"I will never forget my old truck"

July 7, 2017 8:34 AM

Eight months after the Berlin wall fell, Albania's isolationist communist regime was still in power. On July 2, 1990, Ylli Bodinaku took his “Liaz” truck and, with his wife and children in the passenger cab, smashed it through the back wall of the German embassy in Tirana. Three thousand people flooded into the embassy through the hole Bodinaku created. Muri (The Wall): Path of Remembrance is a public art project that examines the "barriers of the past" and commemorates Bodinaku's fateful decision with an installation located exactly where he broke through the wall 27 years ago this month.

Ten days after the wall was breached, all of the Albanians who sought asylum inside the embassy were allowed to leave for Germany.

Ylli Bodinaku:

“During Enver Hoxha’s time, I fed my children with this truck. This Skoda saved my life and that’s why it is very important for me. It’s the best car I have driven in my life and believe me I have gone through thousands of cars, but this one is the most special one,” he adds.

“That’s why, the symbolism of this Skoda displayed here is special. I repaired it after it was brought to me ruined. I cut, repaired and painted it the same way as the original one,” says Bodinaku.

[...]

“The idea was to give Tirana something which both Albanians and foreigners can visit as a story that uprooted communism and brought democracy. This is an installation whose display will later change through pictures and images,” says curator Eljan Tanini.

More July, 1990 photos from the German embassy in Tirana here (page in Albanian).

posted by mandolin conspiracy (3 comments total)

I visited Albania in the mid 90s as part of a church trip. The Albanians were extraordinary people. One family took out a loan to provide our group dinner. (We paid the wife back secretly over the husband's strong objections.) I also fell ill and was cared for in the bed of family I had only just met. I still remember the elderly woman who sat by the side of the bed cooling my fever with a damp cloth. It was amazing to contrast that spirit with the brutality and paranoia of the regime that had just fallen. We were shown a concentration camps that had housed political prisoners and the countryside was dotted with machine gun nests that looked like concrete igloos.
posted by vorpal bunny at 9:36 AM on July 7, 2017 [11 favorites]

I love this detail, from Ylli Bodinaku's account:

"I was together with my 3-month and 12-year-old sons, my wife and a lamb which I couldn’t leave as I felt I was abandoning him"

I'd salute him anyway for his courage, but I love that he took thought of even his littlest orphan lamb.
posted by tavella at 9:44 AM on July 7, 2017 [18 favorites]

Great story; thanks for posting it.
posted by languagehat at 5:37 PM on July 7, 2017