"I was brought up in Albania by my grandmother, who was born in Salonica (as Thessaloniki was known when it was part of the Ottoman Empire) to an élite Ottoman family, but suffered a lot in Communist Albania as a single mother and the wife of a political prisoner. She lived through the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, fascism, Nazism, communism and the post-communist years, and yet always insisted that even though she lost so much-wealth, status, connections-she never lost her dignity."
"Decades later, Ypi wondered how Leman, "no fascist apologist," had managed to experience joy amid so much devastation-not just in the midst of war but also years later, when her family was persecuted in Albania during the reign of the Stalinist Enver Hoxha. " Indignity," Ypi's latest book, is devoted to the question of how her grandmother weathered her tumultuous life-a capability that, Ypi learns, was deeply tied to a sense of dignity."
A grandmother recalled being "the happiest person alive" during a 1941 honeymoon in Italy even as World War II raged. She later faced persecution in Albania under the Stalinist Enver Hoxha and significant personal losses yet insisted she never lost her dignity. Dignity was described as connected to the capacity to do the right thing and to a moral dimension of freedom. Kant's Groundwork explains that humans can take a critical distance from immediate passions and inclinations, enabling reflection on moral duties. That capacity for moral reflection and choice helps explain sustained resilience and joy amid severe hardship.
Read at The New Yorker
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