Pjerin Guraziu

In memoriam

Doctor of Economic Sciences, athlete with international level results. Teacher at the Commercial School of Vlora. Director of Tirana Customs in 1938. After the war, head of finance in the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Agriculture. Member of the commission for the organization of athletic competitions in the 1946 Balkaniad. Pjerin (Pjetër) Guraziu was born in 1906, in Shkodër, from a well-known commercial family and notable for patriotic activity. In 1912, the six-year-old Pjetër Guraziu and his family found themselves in Bari, Italy, even completing the Commercial High School. And culminating in 1929, with the Doctorate in Economics at the University of Bari. In 1930, Pjetër Guraziu returns to Albania and starts working as a teacher at the commercial high school in Vlora. He then works at the Customs of Tirana, while during the years of the occupation he is drawn into the private activity of the family, which was run by his father. In 1938, he married Ermelinda Saraçi, daughter of the well-known Patuk Saraçi - deputy of the first Albanian Parliament. They have two children, Elizabeth and Philip. Meanwhile, the Gurazez family, living in Tirana, financially helps the National Liberation War, hoping and believing in the realization of a democratic Albania. They invite him to participate in the formation of the new government in Berat, as an uncompromised intellectual, which prevents him due to health reasons. But he does not prevent himself from accepting to serve in important tasks in the central departments of the new state (Ministry of Agriculture and Finance) as head of the economic and financial sectors. And with all this,Pjetër Guraziu would arrive at the fateful date of February 22, 1951 when he was arrested and on the night between February 26 and 27, 1951, together with 21 other intellectuals, without any guilt, he would be shot without trial. Forty years later, on August 11, 1991, the Plenum of the Supreme Court in Tirana publicly announced the verdict of innocence for all 22 people shot on February 27, 1951, in the so-called bomb incident at the USSR Embassy in Tirana. In 1993, the reburial of 22 martyrs was solemnly organized in the Martyrs' Cemetery in Tirana. While in 2011 they were decorated with the "Honour of the Nation" Order. Pjetër Guraziu is the first record holder not only of athletics, but of all Albanian sports. The culmination of his story dates back to April 11, 1925 when he won the long jump competition with 6.15 m, in Bari, Italy, 4 years before the first athletics championship was organized in Albania, where the winner of this competition would reach lower numbers, anyway. He participated in the second athletics championship in 1930, where he took first and second place in various sports. (Kujto.al)

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