Thanks to the hospitality of the delegation of Forza Italia – European People's Party, the National Association of Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia, the Adriatic Coordination and the Multimedia Documentation Centre for Julian, Istrian, Rijeka and Dalmatian Culture, this morning they started an intense session of cultural events at the headquarters of the European Parliament in Brussels.

Indisposed Hon. Elisabetta Gardini, the MEP Salvatore Cicu hosted the meeting, presenting the institutions of the European Union as the most suitable place to satisfy the denied rights of the Istrian, Fiume and Dalmatian exiles. At the opening of the meeting, the greeting message sent by the Slovenian MEP Alojz Peterle was appreciated, who, strong in his conflictual experience in the Balkans, reiterated the importance of Europe in rebuilding state relations torn by oppositions.

The President of the Council of the autonomous Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, Piero Mauro Zanin, made extensive references to the report given in view of the Day of Remembrance at the assembly chaired by him by Prof. Raoul Pupo and to the testimony of the Istrian exile Erminia Dionis Bernobi, who as a young girl heard Norma Cossetto's torturers boasting about their misdeeds in the shop where she worked. "Friuli Venezia Giulia has experienced conflicts on the front lines," Zanin said, "but now we are a territory at the forefront of cross-border cooperation with Austria, Slovenia and Croatia. With the same spirit we can reconstruct pages of history that are still incomplete."

With great passion, Rodolfo Ziberna, in his dual role as Mayor of Gorizia and representative of the associations of Adriatic exiles, presented to those present the difficulties of integrating the exiles into the urban fabric of Trieste, the moral capital of the exodus with almost 80.000 arrivals, and of Gorizia, where 20% of the current inhabitants are first, second or third generation exiles: «Due to the political climate in which they arrived in post-war Italy – explained Ziberna – there was a lot of reticence in recounting their tragic experience: in Italy, which celebrated April 25 as the end of the war, it was difficult to explain that on the eastern border in those days the deportations, sinkholes and summary trials by the self-styled Yugoslav partisan liberators of Josip Broz “Tito” were just beginning». Today we are finally talking about it, despite fringes of deniers and justifiers who, after decades of silence and removal, now want to smear the Memory: "A national community must rally around its victims - continued the mayor of the Isonzo capital - and silence these people. We here today, however, officially and institutionally ask the successor states of Yugoslavia to open their archives regarding the deportations and massacres of Italians that took place in Venezia Giulia after the war. We do not want to assign responsibility and blame, we only want to provide descendants and relatives of people who have disappeared into thin air the possibility of knowing where to go to lay a flower in memory of their loved ones".

"The Julian-Dalmatian associations ask politics to exercise its mediating function - continued Prof. Avv. Davide Rossi representing the Federation of Associations of Istrian, Fiume and Dalmatian Exiles - also within this important supranational headquarters. The exiles keep open a discussion table with the Italian government to resolve the issues still open, first and foremost the restoration of the goods abandoned for having "opted" for Italy after the Peace Treaty of February 10, 1947". In recent days, however, there has been a request for a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the massacres of the immediate post-war period on the eastern border, starting with the bomb attack in Vergarolla on 18 August 1946 with dozens of dead and wounded in territory that was still formally Italian: it was the bloodiest massacre in the history of republican Italy: «We do not fear the in-depth analysis of historical research – concluded Rossi – and we recognize in the European institutions the most appropriate place for the protection of today's minorities, such as the indigenous Italian community in the eastern Adriatic, and to support the request for justice of the exiles who abandoned their lands annexed by communist Yugoslavia».

In the afternoon, the exhibition “You will leave everything dearly beloved. The exile of the Julians, Fiume and Dalmatians at the end of the Second World War” will be inaugurated inside the European Parliament: images and words that will bring to the attention of European decision-makers and parliamentarians a story that has been kept silent for too long.

 

Lorenzo Salimbeni