Author: Antonio Ballarin (president of FederEsuli), «Avvenire», 20/01/16

Dear Director, I am writing to you regarding the article by Lucia Bellaspiga (“Avvenire” of Sunday 17 January 2016) on the important seminar promoted by the ANPI (National Association of Italian Partisans) regarding «The dramatic story of the Eastern Borders». The announcement of this event had caused a certain nervousness in the world of associations linked to the Julian-Dalmatian Exodus. We wondered, in fact, whether a convention on the Shoah would have been possible without even a greeting from representatives of the Jewish communities. But our world, the one I represent as the Federation of Associations of Istrian, Rijeka and Dalmatian exiles, has always been characterized by honesty, even intellectual. So, having digested the bitterness of not being able to speak, we waited to hear the contents and then express a calm judgment. This judgment cannot be merely academic, since the narration of the post-war events of the Eastern Border triggers processes in us that do not only involve the mind, but touch the heart and soul. Bellaspiga's chronicle reports the great balance with which the seminar was held and, substantially, marks a point in favor of the theses embodied in our own human experience. However, it is good for the readers of your newspaper to know a little-known fact, but useful for understanding how we have finally arrived at these tests of dialogue between worlds that have been distant for a long time. In May 2013 I had recently been elected president of the National Association of Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia (Anvgd), and my election, the election of a “young person”, marked an approach aimed not only at remembering but also at building a new perspective for our people. Thus, also strengthened by important actions and words under the banner of dialogue (if not self-criticism) by personalities such as Giorgio Napolitano and Luciano Violante, who come from a political world (the communist one) once hostile to our history, we decided to contact the president of the ANPI, Carlo Smuraglia, the same one who conceived the seminar on Saturday in Milan. The aim of our request was straightforward: to create a “working table” with academics close to the world of the Exodus on one side and scholars indicated by the ANPI on the other, to jointly analyse history in its objective facts. This request arose from the fact that our people were not afraid when they risked their lives in the aftermath of the invasion of Tito's armies and are certainly not afraid of the truth, while, at the same time, it seems that the left, seventy years after those events, still struggles to reconsider Togliatti's choices and the disastrous policy conducted at the expense of the people of Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia. Even today, in fact, in the face of many signs of openness, we witness frequent regurgitations of justification. We appreciate the work carried out by institutes for the Resistance and we can only be happy for monuments to the foibe and the exodus inaugurated jointly with members of the ANPI (it happened for example in Carpi, in the province of Modena, where the Fossoli refugee camp was located), but every year we are shocked by the violence of noisy minorities who still protestplay theatrical, such as “Magazzino 18” by Cristicchi or “Rumoroso Silenzio” by Andreini. Ultimately, we note with satisfaction the path of study undertaken by that political party that theorized our physical elimination seventy years ago and we are bitterly surprised by how, once again, only “Avvenire” has understood the importance of the event and has reported it in a broad and competent way. Know, director, that our invitation to that common table with the Anpi remains valid, and even more so today, convinced as we are that the common good can only be born from the truth. There is no doubt that the Memory of which we are witnesses is more necessary than ever in our society, so that the values ​​of justice, freedom and acceptance of diversity, embodied by us, are witnessed in defense of life in all its forms. With esteem