Many due to SWLing Put up contributor, Don Moore–famous creator, traveler, and DXer–for the newest installment of his Photograph Album visitor publish sequence:
Façade of the Nationwide Museum of Albania on Skanderbeg Sq.
Click on right here to learn Half One: Discovering Radio Tirana
Extra of Don’s touring DX tales might be present in his ebook Tales of a Vagabond DXer. Don visited Albania in March 2024.
Albania has loads to supply overseas guests. The nation has coastal seashores, stunning mountains and historic websites a whole bunch and hundreds of years previous. Tirana is a captivating metropolis stuffed with good eating places and pleasant individuals. It’s cheap. The central metropolis is simple to get round on foot. I’m already planning my subsequent go to.
However the primary cause to go to Albania is to see the websites associated to the Communist period and the Enver Hoxha dictatorship. I don’t suppose there may be wherever else the place you may get such shut perception into what actual life was like inside a brutal police state. Certainly, after visiting Tirana, I can’t think about how anybody might reward dictatorships or say that their very own nation could be higher off below a dictatorship. In Tirana three websites particularly stand out on this regard. And every of them has some attention-grabbing shows involving the usage of radio.
The Home of Leaves
The Home of Leaves … the identify sounds peaceable and harmless. That was as soon as true. Constructed in 1931, the two-story villa initially served as the primary obstetrics clinic in Albania. Then when the Nazis moved in after the Italian give up in 1943, it was chosen as headquarters for the Gestapo. That may have been a minor blip within the construction’s historical past, however the Gestapo had remade the constructing into simply what Enver Hoxha’s new authorities wanted: a headquarters for his or her secret police.
The dreaded Sigurimi would occupy the constructing for almost 5 a long time. However that was alleged to be a secret, so nobody might say what the villa actually was, regardless that everybody knew. So it turned often known as The Home of Leaves from the vines that coated the outer partitions. Even then, the identify was largely whispered among the many closest buddies. It wasn’t protected to pay a lot consideration to the constructing.
After the Communist regime fell in 1991, The Home of Leaves largely sat unused. Then, in 2014 the Albanian Ministry of Tradition introduced it could be become a museum telling the story of Sigurimi and its operations. The Museum of Secret Surveillance opened in 2017 and three years later was awarded the European Museum of the Yr award by the Council of Europe.
The museum has many rooms specializing in varied elements of Sigurimi’s work. My favourite was one stuffed with electronics used to observe and file conversations by suspected malcontents.
The important thing to monitoring somebody was putting a radio transmitter bug within the suspect’s residence. The Sigurimi made their very own bugs in a workshop in The Home of Leaves. They had been significantly happy with the tiniest ones, which might very simply be hidden.
The bugs had been often positioned inside a small piece of wooden that may very well be positioned below a desk or chair. The efficient vary was solely about 2 hundred meters, so monitoring posts needed to be in the identical constructing or close by. The Sigurimi would both recruit a neighbor or persuade a neighbor to host a Sigurimi agent to observe the recordings. Rinia model transistor radios made in Romania had been the popular receiver. They had been cheap and will simply be modified to obtain the specified frequency. And so they had been frequent sufficient that possession of 1 didn’t mark an individual as a authorities agent. Brokers often listened in on headphones whereas additionally making a recording of the dialog.
In some instances, home made amplifiers had been used to spice up the weak indicators produced by the tiny bugs.
Recordings of conversations of curiosity had been taken again to The Home of Leaves for additional investigation at monitoring posts corresponding to this one.
The Bunkers
Enver Hoxha knew that tiny Albania might by no means help a military giant sufficient to repel an out of doors invasion. His expertise as a guerilla in World Struggle II, alternatively, had satisfied him that an armed hostile populace might do the job. Albania was, in spite of everything, the one occupied nation to retake its personal capital with none outdoors assist. So Hoxha primarily based Albania’s nationwide protection on ensuring that invading the nation could be so troublesome and painful that nobody would dare try it.
A key a part of that coverage was developing concrete bunkers. Hoxha’s purpose was to assemble 750,000 of them – roughly one for each 4 Albanians on the time. Simply what number of had been really constructed isn’t identified, however the quantity was within the a whole bunch of hundreds. And so they had been constructed all over the place – in farms, in forests, in villages, and in cities.
Most had been the three-meter-wide Qender Zjarri sort, simply giant sufficient to offer two or three combatants a hid firing place. Relying on the situation these had been constructed individually or else in small clusters. Right this moment, a enjoyable exercise whereas touring by bus via Albania is seeing what number of you’ll be able to spot. Often these bunkers are used for storage however there are such a lot of that the majority are deserted apart from the occasional go to by native youngsters. Evidently, they’re the cool place for dropping one’s virginity.
The second sort of bunker was the eight-meter-wide Pike Zjarri, meant to function native command facilities. Being bigger, many of those have been put to different makes use of. After which there have been the large bunkers, big complexes of underground rooms and tunnels the place officers would take refuge and proceed to run Albania’s authorities. However at present’s Albania isn’t involved with repelling overseas invaders. As an alternative it welcomes them within the type of vacationers. And so two of the most important bunker complexes in Tirana have been become museums. And each of them include some attention-grabbing radio memorabilia.
Enver’s Refuge
The most important bunker was an unlimited underground advanced constructed within the Nineteen Seventies inside the bottom of a mountain on the jap outskirts of Tirana. Development was so secret that this bunker’s existence wasn’t even identified publicly till the Nineties. This was the place Enver Hoxha and different prime officers would have gone within the occasion of an invasion or nuclear assault. It had over 100 rooms on 5 ranges with its personal energy and water techniques. The doorway handed via a decontamination station the place anybody coming into might wash off the fallout if a nuclear bomb had already been dropped. (Or in order that they hoped.)
The within is a labyrinth of hallways and small rooms used for every part from communication facilities to help providers. There’s even a small auditorium the place the Albanian legislature might meet. Enver Hoxha and the prime minister had small spartan non-public flats. Different officers, guards, technicians, and servants slept in dormitories. After all, the power was by no means used. It’s believed that Enver Hoxha solely visited thrice – as soon as when it was accomplished in 1978 after which two extra instances for drills.
One among many hallways within the Enver Hoxha’s refuge.
Enver Hoxha’s workplace within the large bunker. The desk has the identical Chinese language-made Pink Lantern Mannequin 269 receiver that I noticed on the Radio Bar Tirana.
The Albanian army continued to make use of the power for a number of years after the Communist authorities fell in 1991. After that it was locked up. Then in 2014 a pair of journalists got here up with the thought of creating it right into a museum which was named Bunk Artwork. However it’s a historical past museum, not an artwork museum. Some rooms had been left unchanged to point out the construction’s authentic goal. Others had been stuffed with displays on Albanian historical past, the Italian invasion, the Communist interval, and life below Communism. And people displays embrace just a few attention-grabbing radio gadgets.
In response to the show, this was considered one of two moveable transceivers in possession of Xhevdet Mustafa when he was killed by the Sigurimi on the seaside south of Tirana in 1982. The show didn’t clarify who Mustafa was working for.
On a number of events within the early Fifties the CIA tried to insert small bands of Albanian brokers into the nation, largely with out success. This Russian-made transceiver was a part of the gear that got here with a small group of brokers parachuted into Albania in 1953. The group had been all killed or captured after they landed. With assist coerced from the prisoners, the Sigurimi used this radio for a number of months to trick the CIA into persevering with to air-drop provides into the mountains.
This black-and-white Albanian-made TV was configured on the manufacturing facility to solely obtain Albanian channels. Nonetheless, intelligent Albanians found out methods to make use of small digital circuits (referred to as kanoce) that overrode these limits. Albanians alongside the coast had been in a position to obtain TV from Italy whereas these in border areas might obtain Yugoslav or Greek TV.
The Downtown Bunker
The unique Bunk Artwork proved so standard with Albanians and overseas guests that in 2016 it was renamed Bunk Artwork 1 and a second location, Bunk Artwork 2, was opened within the metropolis middle. This bunker had been constructed below town streets close to The Home of Leaves and had been meant to be used by the Ministry of Inside Affairs. It consisted of a single stage with a number of branching hallways lined with small rooms. Right this moment, it’s a museum telling the story of the Ministry (of which the Sigurimi was only one half) till its dissolution in 1991.
This bunker was additionally configured for a long-term keep. The Minister of Inside Affairs had this non-public bed room.
Some Chinese language-made radio tools utilized by the ministry.
The Broom Bug
On 12 December 1985, the streets of Tirana had been crowded with individuals out to look at a big patriotic parade which simply occurred to go by the Italian embassy. Two ladies and 4 males wearing trendy western garments and chatting in Italian amongst themselves snaked their method via the group to the door of the embassy. The Albanian police monitoring the door didn’t attempt to cease them. Clearly, they had been Italian vacationers or embassy staff. Besides they weren’t. The sisters and brothers of the Popa household had lengthy been persecuted by the Albanian authorities as their mother and father had collaborated with the Italians through the warfare. And now the six kids needed political asylum.
The Italians had been keen to resettle the household in Italy however the Albanian authorities refused to offer them permission to depart. As an alternative Albania demanded that the siblings be turned over to its police, which the Italians refused to do. The household would dwell within the embassy for 4 ½ years till the Albanian authorities lastly agreed to allow them to go. Within the meantime the Albanians stored a robust police and army presence within the neighborhood surrounding the embassy.
The Sigurimi needed to know what was happening inside in order that they recruited an Albanian maid who labored on the embassy to assist them. She was given 5 bugs and directions to cover them within the typical locations like behind work and below tables. They knew the Italians would discover these and that was superb. It could give the Italians false confidence that that they had discovered all of the bugs. The actual bug was hid in a particular new broom that the maid introduced in and left in a closet subsequent to the place the Popa siblings stayed. Every day she was given a freshly charged battery to swap with the depleted one contained in the broom. The Italians by no means found the bug-in-a-broom. The Popa siblings had been lastly allowed to depart the embassy for Italy on 3 Could 1990.
