Petrit Latifi
In 1928, the Volkszeitung/Deutsche Volkszeitung published an article about the Albanian kaçaks led by Feriz Sallku (Salkovic) who fought against Chetnik Serbs, most likely led by Serbian war criminal Kosta Pecanac, in 1928 in the Prizren area. Feriz Sallku (Salkovic) was an Albanian from the Sanxhak area. His family was persecuted by the Serbian state for decades. At one time, Sallku was considered the most dangerous man in all of Yugoslavia.
Photo of Feriz Sallku
From the article:
“Gang clashes on the Albanian-Yugoslav border.
Belgrade, December 4. The authorities report that yesterday, a gang of insurgents who had managed to cross the Albanian border penetrated into Yugoslav territory in the Prizren area. They were cornered by a gendarmerie detachment that was immediately alerted near the village of Suva Reka.”
“The gang had to engage in a skirmish, during which they left seven corpses on the battlefield. Another gang was attacked by detachments near Cernovo and is said to have lost ten men. According to Politika, both gangs, which operated together, were under the command of the notorious gang leader Feriz Salkovitsch. It is reported that two gendarmes were wounded in the fighting”
Who was Shehid Feriz Sallku?
Martyr Feriz Salković
“Upon arriving in Fier, asking about the village of Hamil and the Mehonjić family, we meet Sait Halilović who tells us in Bosnian that his family moved to Albania from the Novi Pazar settlement of Mur. Very helpfully, he takes us to Selim Salković’s barbershop.
Selim welcomes us warmly and says that his grandfather Hajriz is the brother of Feriz Salković, the famous Sandžak hero. In 1922, they moved to Fier, where they were accepted by Ahmed Zogu, the Albanian king for their merits. Selim’s mother Fatima is from the Kačapor family. He emphasizes to us that they are all proud of their ancestors and Sandžak origins. However, he is outraged by the fact that some of their compatriots have declared themselves Serbs.
(By the way, among our Sandžakli in Albania, the problem of identity, i.e. doubts about nationality, is very present. Even the younger ones speak or, at worst, understand the Bosnian language. However, some of them, especially the more educated ones, consider themselves Albanians.
While Džafer Mehonjić, for example, emphasizes for himself that what his grandfather Jusuf was. It is probably not without foundation the assumption that the activity of Serbian state structures from all segments did not leave the territory of Albania uncovered, thus continuing the tradition of Greater Serbian aspirations and activities from the beginning of the 20th century.
At the Baltez cemetery, where the bones of the famous Sandžak committee Jusuf Mehonjić have been resting for about 10 years, we also came across the richly decorated graves of the Salković family (Sallku, in Albanian).”
Feriz Sallku was killed in a nearby village in WW2
“On one of them is carved: KUSH JAM UNE (“Who am I”) under a photograph of the famous Sandžak hero Feriz Salković. As Jusuf, the grandson of Jusuf Mehonjić, explained to us, Feriz was killed in a nearby village during the Second World War. Next to his, there are also the graves of his sons Ismet and Feriz. His brother Hajriz and his wife Atif are also buried in that cemetery.”
Feriz Sallku was a prominent Albanian freedom fighter
“One of the most prominent figures of the Komit movement in Sandžak, in the period after the formation of the Kingdom of SHS, was Feriz Salković. The people, as with Mehonjić, believed that Feriz was born with a “shirt” and that an ordinary bullet would not kill him, but only a golden one.
During the time of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Salković was, together with Mehonjić and Bajram Curi, declared the most dangerous man in that state by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. After he fled from Sandžak to Albania, more precisely to the town of Fier, the Serbian police first tried to liquidate him with the help of Abdurahman Brunčević from Melayu. In 1929, he lied to the Serbian police that he had killed Feriz, who had lived peacefully in Fier until 1943, when he was killed in an ambush.
Feriz was married to the beautiful Šeremeta, a native of Rožaje, with whom he had five sons. Feriz’s eldest son Avdul, immediately after the murder of his father, set out to find the killer. When he found out who the killer was, he went to the killer’s village. There, they started shooting at him as soon as they saw him. However, he avenged his father on that occasion, killing seven people from the killer’s family.
After World War II, Feriz Salković’s sons – Ismet, Kadrija and Esad – were persecuted by UDBE agents, so they had to emigrate first to Albania and later to Australia – where they still live today. With the collapse of the communist regime, Feriz’s son Ismet returned to Albania from Australia in 1996. ” (H. Crnovršanin, N. Sadiković: “Sons of Sandžak”)”.1
References
Balkan Academia 