Lushnjë Martyrs’ Cemetery

Posted on 05/04/2016 by Michael

Many of the Martyrs’ Cemeteries throughout Albania have a statue of one or more Partisans to stress that those commemorated were those who died in the National Liberation War of 1939-44. Sometimes there’s just one male Partisan, as in Korcë or Ersekë, sometimes there will be both a male and a female, as in Librazhd, sometimes (though rarely) there’s a group of three, as in Pogradec but there are also times when the symbol of sacrifice is in the form of a single female, as in Saranda and Fier. There’s a certain commonality between many of these statues, having been constructed at a similar time, but the statue of the female Partisan at the Lushnjë Martyrs’ Cemetery is quite unique in style and presentation.

The cemetery itself is built into the side of a small hill just a little way from the centre of town, on the northern edge of the main building concentration. The buildings close by are relatively new and when originally planned it would have been more or less in the countryside, but only a short distance from the main population centre.

There is a line of gates and fences at the bottom which guard two flights of steps, a narrow one on the left and a much wider one on the right. These sets of steps are separated by a line of six concrete containers in which a palm tree has been planted. Those on the left of the main steps are mirrored by smaller containers on the right hand side. This planting of palm trees in the martyrs’ cemeteries was quite common in those towns at lower elevations and would have created an avenue of trees for those visiting the cemetery. However, palm trees have to be trained to grow healthily and as some of the containers now only contain flowers I assume that the older trees have died off and haven’t been replaced.

Lushnjë Martyrs’ Cemetery – tombs

The tombs of the fallen are on four levels, going off to the left of the steps, following the curve of the hill. All these are in a good condition and the majority have a red star alongside the name of the partisan commemorated.

The Museum

Half way up the steps, on the right hand side, and a few metres from them, is a one story building which was the museum. This is a smart, one storey building which is in a good physical condition – I’ve seen some that have been allowed to decay (especially the one at the Krujë Martyrs’ Cemetery). The building is faced in marble tiles and on the side facing the approach road are the words:

Lavdi Dëshmorëve

which translates as:

Glory to the Martyrs

These words appear at virtually all martyrs’ cemeteries in the country.

The words are in black, painted metal and look in a very good condition – too good a condition to have been the originals. This cemetery must have had a major clean up in recent times and it now has the aspect of a cemetery where the people respect those who died in the war. On my visit there were a couple of women tending to the gardens and this is something that has become more common over the last few years – after decades of neglect. On the top left hand corner of this facade, to the left of the letters the concrete has been designed so that a large star has been cut out of the mould and the recess painted red. Here the paint looks very bright and new so obviously part of the renovation. There are a number of such stars throughout the area, including one at the very top of the steps and a some on the levels beside the tombs.

The word ‘Muzeu – Museum’ is in similar, though smaller, metal letters to the right of the entrance door. Inside there’s no longer a museum as such. Virtually all of these small, one room museums were looted in the early 1990s, or at least the artefacts taken and protected somewhere awaiting a time when they can be returned for display. This is also clean and there’s a new banner which has a picture of the cemetery’s statue, together with a series of six red stars that appear to rush out of the background. Under those images are the words:

Lavdi Dëshmorëve të Lushnjës

meaning

Glory to Lushnje’s Martyrs

taking the national slogan and applying it to the locality.

The only other exhibits in the room are four display boards which contain the photographs and details of 216 partisans. From information gained from the town’s Historical Museum only 184 of these died during the National Liberation War. I assume that the remaining 32 were Partisans who survived the war but were added to the list when they eventually died. I must admit I didn’t realise this at the time of my visit so don’t know if any of those have been interred in the Martyrs’ Cemetery.

The Cemetery

As I’ve said the area looks clean, bright and cared for. The very nature of the stone used, light coloured sandstone (I think) and marble facing means that, on a sunny day, the cemetery takes on the character of a respectful place to remember the dead.

However, there’s a problem when studying Albanian lapidars. There was a constant changing, improvement, introduction of new concepts throughout the 1970s and 80s. That was OK as all the documentation was kept in different archives. However, after 1990 one of the most important locations for storing this information was in the locale of the Albanian League of Writers and Artists. This archive was just destroyed. This means trying to get information about the past is very difficult.

(I always think that the destruction of this building and all it contained to have been an instructive education on the aims of the reactionary forces whose hatred was directed then, and subsequently – either through mindless vandalism or sheer neglect – at the public representations of the Socialist system. If they, or even the rest of the population in general, would use such venom against the present system of corruption then the country might start to go forward in a meaningful manner.)

Lushnjë Martyrs’ Cemetery

Looking at the present monument there’s a number of things that don’t look right. Behind the present statue there’s a huge concrete wall, faced with marble tiles, separating the cemetery from the surrounding countryside with its evergreen oaks on the hillside. This wall curves around, in a protective manner, the rest of the area. It was constructed for a purpose. Yet nowadays there’s nothing there, it’s just a blank space. Well, not quite.

On the left there’s a large area which is indented slightly from the general plane. At the moment this is painted a bright red, almost certainly from the same can which have been used to highlight the stars. But this just goes to indicate that something is not quite right. A close look at the area shows that under the paint there’s a rough concrete facing. The paint is not obscuring anything it just accentuates the fact that something is missing. Was it a mosaic? That would make sense. This part looks like a cinema screen and such an image would be logical in this position. If not, what?

On the right hand side everything is flat but there are indications that some sort of slogan, statement, call to arms would have been there originally. There are the holes that are the result of fixing metal letters to the wall. There’s also the shadow of letters, whether from the removed metal – which always leaves some sort of stain as the metal weathers – or a later addition to fill a spot with of an image no longer considered ‘politically correct’. The fact that the palm trees, still in existence, in front of this wall indicates that this area was also an important part of the whole monumental arrangement, now lost to posterity.

So, now to the unique statue that, fortunately, does still exist. The statue is dated 1984 and is made of bronze.

The Statue

This female Partisan fighter is a link with past ideas of presenting the Liberation fighters (from the late 1960s and early 70s) but also introduces concepts that take a qualitative leap to something new and more progressive and is one of the latest to have been installed. The death of Enver Hoxha in April 1985 seems, to all intents and purposes, to have signalled the end of Albania’s ‘Cultural Revolution’. This change in direction had serious consequences just over five years later.

Lushnjë Martyrs’ Cemetery – statue

She is about twice life-size, on a low plinth in the centre of the plateau at the top of the cemetery so that she looks down on the tombs below. As she’s on a low plinth it’s possible to appreciate the detail of the figure.

The links with the past are in the fact that she is in a full Partisan uniform, from head to toe, and she also displays all the aspects of a member of the Communist Party of Albania (later called the Party of Labour). On her head she wears a soft cap with her substantial head of hair spilling out at the sides and the back, over her neck. There’s a very obvious star fixed at the front. There’s a scarf tied around her neck and she’s dressed as if it were summer during the conflict, wearing a shirt that has the sleeves rolled up so that they end at her elbows. She is wearing the baggy, loose trousers of the Partisan, the bottoms of the legs tucked into long, woollen socks and on her feet a contemporary walking shoe.

This wearing of trousers must have caused a stir at the time. Before the invasion of the Italian Fascist forces in April 1939 the vast majority of women would have been wearing the clothing that Albanian women had been wearing for generations. This would have been challenged by the growing industrialisation, in such places as Durrës , where, for example, the Tobacco Factory would have provided employment for women, but would still not have been normal, especially in the countryside. The example of the 68 Girls from Fier leaving secretly at night to join the Partisans and the murder of young Liri Gero would, initially, have been a shock to many in such a traditional society, even in times of war.

As in virtually all such depictions she is armed, quite heavily. She has a bandolier diagonally across her chest, running down from her left shoulder, with eight ammunition pouches, each containing six bullets. Around her waist she wears seven such pouches. These are all to provide ready ammunition to her bolt-action rifle which is hanging behind her by way of a thick leather strap that rests on her left shoulder, close to the bandolier. She grips the end of the butt in her left hand, a pose not seen before.

It’s impossible to over-state the importance and relevance of such imagery. Having been born in a society where all women, but especially the young, were treated as second class citizens (or not even citizens at all) this young woman is making a statement that goes far beyond that of the feminist movement in the west from the 1960s onwards (with all its difficult and contentious history). By leaving home and actually fighting in a vicious war against a vicious enemy, by taking up arms and risking her life, by living and fighting amongst men unknown by her family, many of them ‘strangers’, she was challenging long-standing taboos, by wearing ‘men’s clothing’ and therefore being indistinguishable from her male comrades, by assuming positions of command and responsibility, by fighting for a cause that was greater than her own parochial and familial concerns but for all those who were poor and oppressed, she was, as were all the other women, literally ‘turning the world upside-down’.

It has to be remembered that by the time of victory at the end of November 1944 the women in the Albanian Partisan army had constituted around 16% of the total armed forces – and the majority of them were in combat roles and not just in ancillary and support roles. They were not given liberation they had fought for it, had suffered as much and had worked as hard as their male comrades. This accounts for their appearance in so many Albanian lapidars.

Compare this with war memorials in the west. On the monument I consider to be one of the finest in Britain, the Cenotaph on St George’s Plateau in the centre of Liverpool, ALL the fighters are male and the only depictions of a woman is as a sad, weak mourner, really a victim of war, without any ability to have a direct effect on the outcome of the conflict. This is a representation of the situation after the First World War but in the capitalist west this situation wasn’t significantly different twenty plus years later when the world went to war against Fascism.

But the Lushnjë Partisan says much more. Her stance is very different. Normally the Partisans are shown standing to attention or with a raised fist in the revolutionary salute. Here she is half kneeling with her left knee on the ground whilst her right foot is on the ground. This is to provide a platform for the other unique aspect of this statue. I said that she is a lone, female partisan, but she is not alone. Her bent right leg provides a space upon which a very young boy is standing.

This idea appears nowhere else, to the best of my knowledge. Here the Partisan takes on the role of ‘Mother Albania’. Not just a symbolic role as is the huge statue in the National Martyrs’ Cemetery in Tirana. This ‘Mother Albania’ has given birth to the opportunity of a new future. By her actions and self-sacrifice the independent country has a chance it never had before. But that future is not guaranteed, the outcome not certain and the road a difficult one to follow.

It is the young boy, really little more than a toddler, who is taking that road. She is there to support him, as she is in the statue with her strong right hand gripping the boy just under his right armpit, as he takes his first, tentative steps. The fact that she is also dressed as a soldier and is fully armed indicates that this Mother Albania is prepared to fight to support this construction of a new society. I also believe that the connection between her weapon and the child provides another indication of this willingness, and necessity, to use force to create something new. This idea is also present in the statue of the Partisan and Child in Borovë as well as in the monumental mosaic in Bestrovë.

He is dressed in toddlers clothes, a light t-shirt, with an open shirt above that, and flimsy shorts. His right foot is firmly placed on the Partisan’s thigh but he is in the act of attempting to step forward with his left leg. His foot is a few inches above the thigh and his left arm is slightly outstretched as if getting his balance. His whole demeanour is tentative, lacking certainty, unsure whether to go ahead or not. He’s focused, looking straight ahead (as is the Partisan) so he knows where he wants to go, the uncertainty comes from not knowing how exactly to get there. Already he knows that the road towards Socialism has its twists and turns.

Bouquet of poppies and grain

He is Albania, a young socialist nation, even though that socialism was 40 years old at the time of the casting of the bronze. We know he’s Albania because in his fully raised hand he holds a bouquet of poppies – the national flower of the country. He’s also Lushnjë as together with the flowers he holds two ears of grain. At the time of Socialism the town was in the centre of one of the grain-growing regions of the country. The first collective farm was established in Krutja, only a few kilometres to the south, and the whole area is criss-crossed with irrigation systems, allowing the fertile grounds of the coast to be used productively by the construction of huge systems of irrigation bringing water from the mountains – many parts of which have just been allowed to decay and rot as well as the collective land of all the people being privatised and divided into almost feudal strips. You can also appreciate the importance of agriculture in the area by the imagery on the huge monument, ‘Toke Jonë – Our Land’, in the centre of town.

Within six years of this statue being created the people of Albania decided that they no longer wanted to take that difficult road.

The statue is generally in a good condition. However there appears to be a quick and ready repair on the right hip, just below the ammunition belt, and something that looks like a small calibre bullet hole on her right thigh.

The Sculptor

We know the sculptor as he placed his name on the bronze plinth before casting. His name was Maksim S Bushi. He was born in 1948 and trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Tirana, where he now works as an instructor as well as being a teacher in his home town of Lushnjë. He made a bust of Abraham Lincoln in 2004 and it now sits in the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, Illinois in the United States. He has also supposed to have created other busts and sculptures throughout the country but I haven’t come across them myself. However, he surely hasn’t created anything as masterful as his allegory in the Lushnjë Martyrs’s Cemetery.

Location:

The cemetery can be found at the far end of Shetitorja e Palmave, about 1 kilometre from the centre, on the northern edge of the town.

GPS:

40.948445

19.69575802

DMS:

40° 56′ 54.4020” N

19° 41′ 44.7289” E

Altitude:

34.5 m

A War (Krigen), 2015, Dir: Tobias Lindholm

Posted on 25/02/2016 by Michael

Murdered children in Afghanistan

WARNING: This review contains spoilers.

Even though the invasion and subsequent war in Afghanistan has been a total strategic disaster, now turning into a seemingly never-ending conflict, there hasn’t been a shortage of films, both fictional and documentary, about this foreign involvement. The situation was very different following the US invasion of Vietnam where Hollywood took years to be able to address the shameful defeat of the most powerful nation on Earth. (The trouble is that this preparedness to look at the open wounds doesn’t seem to have led to any significant reluctance to get involved in foreign wars, either on the side of the politicians or the public of the respective countries.) The most recent in this series of films is A War – Krigen, directed by Tobias Lindholm.

One of the possible reasons for this spate of soul-searching is the advance in photographic technology. In the 1970s and 80s it wasn’t easy to make a film without a huge amount of resources. Today films can be, and have been, made on smart phones and light weight, yet high quality digital video cameras. It is from this standpoint that has made ‘A War’, a reasonably low-budget film produced from a relatively small country, possible.

This is a film from the Danish perspective. Previous films have looked at the situation from the viewpoint of the two major players in the debacle, the Americans and the British, so it’s slightly refreshing to see how another, junior partner, in this coalition of hypocrisy and double-talk sees as its role on the world stage.

(Here it should be mentioned that the Afghans themselves are still either the ‘enemy’ or the victims. No one has sought to look at the almost 15-year-old war from the perspective of those who have been on the receiving end of all the billions of pounds worth of bullets, air strikes and missiles. But then we still haven’t seen a film that concentrates on the plight of the Vietnamese in their struggle against American Imperialism.)

Although the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, under the name of ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’, was supposed to bring a better life to the inhabitants there’s no indication at all that there have been any real positive gains for the local populace. The Taliban haven’t been defeated, far from it. Recent information indicates they seem to be getting more powerful day by day as the ordinary Afghan peasant lives under the oppression and corruption of the ‘democratically elected’ government and its US/UK trained puppet army. So-called ‘collateral damage’ means that innocent people are daily at risk of being killed following their normal routine in order to survive. The cultivation of the heroine poppy has resumed with a vengeance resulting in the reappearance of drug lords, together with the inevitable violence and mayhem following such a trade (which had been virtually eliminated under the Taliban, as recognised by the United Nations only a matter of weeks before the invasion of the country in 2001) and tribal War Lords control huge swathes of the country.

‘A War – Krigen’ takes place in 2003 when it could be argued (at least by the occupying forces, not by me) that there was a chance of changing things for the better, that the armed forces from so many countries, a grand coalition – so as to spread the blame if not the glory – could still say, without a hint of irony, that they were there for the people of Afghanistan. But they were only there if it meant that casualties on the invading forces’ side were at an absolute minimum.

These Danish soldiers whoop and holler at the death of a ‘terrorist’ but go into mental melt down when one of their own is injured – similar scenarios having also been depicted in previous fictional or documentary films about the war. Behind this is the mindset and thinking of the invading powers that because they have ‘right’ on their side they are, or, at least, should be, invincible. They have the technology, the weapons, the protection, the back up (both in terms of military intelligence and medical resources), that they are the ‘good guys’ – so how can they lose?

This has been the thinking of the imperialist countries in all the wars, ‘insurgencies’, ’emergencies’ and uprisings they have been involved in since the end of the Second World War. They have the God-given right to do what they so chose in whatever part of the world they chose to do it and if anyone in those countries opposes their invasion they are immediately branded as being insurgents and terrorists (and other descriptions with negative and racist connotations) so therefore their lives are of no value and expendable. This way of looking at the local population resulted in the countless massacres committed by these forces of ‘democracy and freedom’ that was epitomised by the murderous attack on the Vietnamese villages around My Lai in March 1967.

My Lai Massacre

Although, I suppose, ever since warfare (even before anyone could enunciate the term, in whatever language) began the aim was to inflict the heaviest casualties on the enemy with the least to yourselves. However, in any conflict it would be ludicrous to expect that you can go up against an enemy and not sustain casualties. Granted the British have not been that good at the useless throwing away of young lives, witness the infamous ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ in October 1854 during the Crimean War and the countless examples of huge casualties, with little or no territorial gain, on the Western Front in the War of 1914-19.

But following on from the imperialist arrogance is an idea that war is in some manner ‘safe’. If we are fighting ‘evil’ when right is on our side, together with God, less body bags will be needed. Politicians who start these wars want to perpetuate such a fallacy as it allows them to convince the majority of unthinking people that the costs of war are not that great, that the days of high casualties are a thing of the past.

This led to the crazy and bizarre situation that developed around the returning bodies from recent wars in the Middle East which arrived at the Royal Air Force base at Lyneham in Wiltshire in the South West of the UK. The parading of the coffins through the near-by town of Wootton Bassett, which at first was seen as a ‘proud’ nation honouring those who had died ‘to keep us safe’ became a political and military embarrassment. Making a big show on a few occasions was politically advantageous to the State but when it was a regular event it only went to show that the war wasn’t going the way the aggressors thought it would. One senior military officer even stated that such public displays of ‘grief’ were counter-productive as war will invariably mean death and it was dangerous to the State if death was fetishised.

It is by putting this idea of the welfare of the injured to the fore that leads the Danish officer (who, in normal circumstances, shouldn’t have been on the front line at all anyway) to call in air support to attack and destroy a compound from where he ‘thinks’ the Taliban might be firing. The consequence of this is that a number of civilians, including children, end up being killed or wounded. For this he is recalled to Denmark to face a legal inquiry.

This might be considered a genuine approach to dealing with the reasons for civilian casualties, especially when the issue is seen through the ‘liberal’ eyes of a Scandinavian country – although that liberalism is becoming somewhat tarnished with some of the more draconian laws that have been passed as a response to the increase in the number of migrants arriving in Europe in the last year or so. But by placing the incident in ‘the heat of war’ the commander has a get out, whether he is telling the truth or not.

In the fifteen years of the foreign occupation the majority of the casualties have been civilians and most of them were killed by the occupying forces. The obscene term ‘collateral damage’ (coined by the Americans around 1968, in relation to possible outcomes of a nuclear conflict but then used in their war of aggression against the Vietnamese people) is now so commonly used that people in general don’t seem to baulk at the seriousness of the consequences of military action on the local populace. We can also see the hypocrisy of the US and other ‘western’ countries when a similar situation is indeed a crime when committed by others, e.g., the Russians in Syria in 2016, but is OK if committed by them in any theatre of war. We should also remember that the US refuses to allow any of their personnel to be committed for any sort of war crimes, even when one of their soldiers leaves a base, at night, twice, and goes on a killing spree, randomly murdering people in their beds.

Cinema has rarely dealt with the issue of civilian deaths in the many wars since 1945, after which year civilians were no longer the ‘rear’ but the forefront of any conflict. This was even more so in those situations where the fighters were guerillas who lived amongst and came from the people. Taking Chairman Mao’s dictum that the guerillas should be ‘like fish swimming in water’ of the populace the reactionary forces sought to drain the rivers and lakes. Whereas ‘A War’ fudges this issue of civilian deaths (and gets publicity owing to it being nominated for an Academy Award) a film that addressed the use of drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan, ‘Good Kill’ (2014), was almost totally ignored.

Being a ‘liberal’ country the case of the civilian deaths is investigated by the Danish military authorities and the commander called back home to face a court of inquiry. An interesting aspect of this inquiry was the depiction of the Danish court process itself, not just for this fictional case but for anyone who has to face ‘justice’ in that country. The informality makes the process much less intimidating than it is in a British or American setting and gives the impression, at least, that the person on trial is innocent until proven guilty. This was even down to using the given name rather than the surname of the accused.

Although the viewer knows that the commander is guilty we have to wait to see if this guilt will be proven in an ‘impartial’ inquiry. Witness after witness gives evidence that seems to place another nail in the commander’s coffin until one witness states, categorically, that he ‘knew’ there was concrete evidence for the commander to call in the air strike, the consequences of which were the civilian deaths. This evidence gets the officer off.

Now this particular development introduces interesting aspects of the military of capitalist and imperialist countries. If we can imagine that this situation is real and were to go into the future following this trial and ask ourselves who would be more trusted by his comrades, those who told the truth or the liar, we would have to say the liar. That’s because the very structure of capitalist armed forces is based upon a small group of people having absolute faith in the idea that those around each individual will be supported, in many ways unquestioningly, by the others in his group.

In the situation presented to us in this film how could anyone have such trust in a person who was prepared to see the conviction of one of their own, albeit a senior officer? The countless cases of those soldiers accused of crimes in the invasions of Middle Eastern countries in the 21st century, with none of them ending up being ‘proven’, is testimony to the closed nature of such groups of killers. It’s exactly the same situation amongst the police where there’s an unwritten code of practice in which the truth is just far too inconvenient.

There is another consequence of these constant invasions and wars and this is the effect that the killing process has on those very well supported, very well supplied and very well armed soldiers. This is demonstrated in a scene early in the film.

A situation arises where one of the members of the patrol is so traumatised by one of his comrades stepping on an IED (Improvised Explosive Device) that he virtually breaks down and refuses to go on patrol. Being a ‘liberal’ country the Danish commander (who establishes his credentials as caring and concerned about those under his command) allows him to be reassigned to base duties until he can get his act together. Here we are presented with the issue of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).

Now in 2003 it could have been possible to say that those who were in the armies of the imperialist invaders weren’t aware of the consequences of what they were doing. I say ‘could’ rather than ‘would’ as I would have thought that anyone who is prepared to be taught how to use instruments whose only purpose is to kill should understand that death was going to be the consequence of those instruments being used. The hope is that the deaths would be ‘theirs’ but, from time to time, it could be ‘ours’. So why the surprise? Despite how they might be presented at times in the past armies are killing machines, they are not an arm of the social services.

It’s also important to remember that all the armies from all the countries that have been part of a US led ‘coalition’ are composed of volunteers. They are not conscripts as they were in the wars in Korea or Vietnam. These men and women had, and still do, make a conscious decision to enlist. I don’t know why they are surprised when they are confronted with the realities of war. Are they so stupid that they think the real thing is like the computer games that might have convinced them to join up in the first place? That once someone is killed all they have to do is reboot and they will come alive again?

If that’s valid for 2003 how much more valid is it for 2016? Those who are joining these armies now were only toddlers when these 21st century wars of aggression started and since the ‘war of terrorism without end’ began. If they watch the news and think they want to be like John Wayne (who never fired a bullet against a real enemy and, therefore, never had to face danger himself, unlike many in Hollywood, either the actors or scriptwriters he was party to ostracising at the time of (HUAC) the House Un-American Activities Committee – see the film ‘Trumbo’ for a good take on Wayne’s ‘patriotism’) don’t they also know that PTSD is a part of these wars? So now that issue is becoming a drain of health services, a problem to the societies to which they return yet still not an issue that makes people address the validity of such wars in the first place. And, most importantly of all in this, the mental welfare of the men, women and children who are on the receiving end of all these billions of pounds worth of munitions is not considered at all. The wars nominally being fought for their well-being and future don’t take their well-being and future into account.

Finally, other films addressing the war in Afghanistan have almost exclusively concentrated on the soldiers in the country itself, their home lives only considered as an aside, being part of banter amongst the soldiers, referenced by telephone/Skype conversations with family members or by images of the ‘life they left behind’ on the walls of their barracks. In ‘A War’ not only do we get the court room scenes back in Denmark we also get an indication of the problems that can occur within the family as a consequence of the father being away for such a long time.

But here we have another contradiction. We are talking about 2003, a couple of years after the ‘war on terror’ began. Presumably the wife of the commander married, and had children, with a man who was in the military but then he was only playing at being a soldier, not killing other people and not being put in danger. Things start to fall apart when he is doing the job he signed up for many years before and for which he is being paid. So why this shock when matters develop so that he actually does what he was trained to do? Why are so many parents and families proud of their sons and daughters dressed in their smart uniforms at their coming out parades not aware what they could face in the future? Why is it always someone else’s fault if they should get killed or injured in a foreign country? Why do so many people want to claim victim status? If you make a conscious decision to go to another country and kill its people live (or die) with the consequences.

If Denmark is not exactly an imperialist nation at present it is certainly there to support the interests of the most aggressive and powerful imperialist nation at the moment, that is the USA. NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance) exists to dance to the tune that the US decides to play. Huge resources, from all the countries in the organisation, are directed towards this end. As the grip of capitalism and imperialism weakens the necessity for these national forces to get involved in international conflicts has increased – and this will be even more so in the foreseeable future.

Imperialism appears to be strong because it seems to have the ability to respond in any part of the world with massive amounts of force. But can this really be seen as a success for imperialism? In Afghanistan the US has been involved in the longest war in the country’s history – and it’s not fully disengaged yet. In 2001 GW Bush declared the ‘war on terror’ would go on as long as it takes and in the middle of February 2016 the French Prime Minister said that ‘hyper-terrorism (whatever that might be) is here to stay’. So the imperialist powers have already admitted that all the invasions of the 21st century have not achieved, in any sense whatsoever, the goals they set themselves 15 years ago.

So, as far as imperialism is concerned, we are in a more dangerous situation than the world was at even the height of the ‘Cold War’. The threat of nuclear extinction from the Soviet Union has been replaced by an enemy that hates what the west represents in a way never seen before. In the past those people who had suffered at the hands of rapacious and murderous imperialism, from the Americas through to Africa and on to Asia have, in some ways, ‘forgiven’ the oppressors or, at least, pushed the events of the past to the back of their minds. Not now. Those groups whose foundation goes back to the times of anti-Communism in Afghanistan are not thanking their progenitor. Just the opposite. The child hates the father in a way not before seen in modern times. The chickens have truly come home to roost.

The so-called ‘Arab Spring’ of 2010/11 has changed the situation in the countries were it took place not one iota. Whatever the optimism and enthusiasm that existed over that period of time some of the faces at the top might have changed but substantially the situation for the vast majority of the population remains the same. Worse than that, some of those countries which underwent a popular uprising are even more aggressive, both nationally and internationally, as they were prior to 2010, Turkey being a case in point.

It’s true that imperialism has succeeded in destroying those functioning societies that were a potential threat to its interests in the region, in the case of Iraq, Libya and Syria, but at what cost to the people? Those once strong militarily countries whose leaders were from time to time courted by the ‘west’ when it suited, are now in chaos with the consequences beginning to have an effect on Europe as more and more refugees seek sanctuary in a part of the world that caused the problem in the first place.

But the populations of the countries who have gave birth to, then incubated this hatred so that it has grown into a myriad of western value hating groups in an increasing number of countries throughout the world, don’t seem to realise that they are part of the problem themselves. Their acquiescence in the face of the jingoism and sabre rattling of their ‘democratically’ elected governments is forgotten. The ones who are fundamentally the cause of the problem claim victim status. Those killed in acts by these ‘fundamentalist’ groups are described as ‘innocents’ yet those civilians killed in drone attacks, air raids or just because they were in the wrong place at the time of a military operation are dismissed as being merely ‘collateral damage’ and all the resources of the invading forces is put into sanitising and excusing those responsible. The lives of an Afghani or an Iraqi is considered of lower value to that of a European. Is it any wonder that people are angry?

‘A War’ is not, by any means, the best film about the invasion of Afghanistan or any other wars that are taking place at the moment (or even of those to come) but it does offer the opportunity for people to look at their own complicity and hypocrisy if they care to do so. I fear, as has been the case in all the other imperialist attempts to maintain or increase their influence in the past, most people will just hope that the problem will go away. It might have quietened down in the past but the result is unlikely to be the same in the present or the future. One day people are going to have to make a decision to challenge the status quo otherwise this war really will go on forever.

The ‘Hanged Women’ of Gjirokastra

Posted on 20/04/2015 by Michael

The Hanged Women – Gjirokastra

The ‘Hanged Women’ of Gjirokastra

Tucked away at the top end of Sheshi Çerçiz Topulli (Square) in the old part of Gjirokastra is a small statue which you could easily miss. Next to the potted plants in front of the Tourist Information Office is a white stone statue, of the upper body, of two women. This is a representation of Bule Naipi and Persefoni Kokëdhima who were executed by the German Nazis in 1944. From that time they became known as the Hanged Women of Gjirokastra.

Both of the women were in their early twenties when their country was invaded by the Fascists and, like 6,000 other women (out of a Partisan force of 70,000) they decided to take up arms to drive the invaders from their land.

bule

Bule was born in Gjirokastra town and apart from the statue in the main square she is referenced, as a ‘People’s Heroine’, on a monument in the Dunavat area of the town. She was a member of the youth group of which Qemal Stafa was the leader so it would seem that she had adopted the Communist ideology at an early age.

persefoni

I’m not sure where Persefoni came from but apart from the monument to her death in Gjirokastra she is mentioned on the monuments in Qeparo Fushë (which is on the Adriatic coast), Kardhiq (in the mountains to the north-west of Gjirokastra) and Përmet (in a couple of valleys over to the east of Gjirokastra). This would seem to indicate she had been a Partisan for some time and had been involved in quite extensive sorties against the Fascists.

The exact circumstances of their capture I’m not aware but it seems they were captured at more or less the same time, imprisoned and then the German Nazis decided to make an example of these young and courageous women in an effort to deter others from opposing their occupation. These terror tactics are common in the history of imperialism.

A favoured tactic by the Nazis throughout Eastern Europe was the public hanging of those who had been fighting against them on being captured and, according to the statistics, this was even more common when women were concerned. The intense military opposition to the Fascist invasion in countries such as Albania and the Soviet Union meant that there are no pictures of women walking arm in arm with the German invaders in Tirana and Moscow (as you do in Paris). What we do get, however, are hundreds of pictures of young women hanging from the gallows in public squares.

These were not the executions that might take place in those countries where capital punishment was, or still is, the case. Everything was done by the Fascists to turn the occasion of the killing of an individual into a lesson in politics. There would be no, or very limited, process of law. Many of the executions were carried out summarily and even if there was the pretence of a trial the outcome was known before it had begun. Almost always they would be public executions, carried out in a main square, with the rest of the population forced to watch. Here the aim was to both strip the victims of their dignity and give that added spice to the terror instilled into the onlookers.

Neither was the execution the clinical affair that was eventually meted out to those German Fascists found guilty at the Nuremberg Tribunals of 1945-9. Those who were dealt with by Albert Pierrepoint would die in seconds. This would have been in ‘ideal’ circumstances. However, on the streets of Gjirokastra on July 17th 1944 Bule and Persefoni would have been stood on a stool under a low and flimsy gallows, with a thin piece of rope around their necks tied in a crude slip knot and then strangled to death when the stool was kicked away. As in the case of most of these lynchings the two women faced their fate with dignity and a continued hatred of the enemy. It was the practice of the Nazis to leave the bodies hanging for as long as possible to hammer home the message but as they were murdered in the summer they would have been cut down quite quickly. (This is just one of the reasons I am opposed to the German War Cemetery in the park behind the University in Tirana.)

The two young women were murdered in the square where the statue now stands.

Now the statue in Gjirokastra’s main square is not one of my favourite examples of Socialist sculpture. In fact I can think of no other I find less pleasing. I don’t yet know who was the sculptor but I don’t think it’s one of the best, or most appropriate of monuments, to two brave, young women.

They appear thin and haggard. Their faces are gaunt and their eyes seem to be bulging out of the sockets. The facial expression says nothing, unsmiling but not telling us anything else about how they might have been thinking. Compare this lack of expression with, for example, the statue to the Partisan in the centre of Tirana. He’s angry (sometimes I think a little bitter – and that’s something coming from someone who harbours a lot of anger) and you know that immediately you look at his face. You don’t get any emotion from this statue, not even a sensation of dignity. Also, there’s a problem with the location. It’s pushed to the edge of a car park, close to a building, as if it’s only there on sufferance (which it probably is) and doesn’t permit the viewer to consider the monument for what it represents.

But in a study of Socialist Realism these two Communist martyrs allow an analysis which has not been possible to date. Not only is there a statue in the location of their deaths but their fate has been represented in a number of media which suggest a number of interesting ideas.

As far as I’m concerned a better sculpture is one created by Odhise Paskali in 1974. This is called ‘The Two Heroines’, which I think is a better title than ‘The Hanged Women’. (Since I first came across this story and related art works I’ve always considered that there’s something cold and almost impersonal in referring to such courageous women in such a way. It seems to say that their short lives are determined solely by the manner in which they died.)

The Two Heroines – Odhise Paskali

(The original of this statue is in the corridor of the old Gjirokaster Castle Prison. It was from this prison that the two women were led downhill to the main square of the old town for their public execution. It can be seen by going upstairs to the Armaments Museum – which has some interesting examples of Socialist realist Art (both paintings and sculptures). The entrance to the prison is off this part of the museum.)

This is more sympathetic to the situation. They look like young women and have determination etched on their faces. It’s a head a shoulders view of the two women and they are joined by their hair. By doing so it tends to go against reality as Persefoni was much taller than Bule but here they are on the same level. However much I consider this to be a better statue there is an important aspect which I think is bizarre. That is the addition of the noose around their necks.

Why? It again defines the women by their deaths. This is just crass Catholic Christian imagery and should have nothing to do with Socialist Realism. If you were to visit Catholic churches in Spain and Italy you would encounter countless paintings and images where the Christian martyr would be depicted alongside the cause of his/her death, normally with an enigmatic look on their face. I don’t understand why this should appear in the country to have declared itself an atheist state, as Albania did in Article 37 of the 1976 Constitution. This is why there’s always a need for a Cultural Revolution to monitor how the society and its history are being represented. ‘People’s Heroes/Heroines’ might be martyrs for the cause of independence and communism but there’s a fine line between that and the idea of Christian martyrs.

There’s another image that seems to follow the approach adopted by Paskali and that’s an engraving by Safo Marko.

Bule and Persefoni

This is a triptych. On the left is an image of Bule involved in a demonstration in her home town. As a member of the youth groups this is what she would have been doing before heading for the hills and joining the Partisans. On the right is an image of a female Partisan, armed and marching through the hills. This could represent either of the women. The problem comes with the central, bigger panel.

Here the two women are depicted, in chains, standing before a very large tree, two nooses hanging from one of the lower branches. This repeats the Christian idea of martyrs together with the instruments of their death but with the added problem of creating a ludicrous scenario. They were killed in the main square of an old fortress town built there because what was in abundance was a lot of stone. No way could such a tree exist in that environment. The scene suggests that the murder took place in the countryside.

Another engraving, this one more in the spirit of Socialist Realism, is by Lumturi Dhrami.

Heroinat Bule Naipi e Persefoni Kokëdhima

Here we know we are in Gjirokastra with the image of the castellated tower on the horizon and the cobbled streets along which the execution party is walking, downhill towards Sheshi Çerçiz Topulli. The two women are in the centre foreground, one in profile the other looking out of the picture. There’s determination on their faces. They know what is about to happen but there’s an impression of ‘so what?’.

They are surrounded by German soldiers but also in the picture are Albanian collaborators, these would have been members of the fascist-nationalist of Balli Kombëtar who allied with the ‘nation of Aryans’ as they shared similar racist and anti-progressive beliefs.

There are also two paintings I’ve seen depicting Persefoni and Bule. The first one I’ve yet to identify the painter and I’m sorry it’s such a fuzzy image.

The ‘Hanged Women’ of Gjirokastra

What’s interesting about this painting is that I’ve seen photographs where the image was being used in classrooms to tell children about the event in 1944. This is not an exceptional painting (although I’ve only seen a poor reproduction) but is simple in that we have four individuals, the two restrained women and two Nazi guards taking them to their execution. The castle walls form part of the background and in the foreground we can see the bayonet of one of the invaders, the greyness of the soldiers uniforms in contrast to the colours (muted but colours nonetheless) of the women’s clothing.

The final image I’ve come across is a painting by Pavllo Moçi simply called ‘Persefoni and Bule’ which is in the collection of the Duress Art Gallery.

Persefoni and Bule – Pavllo Moçi

This depicts the two women in a prison cell, holding hands as the door of the cell is opened by the Nazi guards to take them to their death. Persefoni is on the left and has her right arm in a sling. Bule is standing defiantly with her legs slightly apart as if ready to fight against all odds. Light coming through the door shines on them, highlighting them against the gloom of the cell itself, with the guard in shadow, all demonstrating where the future lies.

On the walls they have scratched the letters VFLP representing “Vdekje Fashizmit – Liri Popullit!” (“Death to Fascism – Freedom to the People!”) which can be seen on the Heroic Peze monument, at the junction of the Tirana-Duress road, and the Peze War Memorial in the Peze Conference Memorial Park, among others.

The two women defiant to the end!

‘The Hanged Women’ – Gjirokaster (Andrew Andison)

The ‘renovation’ or ‘restoration’ of Socialist lapidars in Albania is, at best, a hit and miss affair. Often it just takes the form of a quick coat of whitewash over a monument to hide the ravages of time and the weather. This seems to have been the approach in Gjirokastra during the early part of 2017 – and the result can be seen above (thanks to Andrew for sending through a copy of his picture).

If there was no proper cleaning of the mould before the coat of paint was applied the statue will revert to it’s previous state soon after an Albanian winter.

Update November 2021

Currently the Çerçiz Topulli Square in the old town of Gjirokaster is being dug up and an underground car park is being constructed. This work will go well into 2022. As part of this work the statue of the Two Hanged Women (pictured at the head of the post) has been removed. It is not known whether it will return once the construction work is complete. It probably will as the present local government in Gjirokaster does seem to have a sense of history. It can only be hoped that when the statue returns it comes with an explanation of what it represents. Most Gjirokastrians won’t know the history, even less any visitors from other parts of Albania or the rest of the world.

Also I am adding here another painting representing the day of execution of the two young Partisans. Paintings from the Socialist Period of Albania’s past may not be on permanent exhibition but they are still (at least some of them) in public hands and in storage – although not always stored in the best of conditions.

Persefoni and Bula – G Modhi 1966

This telling of the story is by the artist Guri Modhi (1921-1988) who also was the painter of ‘The Partisan Oath’ (1968) which has been part of the permanent exhibition of Socialist Realist Art in the National Art Gallery in Tirana for many years. (At present the gallery is displaying virtually everything from the store-rooms and it is not known what the permanent exhibition will be once this display comes to an end.) This was on display in the theatre in the centre of the new town on the occasion of the 75th Anniversary of the Liberation of the city on 18th September 1944.

Lavdi Shqiperise – Gjirokastra

One positive aspect of the location is that the two women are looking over towards the wall which forms part of the local government building. On this, picked out in large letters in relief, are the words ‘Lavdi Shqiperise’ – ‘Glory to Albania’ or ‘Long Live Albania’. Even though I had looked at this carefully it didn’t register that there’s something wrong. There’s a lack of symmetry. Why are the words so far apart and what is the ‘scar’ between them? It has been brought to my attention that the space (where someone has worked hard to obliterate what was there before) almost certainly contained the words ‘Partise se Punes e (Shqiperise)’, PPSH or the Party of Labour of Albania (PLA).

This is just another example of the vandalism that swept the country after the counter-revolution of 1990. The reactionaries still try to present themselves as patriots but if it were not for the Communists in the National Liberation Front in the war against fascism then the country would have only the sort of independence it has at present, that is, one where millions have to work abroad; foreign NATO troops crawl over the country like flies; local industry and agriculture is at a pre-capitalist stage; young Albanian women populate the brothels of Europe; and the country begs to be let into the ‘big boys’ club of the EU.

I’ve not come across this type of inscription (whether in its original or vandalised form) in any other town in Albania. It is partly obscured by trees and any vehicle that might be parked on that side of the square can block the view so it can be easily missed.

Left side of the road

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Category Archives: War

Lushnjë Martyrs’ Cemetery

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A War (Krigen), 2015, Dir: Tobias Lindholm

WARNING: This review contains spoilers.

The ‘Hanged Women’ of Gjirokastra

The ‘Hanged Women’ of Gjirokastra

Update November 2021