a washing machine at home. I observe it all with curiosity, the way a child might. Maybe that’s because I never really had a childhood, so that little girl is still somewhere inside me, even though I’m now old."

The regime robbed Rudina Dema of her childhood and adolescence. After a couple of years in Plug, she and her family were sent to the camp in Savra, where she was interned until 1964.

Like Plug, Savra was just outside Lushnjë. During the day Rudina farmed for an agricultural cooperative. She went to school in the evening. It took many sacrifices, but she managed to finish middle school. She was poor, and life was hard, but it was better than before. "Back in Tepelenë, all us prisoners stayed in one large room. In Savra they gave us a room of our own, for me and my family. It was inside a shack. We didn’t have a bathroom, so we had to go in the courtyard, but at least we had a space to ourselves."

Sazan wasn’t there with them. In 1951, right after Rudina was released from Tepelenë, he had escaped. "He was a sharp sixteen year old, and he found a way past the guards." They tracked him down shortly after, and he served four years in prison in Gjirokaster. Once he was released, he fled to Yugoslavia. From there he went to Greece, then on to Italy, Germany, and ultimately the United States. He now lives in Missouri, and is an American citizen.

After Sazan escaped, camp authorities tortured Vasfie. “They hung her upside down from a tree, and put a bucket full of shit in front of her face. ‘Tell us where your son is, or we’ll shove you in,’ they ordered." But she didn’t know, and the guards didn’t have the courage to follow through with their threat. She suffered yet another humiliation in Plug, when Sigurimi agents told her her husband Hysni had died. "He croaked in Greece," they said scornfully. They used that exact word: he croaked.

In 1964, the regime eased its grip on political prisoners, offering parole to some. People out on parole could live and work within a set area dictated by the authorities. Rudina and Tefta took advantage of the new provision, but Ali and Vasfie didn’t—they stayed in Savra. Vera, meanwhile, had been in Tirana for some time already, after marrying Qazim Kuca, who drove trucks for a company there. His family had also been targeted by the regime, and were acquaintances of the Demas. The authorities let Vera leave Savra and live with Qazim. The regime couldn’t ban love—well, not always, at least. In 1968 they gave birth to a boy, Engjell.

Tefta and Rudina’s parole covered the cities of Lushnjë, Fier, Berat, Kavajë, and Elbasan. They chose to go to the latter. "Tefta believed that, because it was a fairly large city with a bit of culture, we’d be able to find decent jobs and live in peace." The gap between expectation and reality was profound. “Because our family reputation was stained, it wasn’t easy to find decent work. The only jobs we were offered were in the olive groves and, later, at a tailor’s shop. Every day—each morning and each evening—we reported to the commissariat and signed the attendance sheet. We had to put up with the suspicious locals, too. They called us "the two whores."

Pierino wasn’t with them. Tefta had sent him to stay with Vera, so that he could attend a good school in Tirana. She wanted to give him a better future than hers. Rudina also kept going to school in the evenings after work, just as she had back in Savra, and earned her high school diploma.

The years in Elbasan were far from happy, but Rudina has held onto one pleasant memory. In 1971 the regime awarded a trip to the seaside town of Vlorë to a group of young workers at the tailor shop that employed her, and she managed to go along. The government needed strong arms to clear the harsh terrain in the hills surrounding Elbasan and plant olive groves, and the trip was a reward for those who volunteered. Rudina had never seen the sea, so she begged an official of the Labor Party—the sole political party under communism—to let her go along, even though she hadn’t volunteered up in the hills. "He oversaw the local young workers. He knew who I was and where I came from, but I kept busy at the tailor shop, so he had a good opinion of me, and allowed me to go." That’s how Rudina discovered the sea. “I sat down cross-legged on the beach, watched the waves roll in, and cried. I felt such freedom."

But freedom—real, true freedom—was something Rudina had never actually experienced. And then even her "supervised freedom," as parole was known, ended. The regime revoked it in 1975, during the trial of Beqir Balluku, who had been minister of defense since 1952. Accused of plotting against Hoxha, he was sentenced to death. In communist Albania, internal feuds among the top echelons often triggered waves of general persecution. This time, parole was revoked nationwide. Rudina and Tefta were sent to a camp in Belsh, a town in the Elbasan district. Soon after, Pierino was exiled from Tirana and joined them there with his wife Ikbale—who he had married a few years before—and their newborn child, names Leone, after Pierino’s father. They went on to have two more children, Ulisse and Anna.

Vera’s family was also affected by the restrictive new measures. She was sent to a camp in Grabian, not far from Lushnjë. Ali and Vaftie didn’t leave Savra. Three years later, in 1978, Vaftie died. Rudina thinks of her every day. "Each morning, as I drink coffee, her face comes to mind. I think of what a sad life she had in the camps. She had been born a lady, and ended up with nothing. She was in tremendous pain, but she kept it all inside."

In Belsh, Rudina once again worked for an agricultural cooperative. “We had a modest salary, but you couldn’t buy much of anything, so at night I returned to the fields to steal leeks, tomatoes, and spinach." This went on for nine long, sad years, but Tefta’s presence offered consolation. She loved her sister immensely. "She seemed like a hard-hearted woman, and was always so serious. But if you knew her well, if you understood her deep down, you couldn’t leave her side. For me she was everything—mother, grandmother, brother, father—everything."

1984 was a turning point: Rudina was again granted parole, and this time it covered the entire country. She was the only one—all the other members of her family remained in the camps, right up until communism collapsed. "Maybe, since I had no husband and no children, I posed the least danger to the regime."

Rudina went to live in Tirana. She found work at a textile factory in the Kombinat neighborhood, which was the industrial heart of the capital under communism but is now a decaying, forgotten suburb. Three months after her release she met Haxhi Mane, her future husband, He was five years her senior, and also had a painful history. He is a Cham Albanian, as the people who originally inhabited northern Greece call themselves. They were expelled from Greece at the end of World War II. Haxhi’s family was well off. Rudina moved to Durrës, where Haxhi resided. They got married. She got a job in a tailor shop, he worked as a bricklayer. In 1988, when Rudina was 43, their daughter Megi was born.

She welcomed the baby girl as a gift from God—her Christian God. She had been curious about Catholicism for a long time, after first encountering it in Tepelenë. "There were some priests at the camp, I had seen them gather, murmur to one another, and pray. I was fascinated by it." Over the years, her religious feeling grew. She prayed in secret, because communist Albania was strictly atheist. “When I arrived in Italy, I wanted to be baptized. I did it in 1992. Haxhi is Muslim, and has kept his original faith, but raised no objections."

Even in Durrës, with a family of her own and Enver Hoxha no longer of this world (he died in 1985), Rudina remained fearful. “I didn’t tell anyone where I came from, and I kept a low profile. I felt the weight of my past, of my name, and I worried the regime might ship me back to the camps at any moment."

1990 was a tumultuous, uncertain year. Various protests broke out. The students of Tirana rose up in December. The government teetered, losing control of the situation. Over the following months many Albanians fled, by sea, to Italy. They didn’t know if communism would fall. Doubtful, they chose to get moving, and Italy represented freedom—their "Western dream."

In early March 1991, thousands of people poured into the port of Durrës and stormed the cargo ships moored there. They ordered the captains to set sail for Brindisi, the closest port as the crow flies. That was the only way to cross the Adriatic, since there were no ferries back then. The sea was a wall of water. Between March 6 and 7, 25,000 Albanians landed in Brindisi. Rudina and Haxhi traveled aboard the Tirana, one of those merchant ships. When they saw the commotion on the docks of Durrës they didn’t have to think twice—they decided to leave. "I didn’t know what would become of me, of us, but all that mattered was getting away from that regime, because I didn’t think it could fall. We got all gussied up. Haxhi wore a suit and tie, I donned a nice dress. ‘We’re going to Italy, we can’t show up looking like beggars,’ we thought. But that’s exactly how we looked when we arrived, after the exhausting trip on a packed ship. As we sailed, I did nothing but think about what I’d endured, but I felt free—a bit like when  I saw the sea for the first time, in Vlorë, in 1971."

Once they reached Italy, Haxhi and Rudina were granted the status of political refugees almost immediately. They briefly stayed in San Michele Salentino, near Brindisi, before heading to Antrodoco and then Rieti, where they’ve lived since 1991. Soon thereafter they were joined by Pierino and his family, and Tefta came in 1993, after Pierino had officially requested and obtained an Italian visa for his mother. After leaving the camps, both Vera and Ali stayed in Albania, moving to Tirana. Since then, the three of them have passed away: Vera in 2005, Tefta in 2011, and Ali in 2013. Tefta is buried in Rieti.

Haxhi and Rudina are now retired. In Italy, he worked as a bricklayer, just as he had in Albania. She found work as a maid. She receives a very modest monthly check, but doesn’t complain. "Here in Italy, I found freedom, friends, the ability to speak my mind, and public housing. After everything I’ve been through, that’s more than enough."

In 2000 Rudina obtained Italian citizenship, and only then did she travel back to Albania. "My Italian passport gave me security, which I didn’t have before. Setting foot in Albania, I felt nothing. That place took everything from me. The only joy I felt was when I saw my relatives again."

Today, Rudina regularly visits the country where she was born. She has a house in the center of Tirana. She has been back to Tepelenë several times. I asked her if, after all these years, she feels ready to grant forgiveness—a fundamental principle of her faith—to those who took her freedom. "I’ve discussed this with my priest. He told me that forgiving is a slow process, best practiced little by little. But I don’t know if I’ll ever get there. I believe there are some things it’s impossible to forgive."