Tuesday, August 18, 2026, marked the 80th anniversary of the Vergarolla massacre, which occurred on the beach in Polesano on Sunday, August 18, 1946. The beach was packed with families and participants in the Scarioni Cup races, the Istrian leg of which had been organized by the Pietas Julia nautical club, a club with a great patriotic tradition, which that evening would later celebrate its 60th anniversary.

It was the first massacre in the history of the Italian Republic, as well as the one with the highest number of victims: 64 were identified (a third of them children), but nearly 50 more bodies were unidentified, so badly damaged had they been by the explosion of the defused mine cache located at the end of the beach. Dr. Geppino Micheletti worked for over 24 hours in the operating room of the Santorio Santorio city hospital to save the lives of the wounded who continued to arrive from the crime scene, even after learning that his two young sons, Carlo and Renzo, were among the dead.

Pola fell within Zone A under Anglo-American military administration while awaiting the Peace Conference to define the new border line: the British authorities established that the explosion had not been accidental, but rather triggered deliberately, but the culprit was not identified, even though everyone in the city thought it was bomb disposal experts affiliated with the OZNA, the Yugoslav secret police that had already been guilty of murders and deportations during the forty days of occupation of the arena city by Tito's communist militias in May-June 1945, after the war ended.

This carnage is among the reasons that drove 30.000 Polesani out of nearly 32.000 inhabitants of Pola to face the exodus: some witnesses of this tragedy are still alive and have left their testimonies.

Beatrice Raveggi and Daniela Velli's book, In Time of Peace. Inspired by the True Story of Claudio Bronzin, an Istrian Exile (Edizioni La nave dei sogni, Treviso 2023), is the result of historical research and authentic testimony and is based on the Guidelines for Teaching on the Adriatic Border issued on October 20, 2022, by the Ministry of Education. Narrated by the then twelve-year-old Claudio Bronzin, the narrative reaches its climax in the Vergarolla massacre, a turning point both in the larger story and in the smaller, personal, and human story of the Bronzin family, as well as other families involved in the attack.