Communist-era secret police files reopen old wounds in Albania
The machinery of the Communist apparatus relied on whisper networks of compromised people, including situations where a "brother spied on his brother."
TIRANA, Albania
Last year, Albania's government opened up the archives of its old secret police, the Sigurimi. Anyone who was spied on during the Communist period can get access to his or her file, allowing those who collaborated with the regime to potentially be identified.
Most other former Communist countries opened up their Cold War-era files long ago. Today, the Sigurimi files fill a series of small rooms in a government warehouse on the edges of Tirana. With files overflowing from metal shelves and in boxes stacked on the ground and windowsills, its hard to say exactly how complete the collection is. Sigurimi agents are thought to have destroyed thousands of files during the last years of the regime.
The Sigurimi secret police force was notoriously efficient. Sigurimi agents were sometimes called living microphones, because they were always listening. But that reputation was made possible by thousands of ordinary Albanians who helped them, working as official collaborators, and thousands more who functioned as more casual informants, offering up intimate secrets about those they knew. The machinery of the Communist apparatus relied on whisper networks of compromised people.
Gentina Sula, the director of the agency that provides access to the files, said she's concerned that people living in Albania today won't understand the context in which choices were made, or not made, under the dictatorship. Her agency has received hundreds of requests for files. It was a society taken hostage, she says. There was a lot of propaganda." She said many collaborators believed they were "serving their country" and being "patriotic," while others were coerced.
So does how does Sula think former collaborators should be treated today?
Sympathy is a big word, Sula says.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/communist-era-secret-police-files-reopen-old-wounds-albania-n884946