In an interview for Euronews Albania, journalist Blendi Fevziu spoke about his book “Enver Hoxha” which has now been translated into 12 different languages and was also added to this year’s list of the best books on the Iron Curtain, published by The Guardian.
Fevziu also talked about a truly unique moment in history, as was the letter sent by Mother Theresa to the communist dictator Enver Hoxha, when her mother got severely ill.
According to Fevziu, Hoxha did not allow Mother Teresa to enter Albania, nor did he allow her to take her mother with her to Rome for treatment. The journalist further added that Gonxhe Bojaxhiu (Mother Theresa’s birth name) did not get to see her mother ever again.
“It was a shock to find out about Enver Hoxha’s attitude towards Mother Teresa and the Catholic clergy. The story of Mother Teresa is probably one of the most painful ones in the book. Mother Teresa left Skopje at the age of 18 [to join a mission in Ireland] whereas her family came to Albania. One day they informed her that her mother was very sick and this is why Mother Theresa wrote a letter to Enver Hoxha.
The letter did not go directly to Hoxha, it went through the Foreign Minister, who told the Albanian ambassador that there was a message for Hoxha so that the mother of a nun named Gonxhe Bojaxhiu could go to Rome to meet her daughter, who she hadn’t seen for 40 years. But the French foreign minister made a mistake by saying that Jacqueline Kennedy had also been interested in this. Gonxhe Bojaxhiu received the letter with the answer, which said that she could not take her mother with her. Many interventions followed but in the end, it was simply impossible. She ultimately ended up asking for a 5-day permit to enter Albania just so she could see her mother, but the answer she received was: “When you left your mother, you didn’t think about the fact that you’d never be able to see her again! Albania has many good hospitals”. One day, Mother Theresa received a letter from her sister, saying that her mother had passed away the day before and that she had done so with Gonxhe’s photo on her chest. Her last letter read: ‘Gonxhe, I know we will never see each other again, but I have had you in my heart every day of my life’. In 1989, Mother Theresa came back and visited the house where her mother and sister had lived for all of those years. It’s an absolutely fascinating story, but a painful one as well” said Blendi Fevziu.
