On the occasion of the celebration of the Day of Remembrance 2022, the provincial committee of Rome of the National Association of Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia and the Society of Fiumani Studies have organized at the Casa del Ricordo (a structure that Rome Capital has entrusted to them since its inauguration in January 2015) the conference “Foibe, exodus and post-war on the eastern border”, which can be reviewed on the YouTube channel of the Multimedia Documentation Center of Julian, Istrian, Fiumana and Dalmatian culture:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR6aHuOJI2U&t

Introducing the event, moderated by Lorenzo Salimbeni (Anvgd communications manager), Professor Donatella Schürzel, president of the Anvgd committee of Rome, recalled the important steps forward made in the knowledge of the history of the eastern Italian border since the institution of the Day of Remembrance. In the face of the conspicuous historiographical production, collections of testimonies and institutional declarations, "those who persist in denying, justifying or belittling the pages of national history concerning Istria, Fiume and Dalmatia deserve only oblivion". Among the most recent initiatives carried out with the contribution of the Roman Anvgd, the national vice president of the association highlighted the naming, just the day before, of a garden in Lariano (a town in the Castelli Romani) near the city schools after Alice Abbà, a young girl thrown into a sinkhole together with her mother a few months after the same fate had befallen her father, a municipal guard from Rovigno: «This is also how dignity and visibility are restored to pages of national history and to the martyrs of Italianness who had been forgotten for too long»

Senator Maurizio Gasparri then recalled his commitment to the claims of the exiles, which began well before the approval of the Law establishing the Day of Remembrance on March 30, 2004: "For example, it was the XNUMXs - said the Roman parliamentarian - when a question of mine hit the headlines regarding the treatment of the foibe in textbooks, to which the Undersecretary for Education Rocchi gave an absolutely inadequate answer. On that occasion, the late Giampaolo Pansa shared my requests and equally rejected the answer I had received from the representative of the Ministry of Viale Trastevere." Gasparri then recalled the work carried out more recently in the Senate commission during the approval of the new Financial Law so that public funds for research and dissemination activities carried out by the exiles' associations were not cut.

Instead, Marino Micich, Director of the Historical Archive Museum of Fiume, one of the most important cultural institutions in the Julian-Dalmatian Quarter of Rome and in the associations of the Adriatic diaspora in general, focused on the book “Verità infoibate”, written last year by Fausto Biloslavo and Matteo Carnieletto. “It is not a history book, but rather a book of stories,” Micich explained, “that the authors, as good journalists, have been able to collect, document and illustrate. It ranges from the pensions paid by INPS to the benefit of notorious infoibators to the knighthood of the Italian Republic awarded to Tito, passing through the recovery of the body of Senator Gigante from the mass grave in Castua where the Yugoslavian communist partisans had buried him in May 1945 after having kidnapped and eliminated him in Fiume.”

Matteo Carnieletto himself concluded the conference with words and images dedicated to Goli Otok, the re-education camp where Tito segregated the “Cominformists”, that is, the Yugoslav communists (and the native Italian community) who, after Yugoslavia’s exit from the Cominform (the coordination structure of world communism based in Moscow), reaffirmed their loyalty to the line dictated by Stalin and the Kremlin: «Visited by chance by the Minister of the Interior of the Socialist Republic of Croatia during the search for a marble quarry to make available to an artist supported by the Tito regime – explained the journalist from ilgiornale.it – Goli Otok proved to be more suitable as a place of detention. The perverse mechanisms that regulated this site imposed a sort of prison self-management, in which each prisoner had to supervise, punish and “re-educate” his fellow prisoners if he did not want to suffer more severe treatment» Sleep deprivation, a hasty transition from one forced labor to another, alienating sessions of political indoctrination and the destruction of any solidarity between prisoners are some of the atrocious aspects of Goli Otok that Carnieletto described in a reportage made for the online newspaper InsideOver: «The remains of this open-air prison are in ruins and abandoned, there is not the slightest interest in cultivating the memory of one of the crimes committed by Tito's communist dictatorship»

Finally, we would like to point out that tomorrow, Wednesday 16 March, the CDM YouTube channel will broadcast live starting at 17:30 pm from the San Marco Library in the Julian-Dalmatian Quarter of Rome the presentation of the book “Aldo Pugliese. From Istrian exile… to union leader”, an event organized by the provincial committee of Rome of the National Association of Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia.
Introduced and moderated by Maria Grazia Chiappori (Councillor of Anvgd Rome); speakers: Aldo Pugliese (President of Anvgd Taranto), Giorgio Benvenuto (former member of parliament and former Secretary General of Uil), Marino Micich (Director of the Historical Archive Museum of Fiume) and Donatella Schürzel (President of Anvgd Rome).