The bust of the intellectual who signed the foundations of the EU, Llazar Zai Fundos, is placed in Korça

2025-11-28 12:22:00, Aktualitet CNA

The bust of the intellectual who signed the foundations of the EU, Llazar Zai

Bust of Llazar Fundo in Korça

The bust of the prominent intellectual, the man who signed the foundations of the EU, Llazar Zai Fundos, has been placed in the pedestrian zone of the city of Korça, in the square named after him, as a sign of respect and appreciation for the figure of Zai Fundos.

A masterfully crafted and detailed bust by sculptor Adi Dule.

Llazar Fundo is the intellectual who in 1941, along with other international intellectuals, participated in the drafting of the Ventotene Manifesto for a free and united Europe, which encouraged the creation of a federation of European states, which was intended to keep European countries out of war.

His bust has been placed today in the heart of the city of Korça. The placement of the bust of intellectual Llazar Zai Fundo in Korça comes on the eve of the November holidays, November 28-29.

A little history, who was Llazar Zai Fundo?

He was one of the leading left-wing political figures in Albania during the kingdom and during World War II.

He was personally acquainted with prominent figures on a world scale, such as Hemingway, Barbus, Roland, Kashin, Leopold Infeld, Einstein. These, as well as many others, have donated their values ??with autograph notes.

Llazar Fundo, known as Zai Fundo, was born in Korça on March 20, 1899, into a merchant family originally from Voskopoja. He attended the French Lycée in Thessaloniki, then studied law at the Sorbonne in Paris, where he came into contact with communist ideas. In 1923, he returned to Albania with the profession of lawyer. He was an activist and chairman of the “Bashkimi” society of Avni Rustemi, a well-known exponent of the communist movement, and later a journalist and social democrat.

Meanwhile, he participated in the “Bashkimi” Society (1922-1925) and after the assassination of Avni Rustemi in 1924, he was elected chairman of the society and directed the newspaper “Bashkimi”. At the end of December, when the Noli government fell, he left his homeland for Italy, Austria, Germany, France and Russia.

During this time he collaborated with the newspaper "Liria Kombëtare" of Omer Nishani. During his stay in Vienna he joined the Balkan Communist Federation, which had within it the Kosovo Committee, where Zai Fundo was active. He then emigrated to the USSR, graduated in philosophy in Moscow and gave lectures on this subject in Leningrad and joined the Comintern.

He participated in the 8th Congress of the Balkan Communist Federation where he discussed the formation of the communist party in Albania, helping to form the Korça Communist Group.

In 1933 he was in Germany where he saw the Reichstag Fire and fled to the Soviet Union with the Leipzig judge, Georgi Dimitrov. He was sentenced to death by the Comintern for his anti-Stalinist stance in 1938, but Dimitrov, then head of the Comintern, overturned the decision.

He returns to his homeland and starts working as a high school teacher. He is dismissed after a year for his anti-Italian activities together with Ali Këlcyra, with whom he also shares the center-left political ideology.

According to the dictator Hoxha's own works and publications (When the Party Was Born and Works 21), Llazar Fundo spoke at the Korça municipality on April 7, 1939, in front of a large crowd, and asked for weapons to fight fascism.

He was captured by the Italians in May 1939 and interned on the infamous island of Ventotene. There he would be together with Safet Butka, Muzafer Pipa, Isuf Luzaj, Altiero Spinelli and Sandro Pertini.

Fundo had become a communist in Paris during his university studies. As his faith was supplemented by intelligence and knowledge of many languages, his political commitment had reached beyond Albania, and when Dimitrov was arrested after the Reichstag fire, Fundo was in Berlin as one of his collaborators. He had escaped arrest and had re-entered Moscow where he worked for the International. When the wind of the great purges began, he, a loyal communist, but educated in a liberal cultural atmosphere in democratic countries, had frequented quite a few opponents of Stalin…

In Ventotene he had naturally become close to the former communists and socialists with whom he often spoke about the curse of Stalin's regime. Otherwise he walked calmly, upright, handsome with blond hair that the wind blew away, murmuring in a low voice the words of Plato that he was reading in Greek, searching in ancient texts for the peace of mind that the failure of his communist experience had taken from him and that he could not find anywhere... After September 8, when the last group of Ventotene internees was released, Lazar Fundo went down to the Apulian coast, crossed into Albania, met the communist partisans, telling them who he was and that he was coming to fight with them, stood behind the wall and was shot. He was or was not forty years old. I would like to hope that besides me there is an Albanian in the world who remembers him".

With two Italian federalists, along with his friend Stavro Skëndin, they draft the Ventotene Manifesto.

After the fascist regime took over in 1943, despite the fraternal and friendly support that Sandro Pertini gave him, in a last meeting with him in Rome, in August 1943; who wanted to convince him to stay in Italy to fight fascism with him, he decides to return to Albania to fight. He joins the Kryeziu brothers and the British mission near them in the Gjakova Highlands.

In September 1944 he was captured by Yugoslav partisans on Mount Dobrej in Tropoja and handed over to the Albanian communists. He was convicted of "Trotskyism" and collaboration with the British Intelligence Service. He was arrested and killed by partisan forces in Kolesjan in Kukës on September 23, 1944.

In Enver Hoxha's radiogram on September 21, 1944, it says: "Zai Fundon, torture him to death and then shoot him."/ CNA