Officials of the Albanian Ministry of Tourism, Culture, Youth and Sports are preparing the opening of a museum which will consist of different exhibits displaying communist crimes during the Hoxha regime.
The center piece of the future museum of anticommunism will be inaugurated on February 20, the date some 18 years ago when Albanians tore down the monument to the dictator Hoxha. During January 2009 the government declared this a national day “in honor of the victims of the communist regime,” and appointed the minister of Tourism, Culture, Youth and Sports with organizing the exhibition to be opened in the National Museum of History. The ministry is also in charge of organizing the international competition for the building of an obelisk to honor the victims of Hoxha’s dictatorship.
The team working to prepare the exhibition consists of directors from the National Archives Center, the Movies Archives and the National Museum of History, along with others. “The exhibition will include the years 1944-1991, almost the whole period of the dictatorial regime, and is designed to be somewhat different from the genocide pavilion of the National Museum of History. It is thought to be a testimony to the “Albanian holocaust” and its curator will be Rubens Shima, director of the National Gallery of Arts,” said Olsi Lafe, director of Cultural Heritage at the Ministry of Culture. Officials from both Archives say they are working on the selection of the materials to be exposed.
Shima noted that the aim of this exhibition is not just to create an instructive presentation of the events of that time. “There will be striking images and photos, materials from the annual congresses that testify of the escalation of the persecutions of civilians. We aim to bring a dynamic and living testimony of persecuted individuals and families, testimonies that unlike the Genocide pavilion are not static. The exhibition is conceived as a living testimony; violence will be shown as it was performed. It will be like the Warsaw museum where people can actually hear voices screaming, can hear hearts beating fast, can perceive men being tortured. In a certain way these kind of museums warn the visitors that what they are about to see might be shocking,” said Shima.
