It was 1961, one of the darkest years in the history of communist Albania’s international relations. After the break with the Soviet Union, Enver Hoxha’s regime immediately severed all ties with Eastern European countries, including Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Bulgaria. The consequences were not just political or diplomatic — but deeply human.
In the midst of the propaganda of the war against “revisionism,” dozens of Albanian-Polish families were suddenly and mercilessly separated. Albanian students who had studied in Warsaw or Krakow, married to Polish girls, were urgently called to Tirana and were never allowed to return to their wives. Meanwhile, the women remained in Poland with their young children, in an ambiguous reality, between love and ideological walls.
In November of that year, three of them — Barbara Tasi, Elisabeta Alibali, and Françiska Nurja — sat down and wrote a joint letter to the “father of the Albanian people,” Enver Hoxha. In humble, painful, and hopeful language, they asked for only one thing: to be allowed to join their husbands in Albania.
The letter arrived at Hoxha's office. At the top of it, with a strong hand and a familiar signature, Hysni Kapo wrote only two words: "No response!"
It was the seal of silence over a human drama that the regime never publicly acknowledged.
Submitted by: Barbara Tasi, Elisabeta Alibali, Françiska Nurja – Poland
Received: Enver Hoxha, First Secretary of the Albanian People's Party.
Tirana, 8.11.1961
R.144
Dear Comrade Enver Hoxha,
We are the wives of students who studied in Poland until June 30, 1961 and went for the summer holidays to their families in the Homeland. As comrade Enver knows, they remained there.
We were left alone with the young children, in difficult living conditions.
In addition, we love our husbands very much, so with all our might we want to unite with them.
Over a period of two months we have been waiting to receive our passports, and now that we have them, we are left with one important issue – the visa issue.
We often go to the Albanian Embassy in Warsaw. They know very well where we are and our obstacles, but without the consent of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tirana, they are unable to resolve our issue.
Our men are trying in the homeland, in Tirana, to arrange permits for our arrival, but even there, every time they go to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, they receive the same answer: “wait.” In a word, we are waiting, they are waiting too.
We apologize for interfering with our affairs, but for us this is an important issue – a matter of the normal existence of the family.
We address our comrade as the father of the entire Albanian people, as the highest authority in Albania, with a fervent prayer for your intervention in our matter.
We trust that the friend, as the father of his family, understands our pain over separation from our husbands and takes into account that we have small children, whom we are forced to take to kindergarten, who live a difficult life without parental care, do not have a good time there and miss their fathers.
In addition to what we wrote above, once again, we warmly ask you to intervene in our case and bring it to a conclusion.
We are confident that the comrade, as the highest state body, will consider our case positively and we eagerly await your response.
