The choice of the Tuscany Region to entrust exclusively to the Historical Institute of the Resistance the training of teachers during the Summer school held in recent days as a preamble to a Journey of Remembrance that teachers and students will take to the sites of the Foibe and the Exodus next February has raised doubts in the community of Istrian, Fiume and Dalmatian exiles.

Far be it from us to question the intellectual honesty of the speakers, even if it was disconcerting to find the names of scholars who made no secret of their justificationist theses regarding the Foibe massacres committed by Tito's National Communist partisans. Last year in Milan, a seminar of the National Association of Italian Partisans was held on these delicate issues without it being deemed appropriate to involve the testimony of any living exile, despite joint initiatives having taken place in the past. For example, in March 2012 we recall the erection of a stele in honor of the Martyrs of the Foibe in Carpi (MO), in November 2013 the conference in Padua (on whose conclusions we unfortunately later found some differences on the part of national leaders of the ANPI) and in Milan on the occasion of the 2015 Day of Remembrance, the presence of an ANPI delegation at the main event. And again, the recent opening of a section dedicated to the Julian-Dalmatian Exodus inside the Museum of Liberation in Lucca represented an important step forward in the inclusion of the complex story of the eastern Italian border in the shared heritage of the national community.

On the other hand, the body chaired by Enrico Rossi did not want to involve in the preparation of this initiative recently approved by the Regional Council those same associations of exiles (for example, committees and delegations of the National Association of Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia are also present and active in Tuscany) that instead constantly relate with the Ministry of Education, University and Research to organize the annual school competition dedicated to the Day of Remembrance and the national refresher seminar for teachers on these very issues. The ANVGD and the other acronyms of the Adriatic diaspora also constantly and profitably make available to schools and municipal administrations on the occasion of the Day of Remembrance their members who can bear direct testimony of the Exodus and the terrible living conditions in the Refugee Collection Centers, as well as researchers and scholars who have carried out research and publications of both a popular and scientific nature.

It would be serious if, after so much silence on the issues of the Foibe and the Exodus, now thanks to the law establishing the Day of Remembrance (approved almost unanimously by Parliament) they were spoken about but in a distorted or incomplete way, neglecting the contribution of associations that guard the memory and testimony of these tragedies and conduct a precious and constant work of information.

Lorenzo Salimbeni