TIRANA, Aug. 2 – The well-known Albanian-American musician Elida Dakoli visited Tirana this week not only to give a piano concert, but also express her desire to help in the efforts to uncover the crimes of the Albanian Communist dictatorship.
Dakoli came to Tirana to give a highly-anticipated concert in the hall of Albania’s Academy of Sciences.
However, Dakoli’s recitals have also been a way of sharing how her family survived communism in Albania. Dakoli currently lives in Texas and gives piano concerts both in the US and Europe.
Dakolli said the communist period is part of the Albanian people’s suffering and her relation to this suffering is big, as during communism she lost her grandfather, whose burial place has still not been identified.
After her concert at the Academy of Sciences, Dakoli visited the Institute for the Study of Crimes and Consequences of Communism. There, she said she’d try to secure a collaboration between the institute and the Communism’s Victims Commemoration Foundation in Washington DC and urged researchers to prepare a list of proposals for collaboration.
The institute’s hospitality towards Dakoli was accompanied by ample information on the publication of over 80 books that reflect the crimes of Albanian communism, a whole library, among which the preparation of a dictionary on victims of communist terror continues, so far having reached the 7th volume.
Dakoli’s visit and concert consisted of another surprise – for the first time, she played on a Bachendorff German piano, which was donated to the Academy of Sciences produced especially for her.
Dakoli gives concert in many European and US capitals, but she never forgets her heritage and in her travels she has become a self-proclaimed missionary of her homeland’s truths in regard to the sufferings caused by the communist, the crimes of which should be investigated in order for democracy in Albania to help democracy settle.
