On April 28, 1949 , Nexhat Agolli, anti-fascist fighter, defender of the rights of Albanians in Macedonia, died in Skopje. He was born in the city of Dibra. After finishing primary school in Krumë (Kukës), he continued the trade school in Vlora and graduated from high school in Tirana. He completed his law studies at the University of Rome. He returned to his homeland in 1940 and worked as a judge in Gjakova, where he developed extensive anti-fascist activity. He joined the partisan ranks of Kosova, then in the partisan detachment of Dibra (June 1942). He participated in the battles for the liberation of Peshkopia and Dibra e Madhe (September 1943). Later, he was assigned to the area of Kërçova, first deputy, and later, battalion commander and deputy commander of the Headquarters of the 1st Operational Zone. In August 1943, he was elected a member of the Anti-Fascist National Liberation Council of Macedonia. With the liberation of Dibra e Madhe (September 1944), he was appointed district commander for Dibra and Struga. In October 1944, he was appointed commissar of the 7th Albanian Brigade, where he remained until January 1945, when he was appointed deputy prime minister and minister of Social Assistance in the first post-war government in Macedonia. In that role, he resolutely defended the cultural and national rights of the Albanian people and the right to self-determination; opened the Pedagogical Course and the “Liria” school in the Albanian language in Skopje (1945); founded with his associates the newspaper “Flaka”; saved from annihilation thousands of innocent Albanians who were kept isolated and tortured in Tetova as “collaborators of fascism”. For this reason, in May 1948 he was dismissed from executive functions and on April 16, 1949 he was arrested on charges of anti-Yugoslav attitude. He was cruelly tortured, but he did not break and refused to betray his people and national ideals. After his death in prison, his dead body was shot with machine gun fire and placed in a square of Skopje, to create the impression that he had been killed in an escape attempt. (In the photo: Nexhat Agolli)
Text: Albanian encyclopedic dictionary – Vol. 1 , Academy of Sciences of Albania, “Kristalina-KH”, Tirana, 2008, page 17-18.
Photo: © Xhoxhi L., personal archive
Graphic processing: AHCF
