Va ' pensiero…Homeland or Mother-Homeland, the land of the ancestors.

There has been a lot of talk lately about the Fatherland in Italy for political and cultural identity purposes. It is good that it is being talked about and its ancient and ideal value is being rediscovered. A term that in the long post-war period became obsolete and hostile to the dominant political culture of single thought, which willingly used anti-fascism to make every form of action and alternative political thought uniform. A well-known intellectual, Galli Della Loggia, spoke years ago in one of his essays of "Death of the Fatherland", denouncing and trying to explain a long and unjust process of removal of a high ideal, cultural and historical concept. Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, who was the first to honor the Altar of the Fatherland on Remembrance Day, gave new impetus to the tricolor and to the concept of the Fatherland, land of the ancestors. The Fatherland welcomes a people, a nation, which takes the form of a State.

For the Julian Dalmatian exiles the concept of Motherland is particularly innate. With this all-encompassing word my exiled teacher Lodovico Zeriav from the Karst of Fiume taught us children to always love and respect it, even if in the Peninsula in the desolation of the refugee camps the Motherland due to unjust policies often appeared as a bad stepmother. Motherland… this is how they are and how we grew up. Every Saturday our teacher Zeriav with the teacher Cecilia Leggeri exiled from Pola gathered the classes to sing our national anthem Brothers of Italy!

It is not for fascism and it is not for nationalism that I share this memory of mine, but to transmit a fragment of life lived as a child in which with pure feelings and hope we wished good to our people, to our nation in brotherhood with other nations. The highest price, after the defeat in the Second World War, was certainly paid by the large Julian-Dalmatian community. This recognition to the exiles is not paid by scholars such as Montanari, Gobetti, Barbero, D'Orsi, Rizzo etc.; and yet

should know the history of so many sacrifices and tragedies culminating in the exodus and the foibe, in addition to the culpable omission of so much of the story in school books. Even for these people, ignorant of the history of the eastern border, the Day of Remembrance must be preserved and defended. Merry Christmas to all Italians.

Marino Micich
Director Archive Historical Museum of Rijeka – son of Dalmatian exiles