My father Sergio Baroni, born and raised in Zara, a refugee in Venice with his entire family, was a friend of Gigio Zanon. I sincerely thank Marco Zanon who remembered in this way "the story of my father's testimony when he saw the Istrian exiles arrive in Venice, at that time he was only 8 years old and he never forgot those tragic moments, they remained etched in his memory until the end...".

 By Vittorio Baroni – February 10, 2021 

 

Memory of a bad day 
by Luigi “Gigio” Zanon 

 

The war had been over for a few months and we were still occupied by the Allies.

Near my house there was a former convent of Theatine friars, belonging to the Tolentini church, which had been suppressed by the infamous Napoleonic laws and used as a barracks.

First there were Italian soldiers of I don't know what specialty, then it was occupied by the English.

In front of this former convent there was a clearing, which we called “campazzo” where we kids from the area went to play. At the time I lived in Campo della Lana and the Tolentini church was my parish.

One day, suddenly, the English left and moved into premises belonging to the port because, they had told us, refugees were about to arrive and the premises of the former convent were needed for them. Furthermore, the English had to keep an eye on these refugees, but we kids didn't understand why.

We only noticed that in our “campazzo” the same men with the red armband on their sleeve who a few months earlier were roaming around Venice hunting for fascists and Germans had settled.

They told us that those who arrived were non-Italian people, traitorous slaves who were placed there waiting to be transferred to other places because they didn't want them in Venice.

The men with the bracelet also “advised” us not to deal with them in any way because they were not at all recommendable people and that if they saw us playing or 'talking to some boy they would take action against us…

After a few days they arrived.

They were women, old men, boys like us, small children, they were carrying bags and suitcases. It was an interminable line. There must have been a few hundred of them.

Once inside, the men with the red armbands (who I later learned were the partisans of the Garibaldi, Ferretto section) welcomed them with shouts, spitting, pushing, curses, then closed the doors of the former convent and remained outside on guard.

Every day soldiers arrived, well-dressed men, some with a red armband and others with a green armband, and still others.

From the canal side – because the former convent was surrounded by water on two sides – boats guarded by the English arrived every day and unloaded sacks of food.

A couple of months passed like this, then schools reopened and it was already October.

My father – fortunately – did not send me to public schools, but to the Cavanis fathers. That year I was in third grade.

Towards the beginning of December, on the sly, six of those boys who lived in the former convent joined us in our class. We had only known them because we used to go around the canals in our little boat and they were always looking out of the windows, from which smells unknown to us always came out.

Even the way of speaking was different from ours, even though we understood each other very well and the words were the same.

It was obvious that among the boys we talked to each other, just as it was obvious that they told us something about their conditions and the reasons why they found themselves in those conditions.

But from talking to them like Romeo and Juliet, that is, us on the boat and them from the windows, to being able to talk directly one-on-one during recess was a very different thing!

The priests realized that we were more interested in talking to these boys than playing our usual football matches.

Then some gentlemen came to the classroom, and also to the other classrooms where these kids were, and explained to us the reasons for what we were experiencing and who those kids and their families really were.

They were refugees who were fleeing from Istria, Dalmatia, etc.

But… hadn’t they taught us that those were Italian territories? Indeed: they had told us that they were Venetian territories, because the borders of Venice once reached that far! And now?

Why did they chase them away?

Hard to understand at eight years old! But little by little we got there! And we became friends: in the face of the partisans with the red armbands, who in the meantime had started to leave the camp.

So we started hanging out, being friends, playing together, living together. Sometimes they would come to my house, or my friends' house, and sometimes we would go to their house. At their house…

Small rooms that were once the friars' cells, or large rooms with dividers made of blankets held up by string or wire.

And their mothers and their grandparents began to tell. Their fathers were not there either because they had disappeared or because one of them had found a job outside Venice. But most of them had “simply” disappeared, and there were other people from outside who were looking for where they were.

Some of them knew that they were prisoners, some in Germany, some in Russia, and some… who knows where…

Every now and then you could hear screams and cries of despair: they were the relatives of those whose fate was being learned: KILLED AND THROWN INTO THE FOIBE, many of them still alive!!!

It was the first time in my life that I heard this name: foiba! And they told me!

And they told.

They told of when, in the middle of the night, the Yugoslav soldiers – whom they called the “Tititni” – would arrive to chase them out of their homes with a few rags and their houses would immediately be occupied by the relatives of the Titoites.

Of the concentration they had made near the docks of the ports of Pola, Fiume, etc. during the transfer from their homes to the port, several of them disappeared and knew nothing more. They knew nothing more, until the news brought by the thousand channels of a People in flight did not ignite those cries and those screams!

Then they were loaded onto carts and placed in the holds to be shipped as livestock or as merchandise to Italian ports.

I can say how they were welcomed in Venice, because they told me about it themselves. I cannot say how they were welcomed in other ports, but from what we later learned, it seems that the treatment was no different.

First of all, upon arrival at the roadstead – outside the port of Venice – they were escorted by military vessels carrying the usual red-armed men. Once they reached the shore, the English soldiers were waiting for them on land to register them, and together with the English there were the partisans.

Outside the gates and outside the port fence there were men and women who insulted them, called them dirty Slavs, fascists, traitors, etc. etc.

They remained on the dock of the port of Venice all day and all night, until dawn – after the port enclosures had emptied of people – they lined them up and escorted them on foot to the former convent, where they were herded together.

Every day the Allied boats arrived to bring them food, and they couldn't go out.

Just the boys to go to school, and then inside again.

This went on for a couple of years. Obviously the surveillance had become much looser, in fact: it had almost disappeared. Then even the women and the old men could go out and tell their stories!

And many of those women who had previously offended them, I later saw them cry as I listened to their stories.

I still remember many of those boys and their names.

With one of them I found myself embarked when I sailed with the ships of the Adriatic. With others we remained friends.

As the years went by, and I studied the history of Venice, I learned that all those territories from which they had been expelled had always been Venetian territories.

Especially those on the coast. and even before the arrival of republican and imperial Rome.

Then they became Venetian again under the Venetian Republic. Even though the Hungarians and the Balkan populations pushed to reach the coast, those were always Venetian lands!

The last city to lower the glorious flag of St. Mark was the southernmost city of Dalmatia: Perast. And the Venetian flag still lies under the altar of the Cathedral of Perast.

Then came the Austrians. And they, imposing hegemony over all the lands they had conquered, moved the inhabitants of the Balkans and the hinterland to the coast, thus starting an ethnic cleansing ante litteram. To the point that they plundered many paintings from the churches of Venice - at that time also subjugated to the Empire - to transfer them to the poor churches of Herzegovina, Zagreb, etc.

This purge lasted until the end of the First World War and the dissolution of the Austrian Empire.

(However, the Austrians knew how to make good use of the experience of the Venetians and the Venetian-Istrian-Dalmatians, especially in the navy! The famous battle of Lissa can well testify to this! That victory was classified as the last victory of the Republic of Venice! In fact, the crews of the Austrian fleet were formed exclusively by Venetians and Venetian-Istrian-Dalmatians!)

With that battle many of those Territories returned to being Italian, until the Titoist Slavic communists arrived and completely drove out our fellow countrymen.

Here in Italy, instead of being welcomed as brothers, the refugees were greeted with spitting and curses!

In the name of the so-called communist politics and solidarity of the time!

I had to see all this: at the age of eight!

Do you think I could forget about it?

 

Gigio Zanon