Language
English
The recomposition of the Julian and Dalmatian Italian community
We have received and are happy to publish this extensive open letter written by Dr. Claudio Deghenghi, exile, essayist and researcher.
Most Illustrious Presidents of our highest national social organizations, Prof. Attorney Giuseppe De Vergottini, president of the Federation of Associations of Julian and Dalmatian exiles in Italy, and Mr. Maurizio Tremul, president of the Italian Union, the highest political and organizational body of the Italian National Community of Julian and Dalmatian exiles native to Croatia and Slovenia – I thank you from the bottom of my heart, on behalf of all the Julian and Dalmatian Italian exiles, for having stipulated a “Programme Agreement for the creation of a cultural network with the Italian Union”. “An agreement that we have officially stipulated – says the professor – at the end of a fruitful meeting led by the Italian Ambassador in Zagreb, SE Pierfrancesco Sacco, which perfects a common path that we have undertaken with the Italian Union in recent months and that we intend to increase. Also to demonstrate that the Adriatic Italianness, equally represented by exiles and natives, is united, proactive and authoritative” (“La Voce Del Popolo” of Fiume, 14 August 2021).
These statements by Prof. Avv. De Vergottini clearly announce the birth of our new utopia. And he is joined, on the same wavelength, by our professor Nelida Milani, who in her “review” published in “La Voce del Popolo” of Fiume on the same day, August 14, 2021, writes verbatim: “In common language, utopia has a negative connotation, utopias are considered fantasy worlds, without their feet on the ground and therefore devoid of practical relevance. Yet even utopias have to deal with the gentlemanly time that in the long run knows how to heal the wounds inflicted by history. And the accounts seem to add up, they are starting to add up. There have been many attempts at reconciliation that have ended in a less than exciting way. But intelligent and good-willed men are doing so again. There has also been a generational change, young people have thrown away the ideological trappings. Enough with hatred, rancor, resentment, rather try to build an ever closer relationship of friendship and collaboration between us, exiles and those who remain, in mutual recognition, and revive the desire to walk together with Slovenians and Croatians in the common European home and in common European ideals. No, it is not a political fervor, heaven forbid. The path to be taken is still long, but the road is already traced, also facilitated by the latest recent UI-FEDERESULI Agreement. May this be the right time.”
So our new utopia is not only well-founded, but it is also already filled with the right contents, the true ones, the natural ones, the historical ones, the ones that are now indispensable.
This open letter, therefore, calls together exiles and natives, greets their presence, and declares that it wants to discuss with them the problems that are still open, which must certainly be overcome. Here they are, in summary, in the following titles:
- Of the Julian and Dalmatian Italian exiles as natural persons;
- Of the Julian and Dalmatian Italian exiles as legal persons.
So, using only the example of Dante's holocaust, I propose a new concept, the holocaust of the Julian and Dalmatian Italian exiles of the last hundred years (1920-2020). Don't worry, it will be explained immediately.
The children, grandchildren and first great-grandchildren of our exiles have finally discovered that the exodus of the Julian and Dalmatian Italian Community did not begin after the Second World War, but rather after the First World War, with the forced exodus of the Italian Dalmatians from Dalmatia (except for the Zadar people, when Zadar remained an enclave of the Italian State), an exodus desired by the newly founded Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, when the two nationalisms, Italian and Slavic, unlike the times of Mazzini, then clashed brutally precisely to our detriment on the question of territorial sovereignty in the Eastern Adriatic. So our Community has begun to suffer all the injustices of this world, for this reason, exactly one hundred years ago (1920-2020). And it is time to stop here. To forgive and overcome so much personal and collective pain, and so much resentment, only Dante's holocaust can work this miracle. The Supreme Poet, in fact, in Canto XIV of Paradise, preparing to meet God spiritually and materially cleansed, says:
“With all my heart and with all my heart
which is one in all, I made a holocaust to God,
which was appropriate to the new grace.”
We too still cultivate an ancient and mutually impure “favela”, which we must now burn with our holocaust, to then present ourselves to the entire world with a “novella” full of grace… Will we be up to it? Let's see.
- OF THE ITALIAN JULIAN AND DALMATIAN EXILES AS NATURAL PERSONS
When it was our turn to pay for the damages of the Italian war on Yugoslavian soil during the Second World War with our heritage, with our most precious things, without any compensation, which was also immaterially impossible, we divided ourselves between those who left in exile in Italy and the world, and those who remained in exile in their native land, which had passed to another State, all of us always alone, as individuals, although in groups of people, alone and uprooted from any real civil gathering. So we gave ourselves any name - "exiles and those who remained" - instead of "exiles and natives", without considering the true new nature of each of us. New names, which made any concrete comparison between ourselves impossible, since the words "exile" and "remained" have nothing in common at all, ever, except the departure and no, and nothing else.
Now we are free to classify ourselves in a completely different way, if we want and must do so, so I propose the following distinction between us, which makes all real comparisons possible, so that we can then respect each other, be able to esteem each other, be able to love each other unconditionally. Thus, clean inside, we will perhaps be able to ideally recompose our Italian Julian and Dalmatian community of the past, which unfortunately we have lost, but which perhaps we will be able to find again, all together, at least ideally, if we care so much.
Yes, running the year 2022, for me our brothers could be divided as follows:
- The Julian and Dalmatian Italian exiles of Italy, that is, those who settled in Italy (Julians and Dalmatians of Italy);
- The Julian and Dalmatian Italian exiles who settled in European countries (Julians and Dalmatians of Europe);
- The Julian and Dalmatian Italian exiles who settled in one of the countries of the three Americas (Julians and Dalmatians of America);
- The Julian and Dalmatian Italian exiles who ended up in Australia (Giulians and Dalmatians of Australia), and
- The native Julian and Dalmatian Italian exiles, that is, those who remained in the foreign states of Yugoslavia, first, and Croatia and Slovenia, later, due to the shifting of the borders between Italy and the former Yugoslavia (native Julian and Dalmatian).
Here, now we can talk about all of them, also noting all the differences that interest us, differences that will all be natural, all true, and which should make any hatred impossible, and any rancor between us will thus be impossible and unjustified.
First of all, we must note that all of them have been defined as “Julian and Dalmatian Italians”, since in the countries mentioned we find exiles who are not Italians and we find Italian exiles who are not “Julian and Dalmatian”, but rather we find exiles of all times and all places, including Italy, who enjoy or suffer the same fate as us. Finally, the famous “remainers” have finally become “exiles” too, since they are Italians who live abroad, we repeat, first in the former Yugoslavia and then in Croatia and Slovenia, even though they have never left home.
- OF THE ITALIAN JULIAN AND DALMATIAN EXILES AS LEGAL PERSONS
All these Julian and Dalmatian Italian exiles, in order to be together abroad in some way, either founded their own legal entities, that is, various associations and/or institutions, or joined already existing associations and institutions, of other Italian exiles, exiles from other spaces and other times. Observing very carefully their new world, and their new way of life, we can and must note enormous fundamental differences between them. But first of all, let us not miss the opportunity to examine the question of the mother tongue or father tongue, which conditions everything about us, life, death and miracles.
If we consider this language, and language in general, as a sun that irradiates our entire world, ourselves and all our things, then we and those things become its little planets, which revolve around it for life, but only until our death. Let us see then what happened to our Julian and Dalmatian Italian exiles in the world, from this point of view:
- The Julian and Dalmatian Italian exiles of Italy, over time, have found in Italy everything they need to live decently, that is, they have given themselves or have had a house or an apartment, schools of every order and level with teaching in Italian, work in Italian companies or institutions, the Italian language spread everywhere, on the streets, in the buildings, in the neighborhood, in short in all the towns and cities of Italy, all the mass media in Italian, Italian publishing, but also the world one in Italian, Italian health care, Italian cinema, museums, theaters and academies, Italian sports; in short, these Julian and Dalmatian Italian exiles, from this point of view, have been able to note and always affirm that they are home again, and that's it; and so they are the only exiles of ours who can say it, happily, without a shadow of a doubt;
- The Julian and Dalmatian Italian exiles of Europe, of the three Americas and of Australia, of all that the Julian and Dalmatian Italian exiles of Italy had in their homeland, they could only have their own house or apartment, the family environment, and the collective life in their own Italian cultural circles, always in Italian. In all other social spaces and in all other times of life, personal or community, they had to integrate into the social environment, that is, learn to use and use the language of the place as if they were born there. Something very difficult, especially for the elderly, and always thankless. Of course, their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren born in foreign lands, educated and educated in schools of all levels of the native people, but in another language, can no longer in any way feel the same nostalgia as their parents for our Adriatic lands, for our sea, for our native places, for the habits and customs of our people, of our native land, in short, while they must and can always speak calmly also the language of the host country, without any difficulty, that is, two languages, the mother tongue and that of their native place. What “identity” will we assign to these creatures of ours, who cannot even be imagined as true “exiles” (or can they?), each having another native land, another destiny? Let them tell us frankly ... We original exiles cannot and do not even know how to conceive of two different national identities in the same person ... But what can they tell us about this?
- The native Julian and Dalmatian Italian exiles, that is, from Yugoslavia first, and from Croatia and Slovenia later – the so-called “remainers” – have lived and are living the same fate, that is, substantially in the same conditions and in the same way as the Julian and Dalmatian Italian exiles from Europe, the three Americas and Australia. It was the shifting of the Italian-Balkan borders that made them “exiles”, forcing them to live in new foreign states, like all our exiles in the world. But they, being aborigines, can and must also bear witness to the vicissitudes experienced under the authoritarian regimes not only of fascism but also of communism. It was fascism that first closed all Slavic schools of all levels, forcing them all to attend Italian schools, so that, after twenty years of regime, all Slavs in Istria and Fiume became perfectly bilingual. In the former Yugoslavia the same thing happened, but in reverse: first the communist regime wanted to drive all the native Italians abroad with a mass exodus; then with the disaster of Vergarolla, and through the terror also established with the night patrols, composed of three members for each small village in the countryside, to beat the Italian workers of the second shift, who returned home in the evening, and beat them with shameful reason, while the virginity of the communist regime demanded that the cowardice be carried out by Italians, even traitors of their lineage, but absolutely not by Slavs, since it had to seem like a family brawl between Italians; and finally, by also closing all our Italian schools of every order and grade in inland Istria and along its eastern coast up to Fiume. So the Yugoslav communists, in short, introduced the official Slavic languages, Croatian and Slovenian, everywhere, leaving a semblance of full bilingualism only in the Italian schools that remained in the towns on the western coast of Istria. However, having to deal with our topic, we are forced to overlook all the other forms of terrorism implemented by the Yugoslavs to push the Italians into a mass exodus and the complete submission of those who remained. The native Italians of Istria and Fiume, therefore, still attend and take care of the existence of Italian schools of every order and level, as well as all their other institutions. They are still fighting strenuously for the preservation of Italianness in the Eastern Adriatic, whatever certain associations and the usual numerous Triestine people, both natives and Istrian exiles, say, who claim that we in Istria and Fiume are finished and extinct, without giving even the slightest hint of sadness and deep patriotic pain for this... But it is our young people, all bilingual, who desert the civil appointments of the CNI, and we struggle to mobilize them, while our three Presidents of the neighbouring Republics succeed very well, even filling the Arena of Pola in every seat. And in our case, then, is it just general and particular political disaffection, or what else?
These native Eastern Adriatic exiles, however, had the fortune, entirely civil, of enjoying the genius of the late Prof. Antonio Borme, who in the 60s and 70s of the twentieth century was able not only to establish international relations with the Mother Country, through the well-deserving People's University of Trieste, but also knew how to conceive, propose and transform all our Italian Cultural Circles into local communities of Italians, which in addition to connecting all the local Italian institutions horizontally, facilitating their common development, also connected them vertically in a new, grandiose, important and more intense way with the central body and with all its related organs of centralized, collective and democratic community management, that is, with the former Union of Italians of Istria and Fiume. Thus the Italian Community became compact, and the Italians themselves cultivators of an Italian national patriotism, that is, of a sincere, frank and loyal love for the Mother Country, which still endures. Now the Italian Union, heir of the UIIF, according to international treaties, enjoys an autonomy that is and must be simultaneously historical, philosophical, social, political, moral, scientific, economic, organizational, managerial, patrimonial, financial, administrative and accounting. All the institutions of the Italian State must take note of this, including the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region, which in recent years stopped financing Italian schools of all levels through the Italian Union, introducing instead a new system of detached financing, that is, made up of individual projects that the Italians themselves must know how to present everywhere to the People's University of Trieste by private individuals, as well as by various institutions, against all international treaties that regulate these matters, thus undermining the unity and compactness of the Italian National Community of the Eastern Adriatic. Is this what the Friuli Venezia Giulia region wanted? We sincerely doubt it ...! Again!
CONCLUSION
Our new utopia, which will connect horizontally and vertically all our institutions of the Julian and Dalmatian Italian exiles of the Eastern Adriatic, will bring great comfort to all of us, personal, collective and community only if it will be able to question, know, and try to solve all our collective problems still unsolved. And for this great work we must sincerely thank first of all our two Presidents who launched it and made it possible, namely Prof. Avv. Giuseppe De Vergottini and Dr. Maurizio Tremul. Amen
Dr. Claudio Deghenghi
