Mark Ndoja, writer, researcher and translator, was born in the village of Iballë in Puka. Left orphaned at the age of 11, under the care of Monsignor Pietro della Pietra, he was enrolled in the Jesuit orphanage in Shkodra. Then, he continued his studies at the Saverian College of the Jesuits, in the department of classical studies, where he had professors Dom Ndre Mjeda, father Zef Valentini, etc. He was part of the literary circle of Gjergj Fishta, who published his first book. With the closure of the religious schools, he finished the Lyceum in Shkodër. He was appointed a language and literature teacher at the Korça High School (1938–1940) and the Shkodra High School (1940–1946). Since 1941, he was elected a member of the National Liberation Anti-Fascist Council, as a representative of the nationalists. He became a communist only in July 1944, after the murder of his friend, Manush Alimani. He was elected deputy of Shkodra in the first two legislatures after the war. On January 28, 1947, he was appointed Secretary General of the Institute of Sciences and, in 1950, Secretary General of the League of Writers. In 1953, the persecution against him began, for his objections to the implementation of the method of socialist realism and, especially, its soviet model. In 1954, he was dismissed from his duties and appointed as a teacher at the “Qemal Stafa” high school. He was arrested on June 24, 1955, for “hostile activity against the government”. On January 16, 1956, by decision of the Judicial Council of the Criminal College of the Supreme Court, he was sentenced to 6 years in prison, “for the crime of agitation and propaganda against the People’s Republic of Albania”. He served his sentence in Burrel prison. He was released in 1960 and, until 1964, worked as an external translator for the “Naim Frashëri” publishing house. Translated into Albanian the “Divine Comedy” by Dante Alighieri, the work of Horace, “Anthology of great Italian poets”. He sent a letter to Enver Hoxha and Mehmet Shehu for the publication of the translation of “Hell” on the occasion of the 700th anniversary of Dante’s birth and, in response, on December 25, 1964, Christmas Day, he was interned to the island of Zvërnec. In 1968, one day before being transferred to Berat, he suffered a cerebral stroke and remained paralyzed in the Vlorë hospital; then, for 6 months, in the prison hospital in Tirana. He was released in June 1968. He died in Tirana on June 22, 1972.
(In the photo: Mark Ndoja)
Text: Encyclopedic dictionary of victims of communist terror – Vol. VI , “West Print”, Institute for the Study of Crimes and Consequences of Communism, Tirana, 2017, pages 33-35.
Photo: © Institute for the Study of Crimes and Consequences of Communism
Graphic processing: AHCF
