“… The leaves imply something that is concealed, the woods and the Sleeping Beauty of the fairy tales. This house is somehow the sleeping beauty that must be woken up, must be discovered…”
With these words organizers described the infamous building of the former State Security, known as the “House of Leaves”, which by decision of the Government will become the Museum of the State Security surveillance of the communist regime.
The presentation of the project in the yard of “House with Leaves” was attended by Prime Minister Edi Rama, the Minister of Culture, the Director of the National Intelligence Service, ambassadors of various countries to Albania, historians and contributors to the materialization of this idea.
The building used to be a center for interceptions and as such it hides painful stories of human lives. Until a short time ago, this building was little or not at all known to the public, but it has been conceived by Prime Minister Rama and, with a project led by the Ministry of Culture, will become a museum of collective memory, evidence of a time of totalitarian control of the country in the last half century, as the authors of the project defined it.
While presenting the project that has been entrusted to a group of authors, Minister Kumbaro emphasized that the goal of this project has an historical, educational and tourist importance.
“Today we have the will to open the solid and paper files, the mysterious homes and the mysteries locked in bunkers and tunnels. We do not have anything to hide. They will be opened, because we must not forget, because we have to learn, because we need to show, educate and be seen with our unusual history. Therefore, we need to open the taboo spaces; we are re-conceptualizing the forgotten and decrepit buildings, and it is part of our museum, creative, tourist and educational strategy”- Kumbaro said. In addition, she invited anyone who has a story to tell, or show evidence or documents about the activities of the “House with Leaves”, to become part of the contribution to the enrichment of this project.
Bashkim Shehu, one of the co-authors, while explaining the concept of the museum said that in general, the phenomenon of interceptions has been thought to be put in two aspects, as part of totalitarian control and surveillance results. In addition, Shehu made a plea to politics to not use and take advantage of this museum for the intents of the current policy.
The history of this building begins with its construction as a medical clinic in the 30s. Later in the years 43 – 44-during World War II it was transformed in the Gestapo’s offices and after the war it was used by the State Security of the time as investigative office. In the 50s, the State Security turned it into the main center of interceptions. By 2014, the building was under the administration of the State Informative Service, passed under the administration of the Ministry of Culture and by decision of the National Council of Museums the building was granted the status of Museum.
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Speech of Prime Minister Edi Rama at the presentation of the project to transform the interceptions building of the former State Security into a Museum:
I do not have much to add to what was said. The Ministry of Culture forgot to thank the current Director of the State Information Service, Mr. Visho Ajazi, whom I thank for the willingness and cooperation, because this building, just right before we entered here today, has been a building that has continued for inertia to be part of the Albanian secret service infrastructure, despite it was not used anymore since many years.
On the other hand, I have been surprised about the fact that according to the Director of the Service, but also to specialists asked to develop the project, although Albania of that time was far from being a force of high technological standards, this building used to have the most sophisticated equipment of the time, which for decades have been changed and replaced with newer devices of that time, brought by the capitalist west against which this building was fighting. The regime did not spare the money to keep up with the technology of the time, in order to intercept the lives of others.
This building is an Albanian testimony of the famous movie dedicated to the East German secret service, “The Life of Others,” which was known far and wide, and besides being an extraordinary movie from the artistic point of view it is bloodcurdling because it shows the real life of East Germany during the terrible years of separation by the Berlin Wall.
I like to bring here this example, because today we are doing neither more nor less, modestly with what we have inherited in this dark part of our heritage, what Germany did since the very beginning, immediately after the fall of the Wall. A process of open confrontation, directly and fearlessly with its past, even though it was a past that belonged in the body and soul to half of Germany, but that in the other half, the part that became the heart of the union, West Germany, it had a special significance, neither more nor less, because no crack, breach or scar should be left in the spiritual platform, which could cause an infection in the whole organism of the new German society, because of the failure to confront with the past of the half of its body, because of the failure to disinfect the half part that joined the other one on behalf of the future, but that would bring in this union a secret of the past in its own body.
This museum is the second in the chain of a project that will continue with the underground, since the capital’s infrastructure is yet to be discovered, and we will disclose it to the public, will show the underground tunnels that were part of the past regime’s secret infrastructure. And in the end, the project will be finalized as a museum of holes. The museum of the holes of the past, which are holes through which you can penetrate the physical infrastructure, but also the psychological infrastructure of our consciousness and at the same time, they will constitute a genuine museum map, starting from the center of Tirana, continuing in certain areas of the city’s underground, to touch then the next point of the regime’s anti-atomic palace, and extend in the form of a spider net, as it was in fact built the whole network structure of the state secret in Albania, turning into a labyrinth where new generations can be acquainted not only with the physical infrastructure, but also with the psychological infrastructure of the past, and where visitors, friends, people interested to know where we come from, can see and touch closely what has been one of the darkest, most mysterious and strangest images of the communist regime.
On the other hand part of this infrastructure will be the opening of files that already has turned into a bill that will be discussed by the Parliament in the coming weeks, based on the German model. In our view this is an excellent model to deal with the past, without using it in view of an internal political or social fight, but by putting the past at our disposal to ensure that this history will not be repeated in the future. In addition, to the part of the secret memory, including the infrastructure of files, will be attached a physical infrastructure which can be seen as much as possible by the public what was the entire edifice of surveillance, persecution and communist society involvement in a civil cold war between people who were targeted as a suspicious part of society and people who were every day afraid of entering the list of suspects. No one in Albania except Enver Hoxha was immune from that fear. Even members of the Politburo and the entire state pyramid, just as history of all communist or totalitarian countries shows, were affected by the fear that they might be intercepted and enter the list of suspects and then, the path of no return of persecution, torture and physical destruction, as happened to many of them. Because, ultimately, the history of the communist regime was a meaningful expression of how the revolution ends up being the greediest eater of its children, and of how the vicious cycle ends to its creators.
In conclusion I want to thank all the participants here and I have a special thanks to the German ambassador, for a very simple reason, because he contributed in this effort by bringing the voice of his country, based on the extraordinary experience of Germany after the fall of the Wall, in order to help the public, to help people, to help the entire debaters about this topic to understand a very simple fact: if Germany is today a model country with regard to democracy and with the past, and if Germany managed to make an excellent transparency process in relation to communism, it came as a result of the fact that Germany is a unique example in the history of mankind on the way it faced the guilt of World War II. With the end of World War II, surely no one, not even the most optimistic, but the illuminated German people could imagine that just a few decades later, the country would become, from the first country of all as a source of a threat to the world, the first country as a source of inspiration for everyone worldwide.
Thank you.
