Tepelenë, a letter to the children who never grew up
I hope you have never cried out, 'Why was I born?' I hope you have come to the conclusion that it was worth it: at the cost of suffering, at the cost of death. I am so proud that I brought you out of nothing, at the cost of suffering, at the cost of death.” I am reminded of Oriana Fallaci and the words she addressed to the child who was never born, as I stand among the five barracks of the former Tepelena camp. I am surrounded by survivors, now grandparents, as would have been the children who never grew up, because they never left the camp alive. Fallaci's child, with the children who never grew up, is not so much united by a title as by the mid-life cut.
Even though it's late August, the wind blowing in the death camp is almost breathtaking. "The winter must have been very harsh," I tell Simon Mirakaj.
"It was too much. It was freezing. Our mothers would leave us outside, in that barracks there. In the evening, we would go to sleep, but in the morning not all the children would wake up. They had frozen in their sleep." Mirakaj lived in this camp for several years.
He thought this was life, a vast field of silos, surrounded by barbed wire, with policemen making appeals, with 'soup' bowls that barely contained anything but water.
They would stack mines and shells, go to the water tap. You couldn't play in the camp, there was no ball, not even shoes. At night, you could hear the cries of little children asking for bread. There was no hut. You remember the horse stable, the women lighting the fire to wash clothes in the tub. Sometimes a mine left over from the war would explode.
There were dead, in front of the children. Bodies were buried beyond the fence. Life in the camps was a blur of daily mourning, daily violence, and daily hunger. A gray background, an Auschwitz, military steps, weapons, hunger, violence, but also torture.
Gentiana Mara Sula, director of the Authority for Information on Documents of the Former State Security 1944-1991, on the Day of the Disappeared (August 30), emphasizes in her speech that their story is untold; "there is a gap in information, but fortunately there are those who are still alive and tell their stories."
"I'll give you just one example. In just one night, 33 young children died. Only 1 survived. They started calling him 'Beba', and he still has that name today," says Lek Pervizi, a 90-year-old painter who remembers everything he experienced in Tepelena.
As a witness, he has visited since the 1950s, sketches of what the camp was like, 600 people in one barracks, 4,500 in the entire camp. Wooden sailor beds filled the barracks that functioned as halls without partitions. The space was divided, only those who had sheets, but sheets were a luxury.
I ask Mirakaj why the children were dying?! "There was an extermination camp here, 300 children died. The deaths had several causes, mainly the lack of food and hygiene. Both of these brought diseases that, since we were unable to cure them, led to death. The little ones' lives were cut short unjustly."
Survivors say that children and the elderly who died were buried outside the camp. The burial site changed three times. From the other side of the camp, it was taken to the Bënçës bridge by the river. In winter, the river, which was overflowing, would take them with it.
Are their remains still found? The 300 dead children have no graves, but even today they do not even have names. If a letter were written to them, to whom would it be addressed? Who were they? Where are they, nameless and without a grave? Their parents have passed away, no one is looking for them anymore. They have been denied life, death, remains and names, even 27 years after the fall of the communist regime.
In Albania, cinematography has not succeeded in making films like "The Son of Saul" or "The Boy in Striped Pyjamas", which would 'photograph' the history we did not see and for which words are not enough and have not been told enough except as statistical figures.
Nevertheless, I can imagine "Saul" searching for his son's (bones) in all four corners of the Tepelena camp, I can imagine the madness of the Albanian "Saul" desperately wandering with fragments of stories taken with 100 thanks from persecutors who are no longer persecuted, I can imagine "Saul", but I cannot imagine his son, nor his bones in a small white coffin in his father's hands.
“The boy with in stripped Pyjamas” (read the sons of the leadership who suffered the fate of those who condemned), maybe pays for the sins of their parents, but they have a name. The 300 sons of Saul do not. Amik Kasoruho and Robert Shvarc would say that no one returns the years of the Kaushës, but everyone has the right to ask today, who stole their childhood?
In 30 or so years we have mentioned victims, dead, murdered, interned, persecuted, shot, but rarely and only occasionally, alongside their names, have the names of the murderers, persecutors, investigators been found.
"In this museum, I would like the persecutors to be present alongside the victims, as they are in foreign museums, with photos and names. We can no longer continue to talk only about victims. The perpetrators have a name," - a young researcher would address Gentiana Mara on Wednesday, when discussing the project for a museum center in the Tepelena Camp.
The Deputy Head of the OSCE Presence, Robert Wilton, also sought the truth, when he said that its discovery "is key for the families of the missing, for society to move forward. Families need the truth, they need to mourn and remember their loved ones in peace."
Gjon Radovani has conceived a project where 300 cypress trees will remember the 300 children without graves in a memorial in the camp. Those cypress trees are an unwritten letter to the children, they are a missing apology.
Fallaci writes to his child: "I feel cold and say that life exists, I sleep and I feel life. Look, I see a light. Someone runs, cries, despairs. But somewhere else thousands and hundreds of children are born, and mothers of future children: life does not need you or me. You are dead. Maybe I will die too. But that does not matter. Because life does not die."
Every comparison is lame, but these phrases come to mind when I see the long-lost children who survived Tepelena: they have overcome the horror, they have found peace again, they have built a life without bitterness and hatred, they have found the strength to laugh, to return to the camp as old men and women, to confess, to tell in their own name and in the name of the children who never grew up, that in Tepelena there was a death camp where their childhood friends disappeared.
It is almost night when we leave Tepelena. On the left side of the road, the former camp disappears into the darkness. It seems to me that if I close my eyes I will hear the cries of little children begging for bread on a cold winter night, where the frost has swallowed everything. After moments of silence, they breathe their last./ Memorie.al/
