Zai Fundo, drafter of the Manifesto of Ventotene/Rama "brings it back" to Milan: Viva la Italia libera

2024-05-26 13:52:00, Aktualitet CNA

Zai Fundo, drafter of the Manifesto of Ventotene/Rama "brings it back"

Prime Minister Edi Rama, in his meeting with thousands of Albanian immigrants in Milan, recalled the contribution of Llazar Fundo, the intellectual and idealist who drafted the Ventotene Manifesto "For a free and united Europe".

Rama said that after the return of Zai Fundo, Albania was not ready for the ambition of an idealist like him, where he emphasizes that when he returned, the dictatorship prematurely took the boy in love with Plato and his homeland to his grave.

"This sentence from the Iliad was uttered in a low voice by an Albanian since 1943.

He had become close to former communists and socialists with whom he often talked about the evil of Stalin's regime. Calm, he walked elegantly with his head straight, beautiful with blond hair, whispering the words of Plato that he read in Greek to him, seeking the simplicity of his soul. During the night of July 25-26, 1943, says Spinelli, while they were locked in the barracks, the word spread that Mussolini had resigned.

The next morning all the internees were in the square to hear his dismissal.

Zai Fundo shouted: Viva la italia Libera

Then Zai Fundo returned to Albania, but Albania was not ready for his ambition, the boy in love with Plato and his country, but disappointed by the communists who had seized the power of the dictatorship, was taken to the grave prematurely. all Albanians.

"Albania had to get out of the ineffectual communist territory, but also to go through the exhausting ranges of an unfavorable transition to finally reappear in the Mediterranean as a state with its own voice", said Rama.

Exiled on the island of Ventotene as an anti-fascist, he would come into contact with the Italian ideologues, Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi, with whom Zai Fundo would draw up the "Manifesto of Ventotene", known as the forerunner of the Hague Congress and the Declaration of Shuman.

They developed a new vision for the creation of a free and united Europe, based on the idea of ??sovereignty, workers' movement, common currency, etc.

Italian researchers would call the ideas of the lawyer born in Korça and graduated from the Sorbonne as the forerunners of the European Union. Fundo had a long and complex political experience, in Albania and Europe.

The life of Llazar Fundo

Zai Fundo, drafter of the Manifesto of Ventotene/Rama "brings it back"

Llazar Fundo, known as Zai Fundo, was born in Korça on March 20, 1899 in a merchant family originally from Voskopoja. He attended the French Lyceum 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 Avni Rustemi's "Bashkimi" society, a well-known exponent of the communist movement, then a social-democratic journalist.

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

During this time he collaborated with the newspaper "Liria Kombëtare" of Omer Nishan. During his stay in Vienna, he joined the Balkan Communist Federation, which included 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.

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 Communist Group of Korça.

Zai Fundo, drafter of the Manifesto of Ventotene/Rama "brings it back"

In 1933, he was in Germany where he saw the Reichstag Fire and left for 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 verdict.

In 1939, after the Italian invasion, he returned to his homeland and started working as a high school teacher. Removed after a year for his anti-Italian activity together with Ali Këlcyra, with whom he disagrees in the political opinion of the center-left. Captured by the Italians and exiled to the infamous island of Ventotene. He would be there 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 intelligence and knowledge of several languages ??added to his confidence, 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 escaped arrest and re-entered Moscow where he worked at International. When the wind of the great purges started, 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 ex-communists and socialists with whom he often spoke about the curse of Stalin's regime. Otherwise he walked about calmly, upright, beautiful, with blond hair blowing in the wind, muttering under his breath the words of Plato he was reading in Greek, seeking in the ancient texts the peace of mind that the failure of experience had taken from him. his communist and that he could not find anywhere... After September 8, when the last group of Ventotene internees was released, Llazar Fundo went down to the coast of Pulia, crossed to Albania, got to know the communist partisans, telling them who he was and what he was doing came to fight with them, put himself against the wall and was shot. Was he forty years old? I want to hope that, apart from me, there is an Albanian in the world who remembers him".

Document - Llazar Fundo was the drafter of the Ventotene Manifesto "For a free and united Europe"
June 28, 09:51

With the two Italian federalists, together with his friend Stavro Skëndin, they draft the Manifesto of Ventotene

After the fascist regime took its toll in 1943, with all the fraternal and friendly support 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 Highlands of Gjakova.

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

In the radiogram of Enver Hoxha on September 21, 1944, it is said: "Zai Fundon torture him to death and then shoot him"./ CNA