This page is my small gift to our dear and fraternal people, the Albanians…
My great-grandfather’s generation waged an heroic partisan war, and after you liberated yourselves, you sent 20,000 of your best sons and daughters across our borders to aid our struggle.
Nobody except the Soviets, the Bulgarians, and you — our brothers and good neighbours, the Albanians — gave us any real aid. Hundreds of your greatest martyrs died on our soil, thousands of your great heroes shed their blood for us, for our liberation, and you expected nothing in return. You have never received so much as a thank you.
The Titoites never mentioned your heroism — instead, through Tito-Ranković and the UDB they perpetrated genocide against your brothers in Kosova, deporting them in the hundreds of thousands to Turkey and stealing their lands. They would not even transport the remains of your martyrs to Albania until the ’70s.
Therefore, I dedicate this page to the hundreds of Albanian martyrs who heroically fell in battle for the liberation of the Yugoslav peoples from the nazi-fascist yoke. May their glory live as long as our mountains, as long as the rocks on the shores of our sacred Adriatic. May old and new debts be repaid, recognizing the decisions by our peoples at, among other events, the historic Bujan Conference. May a new man spring forth on this soil, casting away all national prejudices and great-state chauvinism — new men in the spirit of our Miladin Popović and your Enver Hoxha.
Of course, this is a far cry away from recognition or repayment, but now at least your people’s heroic deeds are no longer only a relic found in old books from the PSR of Albania. They are in my heart and mind forever, and I vow to go to the Cemetery of the Martyrs of the Nation where they lie, and I will pay my respects to each of them, and then to their legendary commander, xhaxhi Enver Hoxha!
N. Ribar