Welcome to the Quirinale. I extend greetings to the President of the Chamber of Deputies, the President of the Council of Ministers, the President of the Constitutional Court and the Vice President of the Senate.

Thanks to all those who attended, contributing effectively to illustrating, reviving and understanding the meaning of this Day of Remembrance.

Celebrating the Day of Remembrance means reliving a great Italian tragedy, experienced at the juncture of the transition between World War II and the beginning of the Cold War. A dark chapter in national and international history, which caused mourning, suffering and the shedding of innocent blood. While, in fact, on Italian soil, for the most part, the conclusion of the conflict against the Nazi-Fascists sanctioned the end of oppression and the gradual return to freedom and democracy, a fate of further suffering awaited the Italians in the areas occupied by Yugoslav troops.

A common fate for many peoples of Eastern Europe: that of passing, directly, from Nazi oppression to Communist oppression. And of experiencing, in their own lives, the entire dehumanizing repertoire of the great totalitarianisms of the twentieth century, different in ideology, but so similar in the methods of persecution, control, repression, elimination of dissidents.

A cruel fate for the Italians of Istria, Dalmatia, and Venezia Giulia, attested by the presence, at the same time, in the same territory, of two symbols of horror: the Risiera di San Sabba and the Foibe.

The area on the eastern border of Italy, already tormented by the very hard fighting of the First World War, subjected to the brutality of fascism against the Slavic minorities and to the ferocious German occupation, became, at the initiative of the Yugoslav communists, a new theater of violence, killings, reprisals, revenge against the Italians, who had always lived there. It was not - as some historical denialist or reductionist wanted to insinuate - a retaliation against the wrongs of fascism. Because among the Italian victims of a hatred, in any case intolerable, which was at the same time ideological, ethnic and social, there were many people who had nothing to do with the fascists and their persecutions.

Many innocents, guilty only of being Italian and of being seen as an obstacle to the plan of territorial conquest and revolutionary hegemony of Titoist communism. Employees, soldiers, priests, women, teachers, partisans, anti-fascists, even communist militants tragically concluded their existence in the harsh detention camps, killed in summary executions or even thrown, dead or alive, into the depths of the foibe. The catalogue of horrors of the 900th century was thus enriched by the frightening term “infoibato”.

The tragedy of the Italian populations did not end with those barbaric massacres, which were concentrated, with exceptional virulence, in the autumn of 1943 and the spring of 1945.

At the end of the conflict, Italy presented itself in the dual role of a defeated country in the ill-fated war wanted by fascism and, at the same time, of a co-belligerent. While Northern Italy was governed by the Republic of Salò, the territories east of Trieste had been formally annexed to the German Reich and, subsequently, were directly occupied by the partisans of the Yugoslavian communist formations.

But their territorial ambitions also extended to Trieste and Gorizia. An annexation project towards which the Allies showed a certain condescension and which, fortunately, was thwarted by the commitment of the Italian governments.

Of course, not everything went according to plan and as requested and desired. Many Italians remained behind the Iron Curtain. The aggressiveness of the new communist regime forced them, with terror and persecution, to abandon their homes, their businesses, their lands. Those who resisted, those who opposed, those who did not integrate into the new totalitarian order disappeared, swallowed up into nothingness. Being Italian, defending one's traditions, one's culture, one's religion, one's language was a reason for suspicion and persecution. The dramatic exodus towards Italy began: a slow bloodbath, lasting a decade. Towns and cities were depopulated of the centuries-old Italian presence, the language, dialects and millenary culture disappeared, family, social and economic networks were dismantled.

The violent arm of the communist regime struck furiously, erasing history, diversity, pluralism, coexistence, under a dark cloak of homologation and terror.

But those approximately two hundred and fifty thousand Italian refugees, who had lost everything, and who looked to the motherland with hope and trust, did not always find in Italy the understanding and support they deserved. There were – it is true – great acts of solidarity. But the machine of welcome and assistance was set in motion slowly, especially during the first years, causing hardship and deprivation to the exiles. Many of them took the path of emigration, towards distant continents. And the material difficulties in their homeland were often joined by moral ones: a certain propaganda linked to international communism depicted the exiles as traitors, as enemies of the people who refused the advent of the communist regime, as an indistinct mass of fascists on the run. This was not the case, they were simply Italians.

The Cold War, with its harsh ideological and military conflicts, made realpolitik prevail in those years. The West ended up looking with a certain favor on Marshal Tito's regime, considered as a containment of the aggression of Soviet Russia. Due to a series of coincident circumstances, internal and external, an unjustifiable curtain of silence fell on the horrors committed against the Italians of Istria, Dalmatia and Fiume, increasing the suffering of the exiles, who were thus precluded even the comfort of memory.

Only after the fall of the Berlin Wall - the most visible, but unfortunately not the only symbol of European division - a patient and courageous work of historical research, not without vain and unacceptable attempts at delegitimization, shed full light on the tragedy of the foibe and the subsequent exodus, restoring this torn page in the history and identity of the nation.

The establishment, in 2004, of the Day of Remembrance, voted by a large majority in Parliament, after an in-depth and high-level debate, sealed this recomposition in the institutions and in the popular conscience.

Recomposition that has also occurred at an international level, with the friendly countries of Slovenia and Croatia, in the common repudiation of any totalitarian ideology, in the shared need to always respect the rights of the person and to reject nationalist extremism. Today, in those territories, always a meeting point of ethnic groups, languages, cultures, with centuries-old reciprocal influences, there are no longer curtains, nor borders, nor wars. Today the city of Gorizia is no longer divided in two by fences.

In their place there is Europe, a common space of integration, dialogue, promotion of rights, which has eliminated walls and wars within itself. Today, friendly and brotherly peoples collaborate together in the European Union for peace, progress, the defense of democracy, prosperity.

I thank the ambassadors of Slovenia, Croatia and Montenegro for their presence here, which attests to the great friendship that today binds our peoples in a common destiny. I thank the Hon. Furio Radìn, Vice President of the Croatian Parliament, where he was elected as a representative of the Italian National Community of Croatia; and the Hon. Felice Ziza, member of the Slovenian National Assembly, where he was elected as a representative of the Italian National Community of Slovenia.

I would like to recall here the words of a joint statement between my predecessor, President Giorgio Napolitano, who did so much to re-establish the truth about those tragic events, and the then President of the Republic of Croatia Ivo Josipović from September 2011:

“The atrocious crimes committed have no justification whatsoever. They cannot be repeated in a united Europe, ever again. We condemn once again the totalitarian ideologies that have cruelly suppressed freedom and trampled on the right of the individual to be different, by birth or by choice.”

The ideal of Europe was born among the tragic ruins of war, among massacres and persecutions, among the barbed wire of death camps. It developed on a continent divided into opposing blocs, in the constant danger of armed conflict: to say no more war, no more nationalistic fanaticism, no more desire for domination and oppression. The European ideal, and its realization in the Union, has been – and still is – for the whole world, a beacon of law, freedom, dialogue, peace. A way of living and conceiving democracy that must be encouraged, strengthened and protected from the many contemporary threats, ranging from trade wars, often the cause of other conflicts, to the denial of universal rights, to the dangerous process of nuclear rearmament, to fundamentalist terrorism of Islamic origin, to the temptations to resolve the complexity of problems through authoritarian shortcuts.

Many of those present, children and descendants of those suffering, persecuted and fugitive Italians, carry in their souls the scars of the historical events that struck their fathers and mothers. But that wound, today, is the wound of all the Italian people, who look at those events with the suffering, pain, solidarity and respect due to the innocent victims of a national tragedy, set aside for too long.