By Susan Kotta
Circa 1910, in Boston, Massachusets, Koco Kotta and Angjeliqi Poci, both from prominent Kor衠families, married. They returned to Albania and in Korca Nuci Kotta was born, soon followed by his sister Tefta’s birth. They spent a happy childhood in Korca, playing soccer and the ancient game of marbles with lamb knucklebones. Nu詠was proud to have perfected the skill of shooting “corners” on the muddy Kor衠school grounds, which catapulted him to distinguished status in Paris when he arrived at the LycꥠMichelet in 1932, age 12.
The family was active in the betterment of Albania. Nuci’s father became Prime Minister in King Zog’s government and Nuci’s aunt (his mother’s sister) was the celebrated “Betsy Ross” of Albania, whose embroidered flag was hoisted over the balcony in Vlora from which Ismail Kemal declared Albania’s independence in 1912.
In Paris for his education, from 1932 through 1938, Nu詠was only home on summer vacations, enjoying the family farmhouse in Pendavinja. His mother died of influenza in 1936.
In Paris, Nu詠developed ties with his cousin, Milto No謡, Charg顤’Affaires of the Albanian Legation, who shepherded him through his new surroundings. Together they launched a lifelong partnership in Albanian matters.
In the summer of 1936 Nu詠was in Munich and later remembered watching the noisy demonstrations of the young Brownshirts, foreshadowing a looming disaster. He transferred to the prestigious LycꥠLouis le Grand, where he passed the first Baccalaurꢴ in 1938, winning first prize in French. He was awarded the second Baccalaurꢴ in 1939, the year that was to cut him off permanently from his homeland, at age 19.
The Italian invasion of Albania in April of that year, followed by the fall of France in 1940, transformed Nu詧s life, as they did all of Europe. Milto accompanied the King to London and Nu詧s father was in Greece. Nuci was never to see his father again. While awaiting an end to the war and his return to a free Albania, in 1942 he earned his Law License at the Facult顤u Droit, Universit顤e Paris.
He was engaged in following and abetting Albania’s struggles against Italy, until its fall in 1943; Germany, until its expulsion from Albania in November 1944; and Greece, following its liberation in 1944 with renewed claims on “Northern Epirus”. He wrote his doctoral thesis, L’Albanie et la question des fronti鳥s Albano-Grecques, published in 1946. He still expected the free elections in Albania guaranteed by Britain and the United States. The bestowal of Doctorat es Lettres, Mention Bien, in 1945 coincided roughly with the title “Enemy of the People” conferred by his native land, now Communist.
In the postwar years he taught French and history in secondary school and introduced the study of Albanian at the National School of Spoken Eastern Languages. Aiming to involve Albanian exiles in informing the West of the unspeakable conditions imposed by the Soviet Union on Albania and the other Balkan states and to exert pressure for their prompt liberation, Nu詠edited a journal distributed throughout the exile community and to Western governments. He was named to the committee of the National Committee for a Free Albania (NCFA) when it was founded in Paris in 1949. The Committee went to the United States under the aegis of the newly-formed Free Europe Committee (FEC). “Balli Kombetar” leader Midhat Frasheri, president of the NCFA, died suddenly in 1949, and agrarian leader Hasan Dosti became president. Headquartered in New York, there were branches in Rome, Paris, Athens, and Istanbul.
Eminent exiled East European leaders in a devastated Europe found not only asylum and financial support in the US. The strategic importance of Albania was seen, and as the British partliamentarian Nicholas Bethell thankfully detailed for us in Betrayed (1984), England and the U.S. had developed a joint plan to secretly fund an internal revolt to overthrow the Communist dictator Enver Hoxha as the bridgehead to the liberation of Eastern Europe and the defeat of the Soviet Union. General Eisenhower, a member of the fledgling FEC, won the presidential election in 1952. Unfortunately the parties who made up the NFCA began vying for some phantom sense of power, shattered the indispensable unity of purpose and began to fall apart. Nu詠edited Shqiperia, the news organ of the NFCA. It was distributed to the Albanian exile community and to Western governments. Miniscule copies of the four-page newsletter were air-dropped to eager recipients on the ground in Albania by the planes delivering parachutists to prepare for the insurrection. The NCFA continued to present its support and pleas for border guarantees to official Washington. In 1952 Mr.Dosti presided over an Ad Hoc UN committee hearing in Geneva on slave labor conditions in Albania.
The Free Europe Committee
The FEC offered other avenues for spreading the exile story. Radio Free Europe (RFE) broadcast messages from eminent exiles to their enslaved peoples. In January 1952 Nu詠Kotta was interviewed by Hugh G. Grant, the last US Minister to Albania. At FEC conferences Nu詠emphasized the necessity for representatives of the Balkan states to take advantage of their refuge in America to absorb and later plant long-developed Western ideals in the minds and hearts of their liberated countrymen.
The Tuesday Panel provided a forum for the various national committees to discuss their distinct circumstances, keep their common plight before the Western Powers, and lend united support to the anti-Communist efforts. At meetings in 1952, Nu詠elaborated on the theme of a breakthrough via popular revolt in Albania. Nu詠described the new Albanian constitution, which, as in other puppet governments, reflected the Soviet model: the command of the country by Soviet military and “technicians”, suppression of writers, Russification of education, and religious persecution.
Dr. Nuci Kotta participated in many activities of the FEC, among them, The Liberal Democratic Union of Central Eastern Europe, the Mid-European Studies Center (he worked with Ms. Miriam Paul who also worked with the Fultz Foundation), and the European Federation Project. Research was conducted concerning the European Integration effort, including feedback from other members of the exile community about industry, agriculture, finance, health, education and public welfare. Dr. Kotta advised a former U.S. Minister to Albania, Charles C. Hart and Mr. Hugh G. Grant, the last U.S. minister to Albania and a great friend of Albania, and Dr. Telford Erickson, who had founded the Albanian-American School of Agriculture in 1925. Dr. Kotta and Mr. Hart both spoke to the Albanian people several times over Radio Free Europe. He worked in the mid-1950’s with Peter Minnar, writing for the news organ The Albanian-American, in efforts to rally Albanian Americans in keeping America aware of Albania’s plight and efforts for liberation. He was a member of the International Commission of Jurists and called upon Albanians to keep strict records and pass them to Free Albania branches and said that justice, and not blind vengeance, would eventually be served.
In 1954 he took a sales position with an international aircraft spare parts company in Washington, D.C., returning to New York occasionally to address the Tuesday Panel and speak before the newly-formed Assembly of Captive European Nations (ACEN). Its purpose was to represent the East European countries that had no voice and to offer support for the defeat of Communism by the Free World in the Cold War.
In 1955 Nu詠was elected Deputy Secretary-General of ACEN and editor of the ACEN News, which he did for five years. The Assembly’s growing fear was that as the Soviet-inspired policy of “mutual disarmament” and “peaceful coexistence” settled in, not only would those people who lived in captive nations continue to suffer, but that they would be transformed into compliant conformists, lose the very concept of individual freedom, and adopt the criminal mentality of their oppressors. That fear was only too prescient.
In 1962 he worked with Abas Kupi on the First Congress in Exile held in New York City, and Nu詠was elected Secretary-General. King Zog’s son, Leka, following his father’s death, pledged, after restoring order to a liberated Albania, to abide by the results of verified free popular elections as to the form of government appropriate for Albania.
A “Stateless” Exile
In December of 1959 he testified with Arshi Pipa, a recently-arrived escapee from ten years in prison, about the crimes of Krushchev before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He also gave a speech that year before the Kiwanis Club on the effect of the Soviet oppression of its captive satellites.
He also dealt with the hard reality of establishing himself financially within the narrow scope available to a “Stateless” exile. Having chosen not to apply for citizenship in any country but his own, he was ineligible to practice law. In 1960, he began teaching French part-time at Hunter College and Columbia, where he began work on his Ph.D. In 1964 he completed work on his doctoral thesis, an analysis of Voltaire’s tale, “L’Homme aux quarante ꤵs”. He stressed Voltaire’s pioneer journalistic achievement in reaching out to the very people whose freedom and justice Voltaire championed. He found the same unique quality paramount in the tale, “the education of the public – even the poorer classes – is the underlying theme running throughout the tale.” It was in this sense that Voltaire, the reformer/philosopher, had served as Nuci’s model for many years.
Nu詠became the Assistant Professor of French at the new State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1964. He moved to the suburbs with me, his wife of three years, and our two-year-old son Gjergj when a heart attack suddenly struck him down in July, 1965. In his eulogy Mr. Hugh Grant encapsulated the loss felt by so many around the world when he said, ” the death of Dr. Nuci Kotta is a personal tragedy for us, but Albania has lost a noble son, a true patriot, ‘on fire,’ in his zeal for the restoration of the complete independence and sovereignty of his native land and the freedom of the Shqipetars – Sons of the Eagle!”. Our second son, Thoma Nu詬 was born in 1966.
