After July 13: Slovenia & Italy Towards a Common Memory 

by Paolo Sardos Albertini – 04/09/2020 – Source: National League

The act performed by the Slovenian and Italian Heads of State on 13 July at the Basovizza Shrine had a very specific meaning: to jointly honour the victims of Tito's terror, a joint homage to the Italians and Slovenians who had been massacred as "enemies of the people" and who are now remembered as innocent victims.
That was an important moment for the creation of a "common memory" that finally makes explicit the truth of what happened: an immense tragedy that involved an incredible number of victims and that left its mark on all three peoples, the Italians, the Slovenians, the Croatians.
The recent discovery of the "boys' pit" in Krocevski rog, Slovenia, is a further step in this journey and it is significant that Joze Dezman, president of the "Slovenian Commission for the identification of mass graves" has called for Italian-Slovenian collaboration in these search and recovery operations.
But it should also be remembered that at the beginning of August the news of another tragic discovery appeared.
This time in Jazovka, on Croatian territory, where the remains of at least 814 victims of Tito's executioners were found.
Among others, these included those taken from the Zagreb Hospital: nuns, doctors, nurses, women and children.
It is the confirmation of how the tragedy is common, that is, it concerns Slovenes, Croats and Italians.
And it is therefore desirable that the journey begun on July 13th will be completed with a visit to the Basovizza Shrine, also by a high Croatian institutional authority. The Mayor of Trieste, Roberto Dipiazza, interviewed by Fausto Biloslavo in the weekly Panorama, expressed a wish in this sense. Italians, Slovenians, Croats will then be able to honor together – perhaps right at the Basovizza Shrine – all the victims of this criminal tragedy, carried out under the sign of the “red star”.
The path was traced by the Catholic Church: Don Francesco Bonifacio, Italian, Lojze Grozde, Slovenian, Don Miroslav Bulesic, Croatian, all three young men slaughtered as "enemies of the people", all three brought to the honors of the altars as "blessed", all three martyrs of communism.
Honouring the three blessed martyrs together will mean definitively realizing a "shared memory". It will mean ensuring that the memory of the tragedy of the Foibe becomes a reason for harmony, rather than for polemics and divisions.