– Kozma Vasili –
May 5th, the Day of the Martyrs, dawns, and all of us, young and old, go to the martyrs and place fresh flowers adorned with the words “your memory is eternal.” These words, like a beautiful refrain of a song, fill Albania and strengthen us. These unmatched stars live and will live through their deeds, through their legacy. The Party and Enver have made Albania as they desired: free, beautiful and strong. In its foundations lies their blood. The people have woven many songs for the martyrs, inspiring and fiery. They are sung and will be sung from generation to generation, because the martyrs have ensured immortality for themselves. We stopped at only a few of the songs raised by the people out of the great struggle. But this artistic venture is alive, active and continues to enrich from day to day, adding new value to the treasure of our millennia-old folk culture. The song is an accurate and rich artistic chronicle of the stormy years of the struggle for national and social liberation. In the song woven by the people for the hero Vasil Shanto, we see the revolutionary spirit of Vasil sculpted, a worker and communist, the spirit of the working class he represented, consolidating its ideological and political entirety, its security and determination in this struggle. And, filled with revolutionary optimism, the song records events and dates from various stages of his revolutionary activity. The Meeting for the establishment of the Communist Party of Albania is fixed in the song:
“…Vasil Shanto, when he took up his word,
his arm raised in fire,
“I have long thought, he said,
about who should lead
not only in war, but forever,
at the head of the leadership of our Party,
and I propose, in the first place,
Enver Hoxha as secretary….”
At the centre of the songs of the National Liberation War is the martyr of freedom, the partisan of the formations of our Anti-Fascist National Liberation Army who, educated by the Party, acts with courage and bravery on the battlefield, giving up his life with a smile on his lips, with unwavering belief in the people’s victory over the enemies. In these songs, there is a prominence of concrete situations of war: dueling with tanks or covering the enemy machine gunner with one’s chest, breaking the encirclement with fury or turning the humble houses of the people into red castles of revolution. Face to face confrontation in demonstration and steadfastness in the face of torture and the noose, etc. The song for the worker Koci Bako, the communist who fell on the day of the Party’s founding, carries engraved in its chest the thirst for freedom and the deep patriotism of the people against the enemies.
“The day the Party was born
in Korça, flames erupted.
Koci Bako, with all the comrades,
organized a demonstration.
That night, before dawn,
Korça boiled all over.
“Down with you, fascist law!
You have trampled our Homeland.
On the November 8th of ’41,
the sacred day of the Party,
the communist Koci Bako
fell a hero of Albania…”
The hero of the songs does not separate words from deeds, and in them emerges most prominently the work of the Party. Folk song preserves the history of women’s efforts, of Albanian soil, its heroism and self-sacrifice, the fiery fighter, unyielding in the storms of the struggle for freedom and social justice, educated by the Party. In the song dedicated to Margarita Tutulani, it is said:
“In demonstration and battle,
you never showed fear to the enemy,
in the demonstrations and the fire,
the fiercest fighter.
In prison, in Berat,
you held the flag high,
your word thunderous,
thunderous and stormy,
the brave girl of the Party,
the youth secretary,
an example of simplicity,
a rare star of beauty…”
The song for the martyrs is seized with the power of the action of war and its magnificence. The song for Gjok Doçi gives us the beautiful war action of the hero, his dynamism and his unrestrained vigour on the battlefield, his spirit of sacrifice and determination unto death:
“Brave Gjok Doçi, brave with a pen,
hitting the mountain without stopping,
ahead with eighty men,
with eighty men ahead.
He marches like an eagle
with courage against the enemy,
to rescue comrades from danger.
In Symiza, the battle ignited,
Young Gjok like lightning,
with a few comrades he found a path,
closing in on the enemies,
refusing to let them go
without making them pay with their lives…”
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