In diplomacy, sometimes we proceed at a snail's pace, unlike politics, where everything - theater and little theaters - takes place under the spotlight. Small steps count and sometimes these lead to positive results and important changes. So I delude myself that I too have made some progress, with the recognition, by Croatia, of the "Day of Remembrance of the Foibe and the Julian-Dalmatian Exodus". In fact, since it was introduced in 2004 as a debt of gratitude towards the memory of the thousands of Italians who were victims of blind and brutal violence carried out by the Yugoslavian secret police and with various vendettas, inspired by class hatred or national hatred, the Croatian Ambassador did not attend the ceremony held on February 10, the Day of Remembrance.
When I received the invitation to attend this event, a few months after my arrival in Rome, I responded positively to the State Protocol that had forwarded it to me. But I had to deal with the inertia of the institutions: someone from my Embassy, ​​evidently, had informed Zagreb of my intentions. And so I received, the day before the ceremony, an “instruction” from my Ministry not to go. Surprised, I called the Minister of Foreign Affairs, my university colleague Vesna Pusić, who tried to tell me that “the time was not yet ripe” and that she too was under crossfire and had therefore given in, because the nationalist forces were still very strong in the Ministry and she did not want to expose herself to a media attack. Naturally, I appeared annoyed and accused her of opportunism. And I called the President of the Republic directly, who agreed with me, but suggested that I wait until this “hot topic” had been “cleared” by his upcoming state visit. I reluctantly accepted this compromise and so we mutually agreed that during Josipović’s state visit to Rome he would pay homage to the victims of the foibe and the exodus in his speech at the state dinner at the Quirinale. The President understood well my regret at having been hindered in my work by the bureaucratic structure of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He knew my personal history well and this state was also an argument, for him, to choose me to go to Rome. In fact, I had told him that after my maternal family, Italian, had joined the exodus – my grandmother, my great-grandmother, a great-uncle with his family, my mother’s sister with her family and my cousin – my mother too had taken her son, that is, me, the following year and followed the family to Italy. Times were hard, my father had ended up in a sort of confinement, in forced labor; luckily he was a naval engineer and had served his sentence in the Lussinpiccolo shipyard. And it was he who had suggested to my mother that she take “the little one” with her and leave. My paternal grandparents, Croatians, agreed, because they too did not see a glimmer of light. Even though my grandfather had been imprisoned by the fascists for helping a certain number of Jews escape by clandestinely embarking them on ships of neutral countries (he was a freight forwarder, owner of a large company, nationalized after the war), after the war he too had gone through some bad times.

And so, my mother and I ended up in the refugee camp in Vicenza, sharing the same cell – a box made of military blankets nailed to wooden planks – in the carabinieri barracks opposite the train station. I, small and unaware, had nothing to say, because I played with the “mularia” and every now and then we also received chocolate and sweets from the various party activists, monarchists and MSI members, who were doing their propaganda among the refugees. After a couple of months, seeing that the promises of being settled and started on a normal life were not being fulfilled, and after receiving the news that my father had been amnestied, my mother decided to return to Fiume.
And so I knew the life of refugees well – my grandmother and great-grandmother with whom we shared the squalid cell (the four of us slept on two improvised beds) remained in that squalor for another two years – precisely from personal experience. And instead, on my father's side there were victims of another kind: a great-uncle shot by the fascists for having been part of a clandestine organization, the TIGR (Croatian and Slovenian irredentists), and another great-uncle of mine, a student, shot as a hostage during the Italian occupation.
And so, after Josipović's visit to Rome, with his approval, I attended the celebration of the Day of Remembrance the following year. With all the baggage of my family history, of victims of fascism on the one hand, and victims of Yugoslav communism on the other, which with its brutal acts had also polluted the anti-fascist resistance, behind which was hidden the cruel triumphalism of the victors.
And since then, my successor in Rome also takes part in the ceremony of the Day of Remembrance. And we hope that one day the two Presidents, of Croatia and Italy, can repeat the gesture of Mattarella and Pahor: the joint visit to a foiba in Istria and to the Italian concentration camp of Arbe, as symbols of an inhuman time and of a history that must not be repeated.

Damir Grubiša – 02/10/2021
Source: The Voice of the People