The Lapidary, built by the Goriozia Section of the National League based on a project by the late Barbara Fornasir, was inaugurated at the Remembrance Park in Gorizia, in the presence of the Deputy Minister of Education Paola Frassinetti, the Hon. Roberto Menia (“father” of the law of remembrance), the 99-year-old gold medal winner for military valor Paola Del Din (Associazione Partigiani Osoppo) and numerous other authorities. It was created by the Goriozia Section of the National League and designed by the late Barbara Fornasir. It commemorates additional women and men to the names already present in the adjacent Lapidary.

The intent of the League and its president Luca Urizio, whom I thank, is to allow many families to have a tombstone on which they can read the name of a deported and murdered relative, on which they can remember him. Without a doubt, the list is not exhaustive.

It was our friend Antonio Scarano who was the mayor of Gorizia when the first Lapidary was erected in the Remembrance Park, which commemorates 665 women and men who had nothing to do with the Second World War, taken away from their homes and loved ones after the war by the pro-Yugoslav communist partisans of Marshal Tito, because they could have represented an obstacle to the occupation of Gorizia and Venezia Giulia, to its submission to the Soviet and Stalinist dictatorship. Therefore, not to free Gorizia from the yoke of the Nazi-Fascist dictatorship but rather to annex it to another dictatorship, the communist one, which has claimed an immense number of victims. The parliamentary commission established in Slovenia has as of today identified over 600 sites where tens and tens of thousands of victims were thrown, murdered by Tito's partisans. Among these, many Italians but even more Slovenians, Croatians, Austrians. A moving thought goes to all these victims, on both sides of the border: a cross-border territory, that between Italy and Slovenia, also united by this tragedy.

An eternally grateful thought goes instead to those partisans (or “patriots” as the 99-year-old gold medal winner for military valor Paola Del Din calls herself) who, instead, took up a rifle to free Italy from dictatorship.

These tragedies have also been exemplarily recognized by the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella, in whom we fully recognize ourselves and towards whom our grateful thoughts go.

History is not hidden but taught, aware that our responsibility is to write new pages for our children and grandchildren to read.

Rodolfo Ziberna
Mayor of Gorizia 

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