Forsaken Albania

By Artan Lame
Tirana, Autumn of 1943. Everyone knows that they were here, but few saw them and even fewer fixed their image on celluloid. The Germans, the bearers of the most brutal military mechanism that ever existed. As far as I have managed to discover, they left very little trace of their transition through this country behind them, on film. Like some kind of a creature that tries to keep out of sight and shun any attempt to be fixed on film; lethal if goaded, and when it withdraws it leaves the deepest of scars on those who disturb it, but it leaves nothing of its own in its wake. And so it came to pass that in September-October of the year 1943, the Albanians first came in contact with this fearful beast, which had begun to show the first signs of fatigue, but, still it was extremely dangerous to disturb it. Even to this day the elderly folk will shake their heads and somberly say, “There was no joke with the Germans.”
In the first photograph, to officers of the Albanian Armed Forces, one of whom is a Colonel, are having a conversation with two German officers. The Albanians are wearing the uniforms issued in February of the same year, when the country was still under Italian occupation, which are more or less a revival of the uniforms of the time of the Zog Monarchy. The German officer is SS and the stripes on his collar indicate that he holds the rank of Brigadef