From the Depths of Hell I Saw Jesus on the Cross

The great merit of this very lively work is that it was written not by a journalist or an outside personality who knew Dom Simon Jubani, but by the victim himself. There is no other book of this quality on the subject. Albania is a country little known abroad. Under the communist regime, it was forbidden to go there except in the framework of agreements and official exchanges between the Governments. Of all the countries of Eastern Europe that have lived under the Communist yoke, this is the one where the persecution against the Catholic Church has been the most violent. It was led by Enver Hoxha, a brutal and bloodthirsty dictator trained in French universities. Albania was declared the world's first atheist State in 1967. All the churches were destroyed. In this book, Dom Simon Jubani recounts his life and twenty-six years spent in the communist prisons of Albania. He suffered so many acts of torture that he lost all his teeth. He heroically celebrated the first public Mass in Albania on November 4, 1990, which heralded the fall of the dictatorship the following year.