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After 1943 when the Italian military force capitulated and German troops took control of the
Albanian territory, NLM strove not only for the expulsion of the German troops from the
Albanian territory but also for the extermination of the BK. In the same year NLM received
the support of the British government, which continued to supply NLM with weapons
although it was familiar with the inner clashes between NLM in BK (cf. Jacques 1995: 442-
424). In 1944 NLM was renamed into the National Liberation Front; its distinguished
commander became Enver Hoxha. A month later, in June 1944, Hoxha launched an offensive
against German troops whose power gradually faded. On 29 November, 1944, a day after the
Albanian independence, Enver Hoxha triumphally marched to Tirana with his troops and took
control of the Albanian territory.
The Italian army occupied the villages of Himarë/Himara area in 1940. In order to make an
ambush for the Greek troops they set a base in the villages of Palasa and Dhërmi/Drimades.
The Italian army forces ordered the villagers to move out of the village and compensated them
with a sum of approximately 8000 Leks (or 65,52 Euros) per adult family member. The
majority of the villagers resettled temporarily to Vlorë, Narta and Durrës where they lived
together with their distant relatives or friends for the period of seven to eight months.
Except for the local man Foto Nina (2004: 129-130), the works of contemporary scholars
presented above do not discuss broadly about this resettlement. In his family biography Foto
Nina does not mention the payment that the people of Palasa and Dhërmi/Drimades received
from the Italian army for their resettlement. Instead of that he reports:
In this period the inhabitants of Palasa and Dhermi were violently resettled by the
Italian army. The refugees of our family settled in the village of Narta in Vlorë, where
they lived for 7 to 8 months (October or November 1940 until April or May 1941).
About this sing two nice poems of Nartiotes that describe their friendship with the
people of Dhërmi/Drimades (ibid.).
After Nina family returned to the village, everything was destroyed. The houses were
demolished and fields were devastated.
Other scholars, such as Rami Memushaj and the essayists of the edited collection of the
Albanian Academy of Science, who defend the pro-Albanian issue, and Jano Koçi, who
favours the local issue, do not write about the period of the Second World War at all. Whereas
Memushaj’s book about the culture, habits, history and ethnicity in Himarë/Himara closes its
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