I’d learned about Bunkart and Bunkart 2 while browsing listicles about tourism in Tirana. Bunkart is a bunker used as an art gallery somewhere farther from the center of the city where I was wandering around (and around) on my first day as a tourist in Tirana. Bunkart 2 is a history museum. I stumbled across the entrance (well, actually the exit and *then* the entrance). Upon learning that entry tickets were only 7 Euros (or 700 lek), I bought one and went in. I learned a lot.
Albanians were spied on by secret police, sent to work camps where many died, or were just executed, in the not-too-distant past. The security agency was called Sigurimi.
This museum was by no means world-class, but, located as it is underground in a series of small rooms, it does what it set out to do: press upon visitors the need for freedom.
The pink building is the ministry of agriculture. The entrance to Bunkart 2 is the dome on the left.The exit of Bunkart 2.The exit door.The dome over the entrance.Portrait view of the hallway inside. I’m not especially claustrophobic, and not especially tall, but by the time I finished going in all the little rooms on the hallway, I was more than ready to get back above ground.One of the display rooms. Small, with only one door. (Not a museum suited to large groups.)Landscape view of the hallway inside.Landscape view of interesting power cables and junctions.Portrait view of interesting power cables and junctions.Sign says: “From 1944 until October 1990 have run away through the Albanian border 9,220 persons [men] and 4,472 of their relatives, women, children, etc., of whom 988 have died.” As recently as 1990, people were literally dying to leave this place…Is this display of an attack dog (and a person wearing a quilted cotton suit to protect him from being bitten during the training of the attack dog) creepy? Yeah. But not as creepy as the idea of capturing or killing your own people because they want to leave.There were several creepy mannequins.Here’s another one.Back to the hallway.Names of people executed because of political status. “The list that is officially verified includes 5,500 people.”Files. “Often collaborators were forced to betray members of their family referring to Sigurimi phrases and behavior of a sibling, a parent or a relative and in some cases such information lead to the arrest or even to the shooting of the ‘guilt’ one. Disappointment among neighbors and co-workers was widespread. The massive use of collaborators by Sigurimi created a deep fractures in the Albanian society, which still has not healed. For every collaborator Sigurimi prepared a personal file, where was noted the nickname of the employee and his true identity. The file was updated regularly with all the information given by the collaborator. The collaborator didn’t have a certain salary, but received a bonus based on the importance of the information he gave. In many cases the information was false or manipulated, allowing the collaborator to get his revenge on personal rivals.”
And what became of many of the files of the regime? The government built two machines to turn the documents into mush “to hide some crimes and abuses committed during the dictatorship.” Each of the “pastry makers” could destroy “up to 800 kg documents in an hour. Documents that would be annihilated were put in piles in the pastry maker and with addition of water they were turned into dough. The dough was loaded on trucks and spilled into rivers or buried underground.”
There was a lot of spying using hidden cameras, microphones, and video cameras. One particularly successful bug was this one, inserted into the handle of a broom that was used for sweeping inside the Italian embassy, where six members of the Popa family went for political asylum. They stayed for five years, constantly spied on, thanks to the maid who took the broom to have its battery changed every day.This sign explains that the photograph was edited (by literal cutting and pasting) to remove someone from it. What’s more interesting to me is that visitors to the museum have attacked the museum sign, scratching away the faces of leader Enver Hoxha and another man.Photos of cameras used for spying. (And yet another creepy mannequin.)Biggest, nicest room in the bunker. “The area of the bunker where was located the office of the Minister of Internal Affairs is composed of a anteroom that was needed for a secretary, an office, a bedroom and a bathroom.”“Since the bunker was finished constructing (1986) this room (even though it was furnished and ready for use), has never been used by any minister in office, even to perform exercises.”“This is one of the first computers used in the Albanian Ministry of Internal Affairs. The commodore PET (Personal Electronic Transactor) 8032-32B EAS was a home/personal computer produced from 1977 by Commodore International.”“Telex apparatus used by police forces to transmit coded messages.”This display tells how anonymous complaint letters would be analyzed for the purpose of identifying the sender. “The anonymous letters were a clear expression form of the revolt against the dictatorial regime, the difficult living conditions, the dissatisfaction, the lack of freedom, etc. This phenomenon was present throughout the years of the regime and on the main focus of the Sigurimi (State Security) for the detection of the Party’s ‘enemies’. In these letters, the unsatisfied even dared to insult Enver Hoxha, sometimes by writing to him directly. Some of these letters were sophisticated, with a confused writing, with capital letters without giving any indication on the address or any information to get revealed. But in other cases, even though anonymous, these letters were sent at the city’s post office and so the circle to detect the author was more narrowed and easier for the investigation agents of Sigurimi…. The discovery of the authors of these letters was a very important task. In some cases, the investigation had a positive result…. In other cases the investigation gave no result and the author remained anonymous forever.”Americans know about the Nazi camps where ‘undesirables’ were sent before and during World War II. The scope of the suffering wrought by the Albanian regime was surely smaller, but it was presumably no less miserable for those affected. Starting in 1949, politically objectionable Albanians could be banished to a different region of the country, and starting in 1954 the enemies of the state could be sent to internment camps. “According to the official numbers compiled recently by the government institutions responsible for awarding compensation for the damage caused during the dictatorship, the internments decided were 12,500, a number that does not consider minors, children of prisoners.” Another report counts 59,009 prisoners and 7,022 dead from conditions of internment.Internment was often fatal. But the government outright executed thousands more: according to one report, 5,577 men and 450 women. The bodies were not returned to the families “to prevent the transformation of the graves of political prisoners into symbolic places for rallies or protests against the party.” Unidentified bodies are still being found in mass graves. And for what were they killed? “The Penal Code of Enver Hoxha’s regime counted 34 crimes punishable by death penalty, 12 were political crimes, of which, ‘escaping by the State’ (Art. 47), sabotaging ‘the socialist economy and the organization and administration of the State’ (Art. 53) and ‘fascist, anti-democratic, religious, war-encouraging and anti-socialist agitation and propaganda’ (art. 55). In 1952, at the time of ‘Anglo-American espionage’ mania, was introduced the death penalty for all ‘conspirators against the state’. Some political crimes, like Art. 55, became part of the Constitution. In May 1990 was done the first liberalization of the Penal Code, reducing to 11 the crimes for which was predicted the death penalty.” After 1992, “the death penalty continued to be applied in Albania, but only for ordinary crimes. The latest death sentence against common criminals was given in Tirana on the 15th of March 1995. After several months there was introduced a moratorium, which led to the definitive abolition of the death penalty, in 1999.”The exit. Freedom!
