Vasil Andoni

Vasil Andoni (Elbasan, Ottoman Empire, January 28, 1901 - Rome, Italy, July 13, 1994) was an Albanian politician and teacher. He was the Secretary General and one of leaders the Balli Kombëtar active in World War II in Albania.

Vasil Andoni
Secretary General of Balli Kombëtar
Personal details
Born	(1902-01-28)28 January 1902 Elbasan, Ottoman Empire (present-day Albania)
Died	7 October 1994(1994-10-07) (aged 92) Rome, Italy
Political party	Balli Kombëtar
Occupation	Teacher

Biography

Vasil studied at Robert College in Constantinople, then took a job at the Elbasan Normal School in his hometown. He became a teacher at a high school in Tirana in 1939 and taught in Prishtina in the early 1940s.^[1]

In 1942, he joined the Nationalist National Front led by Midhat Frashëri and became its General Secretary. During the battles between the Communist-led National Liberation Movement and the National Front, he joined the National Front units fighting in the mountains of Central Albania in late 1943. Unlike many of his party counterparts, he opposed collaboration with German invaders.^[2][1]

Seeing the overwhelming advance of the Communist guerrilla brigades, along with other leaders of the National Front, Frashëri, Ali Këlcyra and Hasan Dosti, they left for Shkodra on October 18, 1944, with a small fishing boat, and on October 23, they sailed south of Bris. He first settled in Rome and wrote for the anti-communist newspapers Albania libre ('Free Albania') and Flamuri ('The Flag'). He emigrated to New York, in 1949, along with Midhat Frashëri, and until his death was a leading figure in the Albanian expatriate community in the United States. He never returned to his homeland.^[3][1]

Ideology

Vasil Andoni along with Abaz Ermenji, Zef Pali and Halil Maçi was part of the agrarian socialist and progressive wing of the party, which gained the leadership of the party after the war.^[4] He expressed himself as having "no religion" when he left Albania.^[5]