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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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”, [...]

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   [...]