...thousand of Italian soldiers sought refuge and solace from ordinary Albanians *Γράφει ο Gazmend Kapllani

Today Greeks celebrate the “NO/OXI Day”, when the Greek Army resisted courageously to Mussolini’s invasion of their country (after invading and occupying Albania in April 1939, the fascist army attacked Greece in October 1940).

However, one of the most tragic and unknown pages related to the Second World War has to do with the fate of the Italian soldiers in Albania, after September 8th 1943.

On this date General Dwight Eisenhower and General Pietro Badoglio announced the Armistice. The Italian Army, with no commanders and no orders, dissolved in Italy and abroad. Soldiers didn’t know what to do.

In Albania, many of them were taken prisoner by the Germans who invaded Albania, crossing to Albania from Yugoslavia.

Reports from the time refer that “at the moment there are about 25,000/30,000 Italians in Albania. Most of them are ex soldiers who didn’t want to go on fighting with Germans. So they have chosen to be on the side of Albanian partisans against the conquerors, or to be prisoner in the Internment Camp. These ex soldiers, in the hope to be able to go home, walk down from the mountains in very poor conditions: sick, starving, without clothes and shoes. (…) But there are also some civilians, and for them the situation is very bad, too. They have received from the Germans any kind of violence and now they live in a squalid poverty”.

The report registers heartbreaking accounts that often highlight the difficulty to find also very simple and essential things, like coffins for the dead.

In the meantime, thousand of Italian soldiers sought refuge and solace from ordinary Albanians. The families of both my parents gave refuge to Italian soldiers who were trying to escape the Germans.

In the case of my mother’s family the Italian soldier was named Serafino and he was from Calabria. He was a terrific cook and started working in the small tavern that my mother’s family owned in Lushnje then. His cooking became such a household story in that little town that German officers started frequenting the tavern. Terrified of being discovered my grandfather and Serafino looked for a solution. They spread and invented a story that Serafino was a first cousin of the family and that he was mute and deaf and he couldn’t speak – so he could avoid speaking Albanian (which he knew very little) or any other language in public.

Another widely unknown story about Italian soldiers in Albania has to do with the Arberesh (Italian citizens who spoke Albanian, mainly from Calabria and Sicily). When the Germans occupied Albania, the Albanian government set up by them asked the Germans to exclude from deportation into labor camps the Italians who spoke Albanian. The Germans accepted their request. This triggered a whole enterprise of issuing false papers: thousand of Italian soldiers, who had no relation to Albanians, were helped by the Albanian authorities, providing them with false identity cards as Albanians/Arberesh. That’s how they survived the deportation and their sure death in concentration camps.

Thousand of Italians (both soldiers and civilians) though died from 1943-1945 in Albania. Hundreds who rebelled against the Germans were executed by the SS. Others were killed fighting against the Germans as partisans, part of the "Antonio Gramsci" (an Italian of Albanian origin himself) brigade. Others were killed by the partisans. And others died of hunger and disease.

No corpses were lost though. Ordinary Albanians took care so that each of them had a grave and a name. After 1991 most of the Italians who died in Albania were taken by the Italian government to Italy in order to rest next to their dear ones.

Nevertheless, today in Albania lay the rests of soldiers from at least ten foreign armies (no rests of Albanian soldiers lay in any foreign territory). Making tiny Albania a unique case in the whole of Europe…

My families never learned about the whereabouts of the Italians they saved, once they left Albania in 1945. They lost contact with them once the borders of Albania were hermetically shut from 1945 to 1990.

photo: Italian soldiers taken prisoners by the Germans in Corfu, 
Greece, September 1943. Most of them died in labor camps.

 28 Οκτωβρίου 

Gazmend Kapllani

Ο Γκαζμέντ Καπλάνι γεννήθηκε το 1967 στην πόλη 
Λούσνια της Αλβανίας. 
Τον Ιανουάριο του 1991 πέρασε τα σύνορα με την Ελλάδα περπατώντας 
μαζί με ένα καραβάνι ανθρώπων. Στην Ελλάδα έκανε όλα τα είδη 
των δουλειών που κάνει ο κάθε μετανάστης για να επιβιώσει: 
οικοδόμος, λαντζιέρης, περιπτεράς. 
Ταυτόχρονα, φοίτησε στη Φιλοσοφική Σχολή του Πανεπιστημίου 
Αθηνών και είναι διδάκτορας Ιστορίας και Πολιτικής Επιστήμης 
στο Πάντειο Πανεπιστήμιο. Από το 2001 είναι τακτικός αρθρογράφος 
της εφημερίδας "Τα Νέα", όπου διατηρεί εβδομαδιαία στήλη. 
Τα βιβλία του έχουν μεταφραστεί μέχρι τώρα, στα αγγλικά, 
τα πολωνικά, τα δανέζικα και τα γαλλικά. 
Δουλεύει πολύ και ταξιδεύει συχνά. 
Επί του παρόντος ζει στη Βοστόνη, έπειτα από υποτροφία που 
του απονεμήθηκε από το Radcliffe Institute for Advances Study 
του Πανεπιστημίου του Χάρβαρντ.