Albania: Shadows of the Past

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 3 December 2015

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Maria Margaronis explores the debris of Albania's past —the prisons, concrete bunkers and secret police headquarters - as the country attempts to deal with its troubled history.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is a BBC podcast. You can get all our podcasts and our terms of use at BBCworldservice.com
0:06.8	slash podcasts.
0:10.7	Welcome to this week's assignment on the BBC World Service with me Maria Margaronis.
0:17.0	We're going into a derelict building right in the middle of Tirana, hidden behind tall trees.
0:24.0	This is where the Sigorimi, Albania's secret police,
0:27.0	listened in to citizens' lives, picking up every whisper of dissent.
0:31.0	These are the rooms.
0:33.0	Wow.
0:34.0	We've made me to wait.
0:37.0	What do we've got?
0:38.0	Tapes.
0:39.0	These are boxes, boxes of tapes.
0:42.0	And those are, they look like cassette players they're recorders
0:45.6	cassette players and boxes of Memorex tapes and what are those are those camera lenses and a switchboard?
0:56.0	Yeah.
0:57.0	You can see objects.
0:59.0	Oh these are the albums with photographs of bugged objects, briefcases, ladies handbags, a pipe, women's shoes and men's shoes shoes pre-fitted with bugs.
1:15.0	This is like an old spy movie.
1:18.0	Yeah.
1:19.0	It's incredible.
1:20.0	Double 07. Looking at this now, we're so used to seeing this stuff in movies that it's really difficult for
1:29.2	me to kind of take in that it's real. We have to remember what this stuff did. This
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.