Remembrance Day: Foibe and Exodus “National Disaster”. No to Denialism

 

Rome, 9 February 2020 – The President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella released the following statement:

«The “Day of Remembrance”, established by a large majority of Parliament in 2004, helps us relive a tragic page of our recent history, ignored, removed or even denied for many years: the terrible suffering that the Italians of Istria, Dalmatia and Venezia Giulia were forced to endure under the occupation of the Yugoslav communists. These lands, with their inhabitants, at the end of the Second World War, knew the sad and harsh fate of passing, without interruption, from the dictatorship of Nazi-fascism to that of communism.

The latter unleashed, in those border regions, a persecution against Italians, sometimes disguised as a reprisal for fascist oppression, but which resulted in a real ethnic cleansing, which struck a defenceless and innocent population in a ferocious and widespread manner.

The persecution, the brutal mass killings – culminating, but not exhausted, in the dark tragedy of the Foibe – the forced exodus of the Italians from Istria, Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia are an integral part of the history of our country and of Europe.

It was a national disaster to which contemporaries did not give - through superficiality or calculation - the due importance. This painful circumstance weighed even more on the shoulders of the refugees who experienced in their Motherland, alongside great solidarity, also not isolated behaviors of incomprehension, indifference and even hateful hostility.

It is above all due to the strenuous struggle of the exiles and their descendants that today, albeit slowly and with difficulty, the sad chapter of the Foibe and the exodus has emerged from the shadows and has become part of national history, accepted and shared. Conquering, dutifully, the dignity of memory.

There are still small pockets of deplorable militant denialism. But today the real adversary to beat, stronger and more insidious, is that of indifference, disinterest, carelessness, which often feed on the lack of knowledge of history and its events. These teach us that hatred, revenge, discrimination, in whatever capacity exercised, only germinate more hatred and violence.

To the victims of that persecution, to the refugees, to their descendants, I address a thought of emotion and sympathy. Their anguish and their suffering must never be forgotten. They remain a perennial warning against totalitarian ideologies and regimes which, in the name of the superiority of the State, of the party or of a presumed and misunderstood ideal, oppress citizens, crush minorities and deny the fundamental rights of the person. And they strengthen us in our intentions to defend and strengthen the institutions of democracy and to promote peace and international cooperation, which are based on dialogue between States and friendship between peoples.

In those same areas that were, in the first half of the twentieth century, the scene of wars and dark tragedies, today we share, with our neighbors in Slovenia and Croatia, peace, friendship and collaboration, with a shared future in Europe and in the international community".

Source: Presidency of the Republic