The red star emblazoned on the poster is that of Tito, the Yugoslavian communist marshal responsible for the Foibe massacres and the ethnic cleansing of the Italians of Istria, Fiume, and Dalmatia. And the organization organizing the denialist conference in Turin on February 10th, the very day dedicated by law to the Remembrance of the Foibe massacres and the Julian-Dalmatian Exodus, is a certain "National Coordination for Yugoslavia" (known to its friends as "Jugocoord"). The paradox is grotesque and anachronistic: Yugoslavia no longer exists, Croatia and Slovenia (now Europe) have long since evicted the busts of Tito, just as those of the Duce disappeared decades ago in Italy and those of Stalin in Moscow, but in the capital Turin, fans of the bloodthirsty marshal still exist and "celebrate" in their own way the memory of his massacres...

To be clear, as if the Third Reich nostalgics association were organizing commemorative events for Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27. The operation is (only in intention) clever, because the title of the conference is precisely “Remembrance Day, a balance sheet”, and if it had not been for that red star one could have believed that it was one of the countless initiatives that on February 10 throughout Italy will honor the memory of our victims.

But the Julian-Dalmatian exiles and their descendants are not at all distracted, and on January 17, the day the poster appeared with great fanfare on websites and Facebook pages, they turned to us at Avvenire: "The cancer of denialism must be nipped in the bud," they told us, because no one knows better than the victims of regimes that what happened in the past can always happen again, if the antibodies of memory are lacking.

Not only does the program list Claudia Cernigoi and Alessandra Kersevan among its speakers (“qualified scientific reports”), who claim that the Foibe either don't exist or contain animal carcasses, but it also explains that "the inclusion of 'Remembrance Day' in the Republic's civil calendar has very serious consequences": "only 341" were Tito's victims, "of which a tiny fraction were 'foibati' in the strict sense," furthermore, "the majority of these figures belong to the armed forces or political personnel of Fascist Italy," and so on and so forth…

We asked Mayor Chiara Appendino for clarification, but she was unaware of the matter. The conference venue, the Le Nuove Prison Museum, is owned jointly by the state and the Ministries of Justice, Finance, and the Interior, "but we have not provided any sponsorship," the mayor announced a few days ago. Yesterday, she personally attended, assuring the public that the event at the former prison would not take place : "The Foibe massacre is a tragedy we have a duty to remember, so that similar dark periods in history never return. What has made this event even more painful is the very oblivion that has characterized it for too many years, leaving the victims feeling betrayed by their own country."

To understand where this Italijanska Koordinacija za Jugoslaviju (translated as it is under the red star, the same one sewn on the caps of the henchmen who rounded up Italians from house to house, long after the war had ended) had come from, all that remained was to ask those who have been managing the Museum for years: "Never, ever have we opened our doors to a conference that can only be described as a disgrace," thundered Felice Tagliente, president of the association "Nessun uomo è un'isola".

Didn't he know anything about it either? "Absolutely not. Are you kidding? In this museum, built on a site of pain, we only celebrate the memory of the victims and restore truth to an already too tragic story like that of the Foibe. No event takes place here unless the board of directors decides first, and we have never considered any such request. The procedure is clear: first you ask the municipality for authorization, then, if the objectives are lofty and consistent with the values ​​of this museum, we grant the permits, but none of this has happened. These people boast, they're inventing a non-existent conference—think how serious they are. Yesterday morning I got a call from Mayor Appendino's office, alerted by Avvenire to what was happening, and we were all shocked." As for February 10th, "if they show up here, I'm willing to close the museum; I have the keys." Jugocoord has been warned.

Source: Avvenire