Statement by the President of the Chamber of Deputies Roberto Fico:

“The Day of Remembrance allows the entire community to preserve and renew the memory of all the victims of the foibe, of the exodus from their lands of the Istrians, Fiume and Dalmatians in the Second World War and of the story of the eastern border.

Those events represent a very painful page in our history and the attempt, perpetrated over time, to cover up the dynamics and historical contours has been an unacceptable operation. Just as unacceptable are the denialist theses: in no case can ideological motivations or compromises aimed at legitimizing the violation of human dignity or at downplaying the serious historical responsibilities that led to such dramatic events be considered admissible.

Democracy always needs truth and there cannot be, in the history of a community, pages that, however shameful, are left blank.

This is why it is important to have established the Day of Remembrance: so that truth and dignity may be restored to the victims of the foibe and to all the exiles who, for too long, have carried in their hearts the wounds of a denied tragedy; but also so that those events may be recognized as an integral part of the civil conscience of the entire national community; and, finally, so that this piece of collective experience may also contribute to reaffirming the necessity and value of the ideal reasons that inspired our Constitution and the fulfillment of the common European home in which today Italy and the countries of the former Yugoslavia, with which we share the eastern border, Slovenia and Croatia, coexist.

These are reasons for conciliation and respect for human rights, for the protection of minorities and for solidarity: principles which always represent a powerful antidote against ideological extremism and dangerous nationalism and which today make the lands along the eastern border, where the atrocities we wish to remember took place, a place of dialogue and exchange, both economic and cultural.

Truth and historical memory are therefore always precious and necessary: ​​they help us to treasure the errors of the past and to look in the right direction, towards a future without fratricidal wars, abuses and tyrannies; therefore, towards a human coexistence in which walls are replaced by bridges of dialogue and in which peace and cooperation are the only guidelines for the path of peoples and nations".