The lost homeland is the new book on the refugees of Venezia Giulia written by Elio Varutti, of the ANVGD of Udine, with the precious collaboration of Claudio Ausilio, of the ANVGD of Arezzo, for the publisher Aska of Florence.

After the Second World War, the Italian citizens of Fiume, Pola and Zara and a part of those of Gorizia and Trieste lost their homeland. Their lands, their houses and their belongings were given to Yugoslavia to settle the damages of the war wanted by the Duce and the King. 350 thousand were expelled, or had to leave with regular documents, to pour into the rest of stepmother Italy, with the fear of the foibe. Many passed through the Refugee Collection Centers (Crp). The text focuses on the story of the Laterina Refugee Camp (AR) with reference to the Julian Dalmatian exodus. From 1941 to 1943, under fascism, it was a concentration camp for English, South African and Canadian prisoners. Undernourishment and poor hygiene in the barracks caused various debilitating diseases, such as dysentery and typhus, in the 2.500-3.000 prisoners.

Then for a year the Camp was a prison under Nazi surveillance. After the liberation in 1944 by the British VIII Army, it was transformed into a concentration camp for Germans and Republicans of the RSI captured in the North until 1946. From 1946 to 1963, for a good seventeen years, it functioned as a refugee camp for Italians fleeing from Istria, Fiume and Dalmatia (for over 10 thousand people), lands assigned to Yugoslavia with the peace treaty of 10 February 1947. They were Italians from the lost homeland. They suffered from cold and hunger. There was a high suicide rate among the oldest of them.

Some displaced persons from former Italian colonies also arrive in Laterina. The book deals specifically with these years of daily life and encounter-clash with the local population, until complete social integration, through some mixed marriages (usually: Tuscan husband and Istrian-Dalmatian wife) and, above all, with work, religious faith and the assignment of council houses to refugees.

The volume will be presented in Trieste on 26 September 2021 at 15,30 pm during the book fair “La Bancarella. Salone del libro dell'Adriatico orientale” and in Laterina (AR) on 2 October 2021 at the Theatre at 17,30 pm.