@user-fg5bh1ys7q

5 months ago

Truly a very good documentary, about the communist era of Albania. It’s crazy to see this, cause as the first Albanian/American child from my family. My father has told me vast stories of him growing up and being in the military in Albania at the time and about my grandfather and great grandfather. My father defected the country in 1988 as a soldier in the alpine division guarding the border between Greece and Albania. Long story short, my grandfather was a high ranking officer. And had gotten the news that my father/his son was a defector and collaborator to the western world, for leaving Albania. To this day I don’t know what happened my father has never truly told me, but from little things I know, civilians and probably people my father knew. where fleeing the country and the officer on the post where my father was, gave orders to kill the civilians fleeing, to not let them cross the border. My father refused and some how the officer ended up dead. The soldiers on duty with my father, from what he said where absolutely lost and scared shitless. Some soldiers next to him joined and fled the country, and some others started shooting at him. He told me the entire southern country was on high alert chasing them for days. After days of running my father ends up in northern Greece where him and a couple of his comrades surrendered to a small Greek police station, My father said when 5 Albanians still dressed in military uniforms walk the street, the people thought it was an invasion. One of my fathers friends at the time was wounded bleeding down his leg, when they walked into the Greek police station, the front lady screamed so loud that every police officer charged out. My father and his comrades still had there AK’s drawn. He told me, that you could hear a feather fall that’s how quite and utterly still everyone was pointing guns at each other. Nevertheless, my father came and surrendered as a refugee fleeing Albania. He ended up staying in a Greek prison for 8 months, getting interrogated..ect for them suspecting he was a spy. To this day he doesn’t have some nails and back teeth. Somehow NATO gets involved, and my dad ends up in America after almost 2 years of traveling from country to country. Unfortunately, my father never got the opportunity to see his dad or my grandfather ever again. For my father being apart of the family of a high ranking military official, from what he told me it brought a lot of government wondering eyes to the family, and shame. My grandfather past away before my father could come back to Albanian, and way before I was born. My father did return to Albanian with my mother in the late 90’s right before I was born, in Vlorë. To visit our family and his mother after 11 years. Unfortunately, during that time the Kosovo conflict was going on, and my father stayed in Albania and fought in Kosovo, while my mother returned to America with me. Ik this was a long comment lol, but I wanted to share this with people. I haven’t been back home in 24 years, and this coming months I will be going back home finally. I have tons of truly old black n white photos of my family dating back to before WW1 to WW2 an later. Albania has alot of history and culture that is not talked about much. Century’s of history and culture. And I appreciate informative videos such as this. Thank you

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