Speech by the Deputy Vice President of the National Association of Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia, Prof. Donatella Schürzel, at the 2022 Remembrance Day ceremony held at the Senate of the Republic on Thursday 10 February. 

 

Mr. President of the Republic

Madam President of the Senate, President of the Chamber of Deputies,

Honorable Senators and Deputies,

Government representatives, civil, military, diplomatic and religious authorities,

Dear ladies and gentlemen, students present,

Friends and Brothers of Istria, Fiume and Dalmatia,

Eighteen years ago, Law 92 of March 30, 2004 established the Day of Remembrance that we celebrate today, and 75 years have now passed since the signing of the harsh Paris Peace Treaty. A diktat that sanctioned the loss of almost an entire region of our Italy and the forced abandonment of their land by the Italians of Istria, Fiume and Dalmatia, whom Indro Montanelli defined as "Italians twice". They came, exiles and refugees, to the mother country, loved to the point of making such a drastic and painful choice. Together with the will to remain free and not to have to submit to a new totalitarian, communist, dictatorial regime like the previous one, fascist.

The commitment and passionate work of many women and men with the Associations of exiles, with the world of historical studies, with the academies, with the activities in schools of all levels and among citizens have led to great recognition from civil society and the political world. We have thus been able to make known the history of the eastern border in an objective, absolutely irrefutable, documented and, therefore, true way.

This is not the time to give space to clumsy attempts at revisionism, reductionism or miserable justificationism, the result of ignorance of history and ideological interpretation. It is even useless to talk about denialism, as the documents, today consultable and visible by anyone, the precise sources of the Archives, the research conducted tirelessly, finally and rightly also with Slovenian and Croatian historians and researchers, speak for us.

It is necessary to explain, especially to young people, the history of the eastern border in a long-term perspective. The Istrians and Dalmatians are autochthonous Italians, born from the disintegration of the Roman koinè. An autochthony also sanctioned by the government and local laws of Croatia and Slovenia for the Italians of the minority.

The just requests for compensation, unfortunately not very solvable, would never compensate for the deep pain, the incurable lacerations, the tragedy suffered by those who first saw loved ones, relatives and friends die in a horrible way in the horrid karst sinkholes or in the deep sea of ​​Dalmatia or disappear into thin air. By those who then lived the devastating fracture of the Exodus,
which meant leaving everything behind: material possessions, work, loved ones, the dead, one's own countries and cities, in short, one's own life!

The Istrians, Fiumani and Dalmatians have always continued to believe in the Italian State and to trust that the denied rights and at least moral damages would be recognized. And this without a doubt represented the institution of the Day of Remembrance, which, after a long silence lasting more than fifty years, has resumed the history of the eastern border, which is the history of Italy, and has restored to an entire community its dignity.

And I think then, how proud my parents would be today, the parents of all of us second-generation exiles, parents who were able to find in their hearts the strength to educate us to love, to use all their rectitude, strength and honesty to be able to start over. To smile in the midst of those walls made of blankets, there in the various refugee camps. To start over with the only possible way, work, whatever it was, even the most humble.

We, children, grandchildren and descendants, have learned things little by little, growing up. Our parents did not raise us in Hate, but rather in Love for our land and our origins. They are the ones who led us on the path of finding ourselves with our brothers across the sea, and finding an ancestral world, equal for all of us. “L'altera pars mea” by Nelida Milani expresses all this in three words and unites exiles and those who remained, who have suffered incredibly, exiles also in their cities not abandoned. Today they represent that world so fragmented and rich that, recomposed through culture, work, could look very far into the future and be a point of reference in our Europe, which has seen and still sees immense tragedies happen.

My thoughts go to my mother, on our last visits together in Pola, when she discreetly took me by the arm, while we looked at the sea between the arches of the Arena. Her eyes were full of pain, but also, finally, eyes that shone with joy for the journey made over time and with our Istrian brothers, beyond the sea.

And again, as I climbed the streets of Rovinj, my father's city, alone for the first time now that we are both no longer here, I seemed to hear his words that had made me know and "experience" his city as if it were mine too.

This is how I feel, how we descendants feel, now that our parents, and all those who have made this perilous journey of life, have left us the witness. Today, when those who have lived their lives in exile share their skies with their remaining brothers, we feel in their cities, even in OUR cities.

The MEMORY must not remain melancholic in the hearts of those who lived these immense dramas, it must become collective MEMORY, of a people, of a State, of the States that are finally friends today. This is how relationships are built, how people are found, how a community aware of its own identity is reconstituted, which can only contribute to the positive growth of the States in which it finds itself.

As was also demonstrated by the beautiful meeting in Basovizza of the Italian and Slovenian Presidents of the Republic, who thus started a just new course. In this perspective, of course, the work that awaits all of us and the new generations is above all that of ensuring that these events become a full part of the civil conscience of the nation, that our Italian brothers from Istria, Fiume and Dalmatia who have recognized as such their brothers forced to exodus, walk with us. And that in today's Europe the suffering and testimony of an entire people are recognized, first made with the exodus, with the civility of behavior, with the resilience of those who remained... These values ​​have been constantly demonstrated over many long years, in which at times the Italians from Istria, Fiume, Dalmatia have felt like strangers in their own country, but which today are emerging ever stronger so as to enter history, make history and with it turn in a proactive and concrete way to the future.