The events of the 2023 edition of the La Bancarella. Eastern Adriatic Book Fair organized by the Multimedia Documentation Center of Julian, Istrian, Rijeka and Dalmatian culture, which this year takes place within the framework of Librixia. Book and culture fair in Brescia. The fruitful collaboration of the National Association of Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia with the publishing house Sestante has led to publications regarding the Julian-Dalmatian Exodus in Lombardy and has now also allowed the synergy of a book stand at Librixia in which the main associations of the Adriatic diaspora have been able to exhibit their most recent book production, precisely in the year in which Brescia is the Italian Capital of Culture together with Bergamo.

In the prestigious setting of Librixia, another step is taken in the initiatives that the Adriatic exiles can carry out thanks to the more than ten-year collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Merit. In fact, on Wednesday 27 September, the MIM is organizing at 10:00 at the Agrobresciano Arena in Piazza della Vittoria a meeting within the project “A Library in Every School”, at the end of which at 11:00 Marino Micich will present the volume Foibe, Exodus, Memory. The long drama of Italianness in the lands of the eastern Adriatic (Aracne Editore, Rome 2023).

This is a volume created by Micich together with Pier Luigi Guiducci, Emiliano Loria and Gianni Stelli in which the massacres of Italians that took place in Venezia Giulia, Carnaro and Dalmatia in the aftermath of the Second World War and the exodus of the Julian-Dalmatians from their lands of origin, which was in some way the consequence of that violence, are analyzed. The tragedy of the foibe emerges as a particular case of that preventive purge that characterized the rise to power of the communist regimes during the twentieth century and of which the systematic persecution of religion is an essential aspect. The story of the exodus and reception in Italy is retraced in its motivations and its many implications, and through the direct testimonies of refugees from Istria, Fiume and Zara.

Stelli in particular provides an analysis of the foibe in his contribution, Micich deals with the various phases of the Exodus and the reception of refugees in Italy, Guiducci illustrates the persecution of the Church in Istria, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, while Loria finally presents a collection of testimonies of Istrian, Fiume and Zadar exiles. This is a text published in conjunction with the Day of Remembrance 2023 and which, due to its clarity of exposition, can also be valuable as a teaching tool for addressing the history of the Adriatic border in schools.