As part of August 23, the European Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Totalitarian Regimes, the Authority for Information on the Files of the Former State Security commemorated the victims of the Valias internment camp, on the outskirts of Tirana.
The Head of the Authority, Gentiana Sula, shared with the public data extracted from archival documents, where for the first time the term concentration camp is officially used for Valias. She emphasized that the camp was initially established in 1945 for prisoners of war, but in the following years it became a place of internment for hundreds of Albanian civilians, reaching its peak in 1950 with about 800 internees, half of them children or infants.
"Documents show that the Valias camp was established in 1945 as a camp for prisoners of war, that is, for the occupier. In 1950, this camp reached its peak with 800 internees, of whom one in two was a child or infant, and although they numbered the size of a school, they did not have the opportunity to go to school, but grew up amidst hunger, disease and fear. There was only one well with murky water and the convicts suffered from dysentery, and they tell of mud huts and children who lost their lives," said Sula.
Also present at the event was Ethem Fezollari, president of the Anti-Communist Association of the Politically Persecuted and a survivor of the camp himself. He brought harrowing testimony from his experience as an interned child.
“I was 6 years old when I was interned for 3 and a half years in Valias. Pregnant women and women with young children were brought there, and I saw with my own eyes how babies were forcibly taken from their mothers and disappeared. I don’t believe that those children were killed, but I think they were alienated, raised by the regime and turned against their own families,” he said.
During the event, a documentary prepared by the Files Authority was also shown, which brought evidence of survival, archival documents and rare footage, shedding light on one of the least documented camps of the communist dictatorship in Albania.
