Author: Elio Varutti

There is a large tombstone on the Hill of S. Right in Trieste. It is large because it contains the names of 64 people killed in the Vergarolla massacre in Pola, Istria, which occurred on 18 August 1946. A third of those names are children's. Sixty-four is the number of confirmed victims; some were literally pulverized. They were all Italians. But what happened? Why is so little known today about that terrible attack? Who designed it? Was it just a fatal misfortune? The massacre was forgotten by history because of the Cold War. Tito and his victorious troops against Nazism should not have been disturbed. It is not intended to deny the role of the Yugoslav resistance, however, there are inhuman shadows that, since the fall of the Berlin Wall, have become increasingly clear, such as the elimination of Italians in the foibe and the massacre of Vergarolla. Recently the public has heard the name of that pleasant beach in Pula, as Vergarolla is, in the dozens of reruns of the show about the Julian-Dalmatian exodus entitled Magazzino 18, by Simone Cristicchi, which is still touring in Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, Canada and the USA. It was August 18, 1946. The war had been over for over a year by now. Pola was an Italian enclave administered by the Allies, while much of Istria had been occupied by Tito's military forces. Trieste was also about to become the Free Territory of Trieste, administered by the Allies, until 1954. On the Vergarolla beach, crowded with swimmers, families and children, there were those who watched the Scarioni Cup swimming competitions. Few Polesani were concerned about the numerous mines and defused bombs piled up nearby. It was an open-air explosives depot. Someone went to set one off, or planted a bomb, to “sympathetically” blow up everything else, as an artificer would say. This was discovered in 2008, when the English archives were opened, as reported by Il Gazzettino on 18 August 2014. The responsibility for the crime lies with Ozna, Tito's secret police, but this conclusion has been contested by the Slavic side. «Between the fear of the foibe and the massacre of Vergarolla – say the exiles who took refuge in Italy – 90 percent of the inhabitants of Pola left». In recent days the massacre was remembered in a sad and well-attended ceremony in Trieste, on August 18, 2014, with the official report of General Riccardo Basile, president of the Polesana Family, as well as other associations of exiles and armed fighters and Antonella Grim, municipal councilor of Trieste, also the daughter of exiles. In Pula too there is a memorial to remember the victims of the vile attack. This year, in addition to the Honorable Gian Luigi Gigli, member of the Per l'Italia group, Franco Iacop, president of the Regional Council of Friuli Venezia Giulia, also attended the ceremony for the 68th anniversary of the massacre. The most popular slogan was “overcoming ancient hatreds and building a new Europe”. Who knows if the question from some deputies of the Democratic Party and 5 Star Movement, filed last June, requesting the establishment of a commission of historians to investigate the massacre, will be successful? Notes and bibliographical references I would like to make some clarifications and suggest some further reading for anyone interested. The number of victims in the Vergarolla massacre varies, according to historical sources, between 80 and 100 individuals. The total number of victims identified and marked on the plaque in Colle di San Giusto is 64 people. Around 200 people were injured. In the coffin of Renzo Micheletti, aged six – as Simone Cristicchi wrote, on page 42 of his Warehouse 18 – only toys rest. In Parliament, in Rome, several party representatives have been interested in the Vergarolla issue since the end of 2013. The photographs in my article published on the web refer to 2011, the year of the inauguration of the monument on the Hill of S. Right in Trieste. In 2014, over 18 people participated in the remembrance ceremony on August 250, with various banners from associations of Julian and Dalmatian exiles and from armed forces combatant associations. In the front row were the banner of the Municipality of Trieste and that of the Polesana Family. In Udine, on 11 May 2004 and 10 February 2008, I interviewed Mrs Maria Millia, Meneghini's widow (Rovigno 1920 – Udine 2009), about the Istrian exodus. She was the daughter of Anna Sciolis and Domenico Millia, known as Mimi, who was a blacksmith in Rovigno. During the interviews, he repeated to me several times, his eyes swollen with pain: “Why did they make all that stuff in Vergarola go on strike, those bad guys?”. Another oral source on the case is: Rosalba Meneghini Capoluongo, Udine 1951; interview of 3 December 2011. Maria and her family left in 1947, following the terror generated among the Italians of Istria after the attack in Vergarolla, and because of the fear of the foibe. Of the many refugees who arrived in the capital of Friuli at that time, they were not even welcomed at the Refugee Sorting Center in Via Pradamano, active from 1947 to 1960. There was no more room. When full, it held over 2000 exiles. Mimi, the blacksmith from Rovinj and Anna, his wife, then had to adapt, with other Istrian refugees, to sleeping for a few days in the crypt of the Ossuary Temple in Udine. The “mattress” was the floor of the church, without even the little straw that they gave out at least in the shacks of the Refugee Collection Center in Laterina, in the province of Arezzo. Maria Millia did not want to return to Istria and spoke little about her experience of the exodus, out of fear. In 1993 he agreed to see Istria again, but with a grudge. As regards the bibliographical sources on the Julian-Dalmatian exodus, my main references are in the recent works of Fulvio Salimbeni, Raoul Pupo, Gianni Oliva, Roberto Spazzali, Franco Cecotti, Annalisa Vukusa, Guido Rumici, Oddone Talpo, Sergio Brcic, Jan Bernas and Simone Cristicchi, who, despite not being a historian but a singer-songwriter, dedicates six pages to the Vergarolla massacre in his book (from page 41 on page. 46, in addition to the pages. 7 and 95), while taking pieces from Jan Bernas. See for example: - Jan Bernas, They Called Us Fascists. We were Italians. Istrians, Fiume and Dalmatians: stories of exiles and those who remained, Milan, Mursia, 2010. - Silvio Cattalini (edited by), Foibe, finally a monument in Udine: 25 June 2010. Press review, Udine, National Association of Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia, Provincial Committee of Udine, 2010. - Franco Cecotti, The Time of Borders. Historical Atlas of the North-Eastern Adriatic in the European and Mediterranean Context 1748-2008, in collaboration with Dragman Umek, Trieste, Regional Institute for the History of the Liberation Movement in Friuli Venezia Giulia, 2010. - Simone Cristicchi, with Jan Bernas, Warehouse 18. Stories of Italian exiles from Istria, Fiume and Dalmatia, Milan, Mondadori, 2014. - Marco Cuzzi, Guido Rumici, Roberto Spazzali, Istria Kvarner Dalmatia. History of a disputed region from 1796 to the end of the 2009th century, Gorizia, Libreria Editrice Goriziana, Trieste, Regional Institute for the history of the liberation movement in Friuli Venezia Giulia, XNUMX. - Gaetano Dato, Vergarolla (August 18, 1946). The enigmas of a massacre between the world conflict and the cold war, Gorizia, Libreria Editrice Goriziana, 2014. - William Klinger, The Massacre of Vergarolla, Trieste, Free Municipality of Pola in Exile, 2014. - Anna Maria Mori, Nelida Milani, Bora, Milan, Frasinelli, 2005. - Carlo Montani, Vergarolla: a definitive truth, “Journal of International Legal Cooperation”, X, 29, Milan, Nagard, 2008. - Raoul Pupo, Roberto Spazzali, Foibe, Milan, Mondadori, 2003. - Raoul Pupo, The long exodus: Istria: the persecutions, the foibe, the exile, Milan, BUR, 2006. - Raoul Pupo, The Disappeared Border: Essays on the History of the Eastern Adriatic in the Twentieth Century, Trieste, Regional Institute for the History of the Liberation Movement in Friuli Venezia Giulia, 2007. - Guido Rumici, Foibati (1943-1945). The names, the places, the witnesses, the documents, Milan, Mursia, 2002. - Guido Rumici, Dalmatian Mosaic. Stories of Italian Dalmatians, Gorizia, National Association of Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia, Provincial Committee of Gorizia, 2011. - Gianni Oliva, Exiles. From the foibe to the refugee camps: the tragedy of the Italians of Istria, Fiume and Dalmatia, Milan, Mondadori, 2011. - Elio Varutti, The refugee camp of via Pradamano and the Julian Dalmatian associationism in Udine. Historical sociological research among the people of the neighborhood and the Adriatic exodus. 1945-2007, Udine, National Association of Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia, Provincial Committee of Udine, 2007. - Annalisa Vukusa, Uprooting, Fagagna (UD), Graphis Printing House, 2001. Private collections Maria Millia Meneghini Collection, Udine, photographs. Sitology Various institutional sites were used for the article. The following sites were very useful for this overall work: http://www.pensionatiitaliani.it/dare-voce-a-chi-voce-non-ha/strage-di-vergarolla-laura-brusiromano-cramer/ http://www.arenadipola.it/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=901&Itemid=1 http://ilpiccolo.gelocal.it/trieste/cronaca/2013/08/18/news/commemorata-a-pola-ea-san-giusto-la-strage-di-vergarolla-1.7596329 http://edoardolongo.blogspot.it/2013/08/olocausti-dimenticati-la-strage-di.html http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strage_di_Vergarolla http://www.anvgd.it/ http://www.foibadibasovizza.it/ http://www.istoreto.it/ https://www.academia.edu/4481640/Cara_maestra_le_scrivo_dal_Campo_profughi._Bambini_di_Zara_e_dellIstria_scolari_a_Udine_1948-1963