Remembrance Day belongs first and foremost to the Julian-Dalmatian community and was supported by 95% of the parliamentarians.

The historiography of the left, tied to the suggestions of the old PCI, places the historical responsibility for the Julian-Dalmatian exodus first on liberal Italy (for them one fact counts... that the Risorgimento was not made by the popular masses, who did not want Italy to enter the 1915-18 war for Trento and Trieste) and then very decisively on the fascist regime.

Furthermore, they establish in their summaries a curious cause-effect relationship in reading the history of the eastern border. The various Montanari Barbero, D'Orsi, Gobetti and others do not, in my opinion, take into account at all in their declarations, in which they hope for the abolition of law 92/2004 establishing the Day of Remembrance, the devastating effects on freedom and human rights of the policies of the Yugoslav communist regime in the post-war period and in the midst of peace, not only in Istria but in all of Yugoslavia, pointing the finger only at fascism. To send away by any means over 300.000 Istrians, Fiume and Dalmatians, it took Tito's regime about ten years and with fascism well over.

The aforementioned historians, finally, do not seem to consider the Julian-Dalmatian Community as a subject of history but a mere object. The law on the Day of Remembrance confers dignity to the forgotten victims of the foibe and to the tragedy of a people. Then everyone can celebrate it as they wish, but without minimizing or reducing the meaning of a tragic story that for years has been culpably silenced by the various Italian governments. Here lies the limitation of their thinking and the strange arguments. They are interested in politics, not in justice and the truth regarding an entire population, and an Italian one at that. They invent conspiracies and state revisionisms to the detriment of the exiles and the Italian minority present today in Istria, Fiume and Zara (about 25.000 Italians).

A contradiction in terms their reasoning, which is based on old Togliattian and Titoist interpretations that are purely ideological and instrumental. We are in 2021 and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 seems to have taught these people nothing.

 

Marino Micich

Historical Archive Museum of Fiume (Rome)