The dossier intended for the Paris conference of 1947 is a sad collection of atrocities 

«Secret – October 5, 1945 – Conditions of Italian internees in Yugoslavia with particular reference to the Borovnica camp and the military hospital of Skofja Loka, both called the hospital of death». From the title of the first typewritten page, the report of our services that emerges from the past makes your skin crawl. «Shootings for nothing», «torture at the stake», «forced labor», «living skeletons» are the terrible words that are repeated in the testimonies of Italian soldiers captured after the war and who survived Tito's concentration camps. A report of horror kept secret for 50 years, which is published in its entirety for the first time by the Rivista dalmatica on the occasion of February 10, the day of remembrance of the foibe and the exodus. "My grandfather, Manlio Cace, a medical officer in the Navy, treated him for the secret services, with the aim of presenting him at the peace conference that led to the Treaty of Paris in 1947, as proof of the unspeakable violence of the Yugoslav regime against the Italians. We do not know if he ever arrived at that meeting," explains Carla Cace, president of the National Dalmatian Association, who discovered the secret report in the Roman archives of the association. Today the dramatic report of the services, previewed by Il Giornale, is presented to the European Parliament.

The testimonies are made even more dramatic by the photos of the survivors: ghosts of skin and bones with the signs of torture, barely able to stand. "Their condition is worse than that of the veterans of the German death camps" we read in the second part with the photographs. Not all of them enemies, but also soldiers who joined the partisan cause or were captured by the Nazis.

Nicandro Filippo, born in 1906, "was taken prisoner in early May, after four days of fighting alongside partisans to drive the Germans out of Trieste." His ordeal began in the Borovnica concentration camp in Slovenia, 88 kilometers from the Julian capital. "At six o'clock we went out to work, which was very hard given our weakness caused by insufficient food; and yet we had to work anyway, otherwise there were beatings, kicks and beatings," he says as soon as he is released from a hospital bed in Udine. "Every day someone invariably died in the barracks; 2, 3, 4 died in the infirmary, mostly from diarrhea," reveals Nicandro. The medical soldier Guarnaschelli Alberto, from Pavia, escapes from German captivity, but on May 12 he is captured by Tito's partisans in Postumia. "One morning they loaded us into cattle cars. In my car there were 118 of us," like the Jews. At the Borovnica concentration camp the punishments were terrible: "I can still hear the screams of those poor wretches who had to stay tied to the pole with a thin wire for up to two hours. Everyone fainted during that torture and after liberation many were left with stiff arms or hands and others had to help them eat and undress." The rifleman Santamaria Gino, born in Rome, describes the detention as follows: "The real life of hell: beatings, whippings, fasting, illnesses and torture meant that almost all of us were reduced to living skeletons." The rations were a broth and many inmates had never seen a piece of bread. "The hunger was so great that we devoured anything we could get our hands on," the rifleman says. "So, along the road to work (forced work, ed.), we gathered grass and dry leaves from the trees or some fallen fruit and devoured everything immediately." In Borovnica "over 60 comrades died of hunger, disease and mistreatment. Another 150 were taken away and nothing more was known about their fate."

The shootings were carried out for trivial reasons. "In Vipacco a prisoner, exhausted by hunger, finished his meager ration and asked the cook for more. A partisan noticed and shot him point-blank, killing him." The testimony is from the Finance Sub-brigadier, Rapisarda Salvatore, who was taken by Tito's men in Trieste. "A partisan armed with a musket asked me for the wedding ring I was wearing on my finger," he recounts. "I pointed out that it was a sacred thing and that I couldn't give it to him. The partisan, sneering, said: Either you give it to me or I'll cut off your finger."

Another financier, Giribaldo Roberto, is an eyewitness to the shooting of two fellow prisoners. "One because he was stopped in the middle of the woods while trying to escape," the report states, "the other because he was caught in a house where he had entered to ask for a piece of bread."

The “death marches” were other occasions of summary executions. Garbin Antonio, captured in Velika Gorica by the Germans, believed “in liberation by Tito’s soldiers, but we soon realized that we were prisoners again”. Together with 250 other Italians he was marched towards Belgrade. “In 20 days we had covered a distance of about 500 km, always on foot – he testified – During the march I personally saw three Italian prisoners killed, unconscious and unable to get up. However, the dead were many more”.

Cristina Di Giorgi, editor of the special issue of the Dalmatica magazine, writes that «the internees in the approximately fifty structures organized and managed by Tito's communist militiamen scattered throughout the territory of Yugoslavia were over sixty thousand (among them former soldiers, former prisoners of the Germans, civilians deported from Istria, Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia, partisans and even communists)».

Before dying of starvation in Borovnica, the prisoners were transferred to an improvised hospital built in the ruined castle in Skofja Loka, sadly nicknamed "the cemetery". Guarnaschelli recounts that "the room always had closed doors and windows. Every night 2, 3 or 4 of us died. I remember that in three days 25 died. They died and no one noticed: only in the morning did they appear stiff". The sick were not allowed to go out even to do their business: "In a corner there was a container that everyone had to use. And we were suffering from diarrhea!" In the death camp of Borovnica, after the repatriation of the survivors, 400 Italians remained in the hands of the torturers. Giuseppe Mignola, from Potenza, recounts that "the most ruthless was a bourgeois who always carried a rubber whip. How many of them that wretch made cry. Then there were children of 12, 13 years old. Those scoundrels". And in the end he declares: «Tito's partisans were more beasts than men». Ungaro Giacomo has a pass issued by the Yugoslav authorities to return home to Bari, but he is stopped anyway by Tito's men on 10 May 1945, near Trieste, after the war ended. Having survived Borovnica he admits: «I have invoked death many times» rather than «endure the torment to which we poor Italians were subjected».

Fausto Biloslavo
Source: The newspaper – 09/02/2022