"Lea Ypi was scrolling through social media when she stumbled across a black-and-white image of two glamorous newlyweds honeymooning at a luxury hotel in the Italian Alps. In the picture - taken in 1941, as World War II raged - a man reclines beside a woman, draped in fur and smiling warmly. Ypi recognised her instantly: it was her grandmother, Leman Leskoviku."
"She was struck by the comments beneath it - "communist spy," wrote one user, "fascist collaborator." In the days that followed, Ypi found herself returning to the photo again and again. "Why should those people decide - without knowing her, without knowing us - what my grandmother wanted, who she was, what that photo meant?" she writes in her latest book, Indignity. "And what gave them the right to share it, summarise her life and then heap scorn on it?""
"When communism fell in Albania in 1990 and the statues of Stalin and Hoxha were toppled, people could vote freely, worship as they wished and live without the fear of prying ears or secret police once again. A new party promised democracy, freedom. But it wasn't long before factories began to close, jobs disappeared and a new kind of disillusionment took hold."
Lea Ypi discovered a black-and-white 1941 photograph of her grandmother honeymooning in the Italian Alps that drew hostile social-media labels such as 'communist spy' and 'fascist collaborator.' The photograph triggered questions about identity, reputation and who has the authority to judge past lives. Ypi grew up under Enver Hoxha's Stalinist Albania, attending school, queuing for rationed groceries and singing regime songs while her family refused to display Hoxha's portrait. The collapse of communism in 1990 brought formal freedoms but economic collapse, factory closures and disillusionment. Hidden family stories, including her grandmother Leman Leskoviku and statesman Asllan Ypi, began to surface.
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