After weeks of online research, my Resistance Album is now up and running, with eight pages displaying the ‘Héros de la Résistance’ sets of 1957-1961 completed, as well as the first two of the remarkable Albanian ‘Anti-Fascist Heroes’ series of 1979-1986.

This latter series is remarkable in that it contrives to commemorate no fewer than 77 individuals on 31 stamps, all of which look very much alike, featuring minuscule drawings of each ‘hero’, labelled in near-illegibly tiny print. The Albanian resistance (as perhaps with all others) was beset by internal dissension, and can only be seen through the prism of the victor in those struggles, namely the dictator Enver Hoxha, in whose final years this series was produced. Since not one of the 77 survived the war, what few narratives exist of their (mostly) short lives are couched in terms none dare contradict. Those who were not executed by ‘the cowardly fascist invader’ tended to die ‘fighting bravely, outnumbered by Italian (or German) fascists’ in battles which lasted, typically, ‘6 hours’.

Indeed, a note I have appended at the foot of the first ‘Albania’ page reads as follows: “It has not proved possible to collect details of all 77 Albanians commemorated in this series. In the case of those about whom details are available, these do not always tally with each other, and may anyway be the product of post-war myth-making. The sets were produced in the last years of the Hoxha regime, and the official narratives of brave deaths in battle against successive occupying forces may mask less savoury events in the struggle for Party control, from which Hoxha was to emerge victorious."