Albanian Historian Angers Survivors of Communist Camp

Pellumb Xhufi, a former politician and historian better known for his work on Medieval history, caused shock on Wednesday when he claimed to have read CIA reports that evaluated conditions in communist era camps as "not bad".

Xhufi was referring to the infamous concentration camp in Tepelena, south Albania, where thousands of people, mostly women and children, were isolated by the regime between 1945 and 1955 because they were family members of "enemies" of the state.

Survivors have testified extensively about the inhumane conditions. Some of the memoires collected by scholars after the fall of Communism recall how hundreds of children died due to lack of food and medicines.

However, on a TV show about history on Ora News, Xhufi explicitly denied this.

"Absolutely no!" he said, answering a question whether it was true that some 300 children died.

"The site functioned as an army barracks up to the 1960s. It was built by the Italian army, was a solid construction with tiles. In the [CIA] document, is also written that the conditions were "not bad,'" he added while accepting that it was basically a forced labor camp.

According to Xhufi, it was "a banality" to compare the camp with Nazi era concentration camps.

Fatbardha Saraci, a scholar who has collected the memories of the survivors of Communism regime, including the memories of a mother who lost two infant children in the camp, called the comments inhumane and humiliating.

"It is especially inhumane toward those who lost their lives in prisons and labour camps," she said.

"Conditions at Tepelena camp were inhumane. In a small barracks there were hundreds of people living for years in crowded conditions, interned without trial and used for harsh labor in the...

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