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"I walled up the books to protect them from vandalism", the unusual story of the woman who faced the "Gangs of Vlora" in '97

2024-03-06 22:04:36Aktualitet SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
"I walled up the books to protect them from vandalism", the unusual
Liljana Gjika

At the height of the madness that engulfed Vlora in early 1997, Liljana Gjika would witness a rare act of citizenship.

She was the director of the library of Vlora, one of the cities that experienced the most explosive situation. At the end of January, he got a call to inform him that protesters had attacked the library.

"I am shocked. I get a big mess when I remember that nonsense that had no political color", said Liljana Gjika, former director of the Library, Vlorë.

"Crowds of people rushed to the library premises and took books in bags and boxes. There I took the son and I talk to them what you do what you do, for a moment they were left. People and employees also came to the rescue community, very shocked with tears in their eyes... they helped me by sending two guys with guns", said Liljana Gjika, former director of the Vlora Library.

In this library, 120,000 specimens for adults and 50,000 for children were stored. Since it was located right next to the port, the desperate who could not escape took out their anger on the temple of knowledge. Liljana did not give up, but started an epic battle by walling the books to protect them from vandal acts.

"With my son and his friends, we bought bricks, we bought gravel to build the walls because this happened every day, and day by day I did the same thing as Rozafa's castle, which was built day and night and destroyed. We built 12 walls, we walled the books", she said.

He emptied two rooms of the house and filled them with the rarest collection found in the library, as the only chance of salvation. The collection included encyclopedias, the entire sector of Albanian-Balkanology as well as the old collection of newspapers and documents.

"We opened walls at night, they took books for nothing, they threw them and I did all those crazy things. They opened the doors, I took big masks and wrote in big letters: O People, please do not damage the books, they are valuable for you, you have no idea how many kg of nails I bought to protect the windows", said Liljana Gjika, former director of the Vlora Library.

By the end of the madness the library had lost more than 50% of its holdings, but rare collections survived. Today they are proudly stacked in the library of Vlora, where they belong.

All these sectors you see are the books saved by Liljana. This is the extraordinary story of an ordinary man, who at that time was considered abnormal for the battle he had undertaken in an Albania seething with chaos.

"My heart beats when I am in front of these books, they are very valuable, irreparable. I would do the same thing again and even more forcefully", said Liljana Gjika, former director of the Vlora Library.


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