“The past is never dead. It’s not even a past”. William Faulkner “To the extent that the past can indeed be overcome, this can be achieved only by telling what happened”. Hannah Arendt    

It can be translated as “the place from where you can see and hear everything”. The other meaning of the first word, according to which the second was built is that of an ideal prison, conceived more than two hundreds years ago by the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham. The Utilitarian did not believe in the utopia of a perfect society. Communism was such a utopia. The claims to realize it brought society to a total control, similar to Bentham’s prison. The clinic’s laboratory was used for film developing, for manufacturing of keys to open doors and safes. Illegal opening of [...]

These are voices captured by electronic interception decades ago. But they cannot be a curiosity object. They come from the darkness, from the abyss. Regardless of their words, they are voices that invite for a reflection on the past. The transcription model of an interception made by State Security employees is shown in one of the rooms.

Surveillance was used for all social strata and categories, because none of them was immune from persecution; a priority was that class or category that was considered as potentially dangerous at a given moment. A word, a song, a casual meeting could quite well be considered hostile activity. A telephone interception list is shown. This list was taken from the archive of the Ministry of Internal Affair. Tirana of the 70's had about 1,500 family telephones that were given by special authorization from high State bodies. They were given mostly to Nomenclature families or to those who had connections with [...]

Private life under the communist regime was completely unprotected from State intervention, because the ideology had a collectivist character and the party-State was omnipotent. With regard to the family, the state played the role of the patriarch, who should know everything and decide everything. Secret interception via microphones was just one of the ways in which the State penetrated every home, capturing intimate conversations whenever and how often it wanted. When an individual was declared an enemy, it fell like a curse on the entire family. In this sector visitors can see a typically living room of the 70's with [...]

Interception of foreigners constituted essentially an extension of control and repression within the country. A feature of the communist dictatorship in Albania was the ever-complete self-isolation from the world, by proclaiming Albania as the only socialist country in the world, which was under siege and comprised the target of the two superpowers and their blocks: the entire world against a small country. At the same time, in the totalitarian mentality of the time, the external enemy appeared as inseparable from the internal enemy. Ultimately, self-isolation aimed at maintaining Albanian society under total control. The control of the foreigners and the [...]

Perception of enemy determines the control and repression manners. Conversely, these ways reinforce the perception on the enemy. The vicious circle of totalitarian dynamics. In the rooms of this sector, visitors will get acquainted with some of the most sensational trials during communist dictatorships accompanied by photos of these court proceedings. One of the rooms is dedicated to the long list of innocent people who were imprisoned or executed for political reasons.  In Albania, during the dictatorship (in a population of 1 million in 1945 and about 3 million in 1990), around 18,000 people were imprisoned for political [...]

The electronic interception work is closely linked to Security agents, the living microphones. Usually, they preceded the electronic microphones with information, and in many cases, they carried the bugs in talks with potential to be arrested. A statistic presented in one of the museum rooms shows about the four categories of collaborators, the number for each category over the years, etc. Related to this statistic, visitors will be acquainted with declassified documents for some collaborators under pseudonyms: “Big cupboard”, “Artist”, “Mountain”. Their respective files indicate the recruitment methods of the agents, and show that they have often been carriers of [...]

The House of Leaves was a maternity hospital at the beginning. It was built in   1931   as   an   obstetric   clinic   at   the   initiative of   the   distinguished physician Dr. Jani Basho and it was run by him. It is the first of this kind in Albania and this has been its function during the thirties. During   the   early   postwar   years,   the House   of   Leaves was   used   as   an investigation center, thus also as a place where tortures were made. The practice   of   tortures   and   other   terror   forms   was   accepted   also   by   the official communist   propaganda   but as if   they   occurred until   [...]