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Julian-Dalmatian emigration around the world
On March 15, 1954, the first ship loaded with emigrants set sail from Trieste: hundreds of Triestini and Istrians, who had already abandoned their homes under pressure from Tito's communist Yugoslav regime, set sail for Australia, South Africa, and the Americas in search of better living conditions. In previous years, especially through the channels of the International Refugee Organization (IRO), thousands of Istrians, Fiume, and Dalmatians had undertaken this journey, which in turn was connected to previous migratory flows. Although the phenomenon has been studied, partially analyzed, and preserved in memory through the collection of testimonies, it was missing in...
Women and the Julian-Dalmatian Exodus: Memories of a Forgotten History
During the Julian-Dalmatian exile, from the 1943 armistice until the postwar period, the role of women was crucial and extraordinary. They paid a high price and faced experiences of uprootedness, violence, and resilience that are still little known. Through direct and indirect testimonies, Giuseppina Mellace recounts the difficult reception in Italy, life in refugee camps, and forced renunciations. The common thread is the story of Egea Haffner, the little girl featured on the poster for Remembrance Day, and Licia Cossetto, who, after recognizing the body of her sister Norma, brutally raped and then thrown into a sinkhole, was forced to abandon...
Exodus. The silence of those who remain.
Professor Katja Hrobat Virloget, director of the Department of Anthropology and Cultural Studies at the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Primorska in Koper, focuses on migration and population movements, memory, identity, heritage, folklore, and mythology in her often interdisciplinary research. In Exodus: The Silence of Those Remaining, the anthropologist explores the memories of those left behind after the exodus: men and women who, along with a large portion of the Italian community, did not leave Istria to reach Italy during the turbulent post-World War II years; people who remained in Yugoslavia and went from being a majority to a minority.
“Tanto lontana terra” a musical painting dedicated to the Exodus
"Tanto Lontana Terra" is a dramatic musical composition composed of 16 pieces in which the alternation between spoken and sung voice is punctuated by silences and bursts of sound performed by a string quartet (two violins, viola, and cello) and piano. The composition by Trieste-born Maestro Marco Podda—a musician, conductor, and composer with an international career—was successfully premiered in 2023. At the Teatro Stabile del Friuli Venezia Giulia, the performance of "Tanto lontana terra" represents a poetic and moving way to keep alive the memory of the exodus on Remembrance Day and reflect on the fundamental theme of overcoming borders...
Love and Pain in the Exodus from Istria
It is called La rosa dell'Istria, it is a TV movie that will shed light, with a "non-political, non-ideological" angle, on a "little told" story, that of the Istrian exodus. Freely inspired by the novel Chi ha paura dell'uomo nero? by Graziella Fiorentin (Mursia editions), La rosa dell'Istria, as explained by Verdiana Bixio, president of the production company Publispei, "is a great love story, but also a story that tells what it means to be or not to be at home, how one experiences uprooting". "It is not a film about Tito's persecutions - adds Bixio - but an intimate story about the post-exodus, we tell the story of people who had to seek salvation, families...
Mili dies, the exodus of my
“Mili muoi, that's what my grandmother called me…” Carlo Colombo is a pianist, author and singer from Treviso, but he is also the son of Julian-Dalmatian refugees. He decided to tackle the thorny issue of the exodus from the territories of Istria and Dalmatia following the establishment of the communist dictatorship of Tito's Yugoslavia after 1945, experienced primarily by his paternal and maternal family. He tells stories of escapes by sea and by land, accompanying himself with the piano, the ekatron and the Toy Piano; he also does so by singing period songs and original songs that he wrote specifically for this show. The testimonies are all direct and acquired since...
My Home Elsewhere, by Federica Marzi
Having remained in Trieste for the summer while her parents Selma and Zeliko and her younger sister Majda return to their homeland, Bosnia, to Zvornik this year, young Amila begins to work odd jobs on the Carso, in Bristie, helping out with the household chores of two elderly people, Norina and her husband, Mariano, Istrian exiles who took refuge in Trieste after the war. They are two 'foreign' families whose stories intertwine in the undefined border town that is Trieste, families with feelings as hard as stones, as immovable as mountains; only another feeling - light, fresh and unexpected - can make that mineral brittle and tame and push towards self-understanding and...
The director who first dared to tell the story of the Istrian exodus
When it was released in cinemas in 1948, "La città dolente" had little success, but Mario Bonnard's work later became a valuable document on the exodus from Pola and on the conditions of Istria in the immediate post-war period, when in Zone B the Yugoslav military administration actually manifested itself as the first stage of an increasingly obvious annexation to communist Yugoslavia well before the official decisions of the Peace Conference. Free -...
Hot Chocolate for Two, Nunzia Gionfriddo's Book for Remembrance Day
On the occasion of the Day of Remembrance, to not forget the massacres of the foibe and the Istrian exodus, “Cioccolata calda per due” by the Neapolitan author Nunzia Gionfriddo, published by Phoenix Publishing, arrives in bookstores. On the occasion of the Day of Remembrance, celebrated every year on February 10, to not forget the massacres of the foibe and the Istrian exodus, “Cioccolata calda per due” by the Neapolitan author Nunzia Gionfriddo, published by Phoenix Publishing and winner of the Premio Milano International, arrives in bookstores in the new updated version. A complex novel, vaguely romantic, even if the title is misleading. The title in fact refers to a love story, in...
The “remaining” Julians, victims of history
“Bora” by Anna Maria Mori and Nelida Milani (Frassinelli, 1998, 240 p.) contains the testimony of two women, natives of Pola, whose young lives were affected by the tragic events of the Second World War with the exodus of the Italian population from Istria, Fiume, Dalmatia. This marked forever, for them as for many of us natives of those lands, the irreversible laceration between the “before” and the “after”. At the end of the book there is a chronology of the main historical events that concern us. It was written by Antonella Scarpa, who, we learn, “lives in Venice where she studies contemporary history, and works as a librarian. Daughter of an exile who has...
