I followed with interest the ceremonies on the Carso that preceded the meeting in Trieste at the Prefecture and at the Narodni Dom returned to the Slovenian Community in the name of a pacification that proceeds through symbolic gestures, sharing, support. As people of Fiume, we fully understand the need to untie the knots of history and build new opportunities. While the images of the two presidents, Sergio Mattarella of Italy and Borut Pahor of Slovenia, scrolled by, holding hands at the Foiba di Basovizza and then in front of the memorial stone of those shot, there are many thoughts that I would have liked to express in a hypothetical assembly of all of us exiles and Italians who remained: starting from the desire for a recomposition that is not only formal, that does not stop at declarations, that does not slip away after the emotion of the first meetings.

Hatred – as we have heard specified – is an easy and comfortable feeling, you just have to let anger and resentment flow without any restraint, friendship instead needs commitment, work, new contributions, to be nourished and implemented, it requires effort even though it is a pleasure, it involves the head and the stomach, it must be continually brought back into the right ranks.
Looking at the images of the ceremonies I thought about how significant this moment is, from which an immense signal comes: now it is possible for a president to bow before a monument that recalls the foibe and the exodus, now it is possible for us to reason about the great tragedies of the twentieth century from a different perspective, each faithful to their own history but respectful of that of others. We must learn to hold hands. It is not easy but it is possible.

When we decided to open the AFIM Presidency Office to our fellow citizens of Fiume, in particular to the Italian Community based in Palazzo Modello, it was not just a formal act, at our meetings we talk about our problems and theirs, without any interference we proceed to resolve the issues that beset us, we trace new paths of collaboration.
This is why today, faced with those images and those declarations, I felt our positions of immediate and sincere transversality reconfirmed.

I appreciated the quote from Antigone: "I was born not to hate, but to love" which well outlines our choice which today more than ever becomes a commitment for the future, far from tit for tat from politics but convinced to build by drawing strength from our enthusiasm for the common goals to be achieved.

We will forcefully ask the State for a law that protects us and allows us to design new paths, because the conviction about the goals to be achieved will be the force capable of guiding us.

Frank Papetti
President of the Association of Italian Fiume People in the World – Free Municipality of Fiume in Exile