Author: Cav. Renzo Codarin (President of the National Association of Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia)

In a period in which the migratory emergency and the drama of civilians involved in wars is of dramatic relevance, the Day of Remembrance takes on particular importance, since it would first of all be said that the oblivion that has affected the complex story of the eastern border is even more unseemly when compared with the media hype that accompanies analogous phenomena today, but secondly it is appropriate to highlight some differences. Starting from what was recognized a few days ago by Prof. Roberto Spazzali, director of the Regional Institute for the History of the National Liberation Movement in Friuli Venezia Giulia, who during a preparatory meeting for the Day of Remembrance in the province of Ferrara clearly highlighted how today's refugees are mostly young people with great hopes who abandon their land and their families without even trying to create resistance or opposition movements, perhaps chasing the mirage of economic well-being. The 90% of the Italian community of the Eastern Adriatic that abandoned the lands in which it had been rooted for centuries, instead, tried since the final stages of the Second World War to give life to a resistance movement rooted in the territory and capable of combining Italianness, democracy and freedom. The end of Captain Filippo Casini of the Carabinieri of Pola, the death of the partisans of Trieste who were victims of “Slavic denunciation”, the annihilation of the Italian partisan detachments of Istria sent into the fray or ambushed by the Croatian commands, the destruction of the National Liberation Committee of Istria by the OZNA, Palmiro Togliatti's negative response to the request of the Istrian communists to be able to take up arms again to oppose the foreign occupation, well camouflaged under the red flags of Tito's army: there are many examples that demonstrate the repeated opposition to Yugoslav expansionism in Venezia Giulia before the terrible choice of exodus. But what distinguishes the experience that Remembrance Day aims to commemorate was the subsequent dignity with which the Julian-Dalmatian exiles faced the Exodus. There have been many sad pages that have marked the reception and reintegration of our fellow countrymen into the Italian social fabric: the whistles and insults received by the Polesani in the ports of Ancona and Venice, the humiliation of being taken to the Refugee Collection Centers on board cattle trucks, the "train of shame" that could not stop in Bologna under threat of a strike by the CGIL railway workers and the accommodation for many years in CRPs characterized by terrifying hygienic and sanitary conditions. And then there were the rallies in which the exiles were singled out for public ridicule with expressions such as “in Sicily they have the bandit Giuliano, we have the Julian bandits”, the order by the Minister of the Interior Scelba which required that refugees be fingerprinted, Marinella Filippaz who at twelve months of age died of cold in the Padriciano refugee camp in the freezing winter of 1956 or the dozens of people who, uprooted and thrown into precarious conditions in Trieste, went mad and are today at the centre of Gloria Nemec’s narration in the volume “Dopo venuti a Trieste. Stories of Julian-Dalmatian exiles through a border asylum 1945-1970”. All this while the Italian State, in violation of the provisions of the Peace Treaty, paid part of the war reparations owed to Yugoslavia using the abandoned assets, whose legitimate owners are still waiting for fair compensation. Faced with so many injustices and unfortunate situations, the 350.000 exiles endured in silence, noting how for almost half a century public opinion had little or no interest in their dramas and the tragedies they had experienced first-hand in the lands they had painfully left behind. With great dignity, the exodus community also took on the task of preserving this story and passing it on to the new generations and to the few who had approached their own suffering, simultaneously integrating into the Italian society or that of the foreign country that had welcomed them, working honestly, until reaching in some cases even levels of excellence, and without giving in to criminal actions dictated by desperation. This is why this year the Day of Remembrance takes on a special meaning: today's humanitarian emergency represents a starting point to remember a similar page of history forgotten, exploited and forgotten that has affected thousands of our compatriots and cannot remain closed only in the memory of those who experienced it firsthand or in their families. Trieste, February 8, 2016