Eric Gobetti's new publication "E Allora le Foibe?" has caused perplexity and dismay in the world of Istrian, Fiume and Dalmatian exiles, since the announcement of the title. Reading the booklet confirmed expectations: although it is published by a prestigious publisher like Laterza, it is a justificationist work, represented however as an effort to "understand" the murderous logic implemented by Tito's partisans.

Once again, the narrative can be said to begin on July 13, 1920 with the burning of the Balkan in Trieste: there is no mention of “understanding” the tensions between Italians and Slavs fomented by the Austro-Hungarian Empire in its last years of existence, nor of the killing of the Italian sailors in Split as an episode that would lead to the Trieste riots the following day. No reference to the exodus of Italians from Dalmatia after the signing of the Treaty of Rapallo, while the focus is on the emigration of Slavs from the provinces annexed to the Kingdom of Italy, described with bombastic figures without going into the meticulous counting to which the Julian-Dalmatian exodus will be subjected. The Istrian foibe of 1943 are thus presented as a reaction to the fascist violence and repression carried out by the Royal Army during the occupation of Yugoslavia, with only veiled references to the long-standing expansionist projects of Slavic nationalism. The very use of the foiba as an instrument of elimination is scaled down and represented as a simple burial site, despite the testimonies and reconstructions that are in the public domain (on the other hand, the limited bibliography ignores, among other things, all the scientific production of the associations of exiles). The denigration of the National Monument of the Foiba of Basovizza, usual in the rhetoric of justificationists and reductionists, is accompanied by the absence of references to current events, from the homage that the site received jointly from the Presidents of the Republic of Italy and Slovenia to the recent discoveries of mass graves in Slovenia and Croatia, in which thousands of victims of Tito's repression lie.

The Julian-Dalmatian exodus becomes one of the many forced population movements that occurred at the end of the Second World War (incidentally always starting from territories that had ended up under communist dictatorship), without grasping its specific characteristics: the foibe were a political purge, the numbers of which are minimized, preliminary to the annexation to Yugoslavia; the exodus represented the ethnic cleansing of the Italian community historically rooted in the eastern Adriatic. Emphasizing the options provided for by the Peace Treaty, the author glosses over those who had to flee clandestinely before and after February 10, 1947, omits that a CLN of Istria had been reconstituted, later annihilated by the Yugoslav apparatus, and treats the conditions of the Refugee Collection Centers with embarrassing lightness.

After such a partial and hasty historical reconstruction (was the pamphlet supposed to be published in time to cause controversy on the eve of February 10?) the author represents Law 92/2004, establishing the Day of Remembrance and approved by a very large majority in Parliament, not as a belated recognition of a page of national history, but rather as a coup by a presumed "neo-fascist right". From these assumptions originates the rancorous criticism of the film "Red Istria", judged "a product of Nazi propaganda" perhaps because it was able to represent the climate of uncertainty, terror and anxiety that could be felt in the Istrian hinterland after September 8, 1943 due to the collapse of the Italian State, the deportations carried out by Yugoslavian partisans and the roundups carried out by the Germans (all elements that appear in the film).

Faced with so many other inaccuracies, many resort to the quote “do not care about them, but look and pass” by Dante who placed the borders of Italy at Carnaro already in the Middle Ages, even if Gobetti, who likes to be photographed next to the statues of the dictator Tito, does not remember it. Since the title of the pamphlet is meant to be ironic, but turns out to be offensive, we prefer to conclude with “laughter will bury you”, because here we have to laugh so as not to cry.

 

Renzo Codarin
President of the Multimedia Documentation Center of Julian, Istrian, Rijeka and Dalmatian Culture