Revista Haemus nr. 30-32 - Libraria pentru toti

AUDACES FORTUNA JUVAT 30
Ai që rrnoi për me rrënue idhuj pa krena - At Zef Pllumi
'Zef Pllumi (1924-2007) was born in Mali i Rencit near Shkodra and joined
the Franciscan Order. As a twenty-year-old, he witnessed the Communist
takeover and the unprecedentedly violent suppression of the Catholic
Church in northern Albania. Most clergymen were arrested and many were
executed. Though he suffered much abuse, Pllumi managed to survive and
was ordained in 1956. He worked as a parish priest in Shosh in the
mountains of Dukagjin for some twelve years until 1967, when a
government edict was issued for the total abolition of religion. He was
arrested at that time and spent the following twenty-three years in prisons
and labour camps. His harrowing experience as a Catholic priest in
Stalinist Albania is recorded in his moving, 730-page memoirs, "Rrno vetëm
për me tregue" (I only live on to tell), Tirana 2006, of which an extract is
given here. Father Zef Pllumi died in Rome on 25 September 2007.
44
November 1944
The national holiday, 28 November 1944, was a cold, sombre day, perhaps
the most sombre one since the declaration of independence. Since
childhood, we had celebrated that day with lights, colour, songs, lots of
noise and the waving of flags. The flags still fluttered on the bell towers of
the churches, but they looked lonesome up there and no one paid any
attention to them that day. The Germans had all left their barracks, offices
and guard posts, and departed for Montenegro. Shkodra was expecting the
arrival of the partisans who had been waiting on Bardhaj Hill, in Postriba
and on the other side of the Bahçallëk Bridge for the Germans to leave.
That night, we heard several explosions that were so strong, they shattered
the windows of many homes. A German motorcyclist had returned from the
border crossing at Hani i Hotit to set off the mines placed under the bridges
connecting the town to the plains. After these explosions, which marked the
definitive departure of the Germans, no one slept a wink all night. There
was a sense in the Franciscan Monastery where we were living that the
West had taken an historic step at that moment and was abandoning us, and
30 Fati mban anën e guximtarëve / Destinul ţine partea curajoşilor – lat. Materiali që
po botojmë është riprodhuar nga Interneti / Materialul pe care-l publicăm aici a fost
preluat din Internet.