Foibe and the public use of history
Instrumental polemics do not help build a bridge between the European past and present.
The outbursts on the tragedy of the Julian foibe continue with new protagonists, often reaching the point of literally wanting to abolish law 92/2004. I do not intend to dwell here on what bizarre relevance there is to wanting to overturn an almost unanimous vote of the Italian parliament in favor of a law that intended to connect the memory of the Julian-Dalmatian exiles with national and European history. Obviously, this law, which established the Day of Remembrance of the suffering experienced by the Italian populations of Istria, Fiume and Dalmatia, cannot and must not be abolished based on the latest requests made by Professor Tomaso Montanari or Alessandro Barbero.
The group of historians, Eric GOBETTI, Tomaso MONTANARI, Alessandro BARBERO, Giampaolo D'ORSI, Claudia CERNIGOJ, Alessandra KERSEVAN, Sandi VOLK, Giacomo SCOTTI and a few others, essentially grasp, in the work of the Yugoslav communist repression culminating in the mass massacres of the Julian FOIBE, only one element of the historical context, that is, FASCISM and its repressive policy. A repression that began in 1922 but which, it should be added, dramatically transcended precisely in wartime, striking Tito's Yugoslav partisans and that part of the Slovenian and Croatian population that supported the Yugoslav People's Liberation Movement. Violence against violence that exponentially worsened in the vortex of war. By these historians and their other followers, the FOIBE are considered a negligible final episode, certainly complex and brutal, in the long struggle for liberation from Nazi-fascism. It would therefore seem to be a SIMPLE SETTLEMENT OF ACCOUNTS. Although they do not keep quiet about the repressive phenomenon conducted against militarized and civilian Italian elements by the Yugoslavian secret police of the OZNA (Section for the Defense of the People), they give the clear impression that the action of the Yugoslavian communist regime was, all things considered, an INCIDENT ALONG THE PATH. For them, the massacres of the foibe are, fundamentally, an ACCIDENTAL ELEMENT and not of substance. Such evaluations also lead the aforementioned historians to reduce the confirmed and presumed victims, from approximately 10.000 individuals to just under 5.000. But, it must be emphasized, that such statements are not based at all on the results of definitive historical research. The research still needs to be done properly, even if after 75 years from those events it does not appear to be an easy task. In any case, these are numerical declarations that aim to understate the situation and therefore, added to other justificatory considerations, lead to a downplaying of the seriousness of the purges ordered by the Yugoslav communist leaders.
Often, in the press statements of Gobetti or Montanari, the fact that the killings in the foibe and Yugoslavian concentration camps occurred mostly after the war was over is glossed over. Furthermore, the aforementioned historians do not say that the victims of the Italian foibe should be added to the over 150.000 Slovenian, Croatian, Serbian victims... caused by Tito's regime, with the general accusation of "enemies of the people". Only by taking these figures into account does the dimension of the mass liquidation phenomenon of the Yugoslavian communist regime become clearer. All this occurred during the second half of 1945 and partly in 1946.
In practice, the stabilization policy of the new Yugoslav dictatorship, implemented for years and years with Stalinist methods, included: mass massacres, deportations, forced re-education in labor camps, confiscation of property and other repressive and anti-democratic measures such as prohibiting multi-party politics, freedom of the press and opinion, etc. etc. All these facts remain relegated to a vague historical background and not properly remembered in the statements of Montanari, Gobetti and others. For them, they are accessory, secondary facts. Yet, broadening the objective would help to better understand the foibe and ultimately also the long exodus of 300.000 Julian Dalmatians that occurred from 1944 to 1958, caused above all by the liberticidal policy of the Yugoslav communist regime.
It is clear that all these tragedies must be studied by remembering and contextualizing the other tragedies, but not with a justificatory purpose but rather to condemn every form of excess and abuse. At least the civilian victims deserve this act. It is also true that the forces that fought fascism and Nazism did so in the name of democratic freedoms; this action undoubtedly represents a historical merit. But those states, like Yugoslavia, which then at the end of the war repudiated the values of freedom and democracy by imposing new bloody dictatorships for decades, are not examples to be held up in a positive light for future generations just for having won the war against the Italians, the Germans and their collaborators. Tito and other communist dictators earned demerit after the merit. This is a statement of a moral nature not historical, but I think it is right to underline it here.
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AVOID THE MISTAKE OF BUILDING NEW WALLS
It is clear at this point that the aforementioned historians, in criticizing law 92/2004 and therefore appealing to a deleterious "public use of history", incur the ERROR of those historians who, narrating the Foibe, do not take into due consideration the responsibilities or rather the victims caused in that territorial context by the fascist and Nazi systems. In any case, promoting the abolition of the law of the Day of Remembrance after about fifteen years from its promulgation, is a very weak and unacceptable political operation. It is, in any case, a gratuitous offense to the Julian-Dalmatian community and to the civilian victims of that tormented period.
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THE VALUE OF AUTHORS such as Raoul PUPO, Gianni OLIVA, Marina CATTARUZZA, Guido RUMICI, Giovanni STELLI, Amleto BALLARINI, Roberto SPAZZALI, Fulvio SALIMBENI and others.
From this often excessively polemical dialectical context, something positive emerges, in my opinion, constituted by the work carried out on the complex themes of the Julian lands by established historians such as Raoul Pupo, Gianni Oliva, Guido Rumici, Marina Cattaruzza, Giovanni Stelli, Roberto Spazzali, Fulvio Salimbeni together with Amleto Ballarini and Mihael Sobolevski, authors of a bilingual work, Italian and Croatian, on the Italian victims in Fiume and its surroundings (1939-1947). There are then other authors on the theme of the foibe who deserve more attention: Lucio Toth, Giuseppina Mellace, Vincenzo de Luca and Gaetano La Perna, as they bring useful information and testimonies. The merit of these authors lies in telling, with the help of substantial documentation, the history of the repressions and massacres that occurred in Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia without omissions or simplifications for ideological use, wisely contextualizing them in a longer period. This is a historical-scientific method that is not only more linear, but capable of developing a sort of CULTURAL MEDIATION, due to the balance of the arguments expressed, which over time will be able to increasingly strengthen the foundations of a DEMOCRATIC AND CONSTRUCTIVE DIALOGUE. A dialogue that is a harbinger of new research and studies on the dramas and tragedies of a twentieth century that has not yet passed. In conclusion, only by following the path of dialogue traced by these scholars, will it be possible to increasingly involve the Slovenian and Croatian counterparts and give concrete substance to the last ceremony of presidents Mattarella and Pahor held in Basovizza, dedicated in memory of all the victims of dictatorships and totalitarianisms of the twentieth century in those territories.
Marino Micich
Director of the Historical Archive Museum of Fiume (Rome)
Director of the Historical Archive Museum of Fiume (Rome)
Language
English



