Remembrance Day 2018 takes on special significance with reference to two important anniversaries. First, this year marks the centenary of the end of the First World War , which for many irredentists in Julian, Fiume, Dalmatia, and the Kingdom of Italy was a Fourth War of Independence that finally crowned the Risorgimento with the unification into a single nation state of all the lands inhabited by populations of Italic language, culture, and tradition. This historical moment is important for remembering the profound bond between Venezia Giulia, Carnaro, Dalmatia, and the rest of Italy, a bond rooted for centuries that was violated by the ethnic cleansing perpetrated by Tito's partisans at the end of the Second World War, which forced 90% of the Italian community to take the sad path of exodus after the Foibe massacres.

It also marks the 70th anniversary of the Tripartite Declaration with which the United States, Great Britain, and France, on the eve of the first general elections of the Italian Republic on April 18, 1948, pledged to restore the entirety of the yet-to-be-established Free Territory of Trieste to full Italian sovereignty. Soviet and Yugoslav opposition to this initiative would affect the electoral performance of the Italian Communist Party, which subordinated the protection of national interests to compliance with the Kremlin's directives. Tito's subsequent withdrawal from the Cominform would transform the Yugoslav dictator into a Cold War interlocutor of the Western bloc, and the Declaration remained a dead letter, vainly trumpeted by exiles in their demands.

Remembering these and other episodes (think of the participation of hundreds of Istrians and Dalmatians in the uprisings of the revived Republic of San Marco in 1848, whose flag featured the St. Mark's lion alongside the Italian tricolor) helps contextualize the events of the foibe and the exodus within a more complex historical context, which allows us to better grasp the magnitude of the disaster that struck the Italian communities of the eastern Adriatic. A broad historical overview also helps demolish the vexing initiatives of reductionists and justifiers of the massacres in the foibe and the exodus. The world of exiles and their descendants, already victims of decades of oblivion regarding what they suffered, barely breathed a sigh of relief upon learning that a conference in Turin, offensive to our historical and human history, was about to collapse, before it was immediately dashed by the news that the Municipality of Orvieto was once again offering its patronage and support for the staging of an event with blatantly justifiable overtones.

The National Association of Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia hopes that the new majority that will emerge from the polls on March 4th will not only be able to resolve the many outstanding issues facing exiles, starting with compensation for abandoned property , but also effectively and convincingly support historical research and dissemination efforts to correctly reconstruct the complex story of the eastern border.

 

Renzo Codarin
National President and Provincial Committee of Trieste of the National Association of Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia