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“Traces of Exile” at the CRP of Laterina
Never since 2004, the year Remembrance Day was established , have we seen such a flourishing period of books on the Julian-Dalmatian exodus. Essays, historical research, testimonies, and novels: various authors are throwing themselves into this investigation, which has been relegated to silence for too long since the Second World War. These are not just memorials plagued by victimhood, as the justificationists, reductionists, and deniers of the foibe theme dare to claim. One can also find extensive academic studies, journalistic investigations, short stories, poems, archival research, with interviews and field visits.
This is also the case with this book. Giuliana Pesca, Serena Domenici and Giovanni Ruggiero, with great teaching experience, have set out with great determination to unearth documents, data, statistics and letters in the State Archives of Arezzo regarding the Refugee Collection Centre (Crp) of Laterina, active from 1948 to 1963. So far they have found and published the number of refugees who passed through that Crp in Arezzo, one of the most important in the Central North of the country. There are over 9 thousand (see page 10) transits through the dilapidated barracks of Laterina, formerly used as a Fascist concentration camp (1941-1943). There are 12.509 who passed through the Crp of Arezzo, the capital, in the years 1945-1946 (p. 18). These are remarkable numbers. It is not only the exiles from Istria, Fiume and Dalmatia who enter, willingly or unwillingly, into the CRP of Laterina because there is also a good portion of refugees expelled from the former colonies of Libya, the Dodecanese, or from other territories of previous historical settlement of Italians, such as Romania and Tunisia.
It's worth noting that a previous study, from 2017, attributed a total of 588 admissions to the Laterina CRP; see: L. Benedettelli, Istituto storico grossetano della Resistenza e dell'età contemporanea (ISGREC). This demonstrates, as happens in other cases, that research and studies are never definitive, especially if conducted only on a few papers from the CRP directors, written to appease the respective prefects. This is a very dangerous tendency for certain historians, usually ideologically driven (or, worse, indoctrinated), to downplay or dilute the data, events, and painful fates of the Julian-Dalmatian exodus. Some go further, calling all those few who abandoned Tito's paradise fascists.
If you want to learn more about the Cold War refugee camps, this is the book for you. If you want to learn more about the Laterina Refugee Center, this book is excellent. In fact, it goes much further, because in just a few pages there's even a reference to the Libyan Holocaust. Truth be told, this subject, unknown to most, deserves its own research and, above all, as a Tuscan friend of mine would say: it has nothing to do with the Laterina Refugee Center.
The reader is advised that this review intends to expand on the underlying theme of this interesting and innovative Tracce d'esilio . In any case, the vocabulary here is respectful of the dramas of the exodus from Istria, Fiume and Dalmatia. There is also a bit of history of the colonization of Libya by the Kingdom of Italy (1911) and of fascism (1930). In my humble opinion, the historical background of the Italians in Istria, Fiume and Dalmatia seems rather lacking; "Italians" in the Dantean sense. They represent the majority component, according to the data discovered by the three authors, of the 9 thousand refugees who passed through the CRP of Laterina. One would have expected a little more regarding their origins. Were they all from the region , that is, brought from the rest of the Kingdom by fascism, or attracted by the job opportunities? I know it would take a long time to describe the Roman colonization of the Histri, the foundation of Aquileia (181 BC), capital of the 10th Augustan region, and the introduction of Slavic peoples for repopulation, only after the 6th-7th century. Then the Placitum of Risano is important; it's not just a bag of peanuts! The Placitum of Risano is a document dating back to the year 804, which summarizes, in the form of arbitration minutes, the judicial assembly held in a location near the Risano river, near Capodistria, between the Missi dominici of Charlemagne and the delegates of the Istrian villages, many of which were founded in Rome.
It contains the complaints of 172 sworn witnesses, representatives of Istrian cities and fortified villages, about the actions of the Istrian bishops and the Frankish duke John, a descendant of the Lombard king Astolfo. The local nobles and the late Roman municipalities complain about the bishops' greediness and the violations of customs acquired during the Byzantine domination, such as the rights of grass and acorns. Above all, they protest about the increase in contributions (mostly in kind) and compulsory work required by the duke, and about his interference in the management of the servitude and common lands, where he settled pagan Slavs.
Then there is the power of the Patriarchate of Aquileia, of Roman, Lombard, but not Slavic descent! From 1420 the dominion of Venice developed until 1797, the date of the Treaty of Campoformido, with which Napoleon sold the Veneto, Friuli, Istria and Dalmatia of the Serenissima Republic of San Marco to the Austrians. Then there is the twentieth century, with two world wars, fascism with its atrocities against the aliens and the elimination of Italians in the foibe, for ethnic cleansing, at the hands of Tito's militiamen, ending with the fratricidal Yugoslav wars of the 90s, or patriotic wars, as the southern Slav historians like to write.
It took a long time for even the most renowned historians to accept the figure of 280-300 thousand individuals fleeing the violence and abuses of Tito's regime, the OZNA and the UDBA, the Yugoslav secret services. To explain the reasons for the exodus, some significant passages from President Sergio Mattarella's speech for the 2019 Day of Remembrance ( https://www.quirinale.it/elementi/22297 ) can be cited: "It was not – as some denialist or reductionist historians have wanted to insinuate – a retaliation against the wrongs of fascism (...). Those who resisted, those who opposed, those who did not integrate into the new totalitarian order disappeared, swallowed up into nothingness (...). The violent arm of the communist regime struck furiously, erasing history, diversity, pluralism, coexistence, under a dark cloak of homologation and terror (...). A destiny common to many Eastern European peoples: that of passing directly from Nazi oppression to Communist oppression. And of experiencing, in their own lives, the entire dehumanizing repertoire of the great totalitarianisms of the twentieth century, different in ideology, but so similar in their methods of persecution, control, repression, elimination of dissidents.” In short, certain Italian speakers, such as the Bonettis, have been present in Dalmatia since 1200, marking the history of Split, Zadar and the island of Brac.
In 2021, for the first time in Slovenia, Katja Hrobat Virloget, a young anthropologist from the University of Primorska (Koper), finally wrote about “eksodus” in her book entitled V tišini spomina, Eksodus in Istra, which translated is: In the silence of memory, of the exodus and of Istria . Until now, Yugoslav historians and, after the collapse of Yugoslavia (1991), Slovenian, Croatian and Montenegrin historians have always spoken of a few transfers of Italians , in the post-war period from Istria, Rijeka and Dalmatia, never of an exodus, of the silence of the refugees and the fear of those who remained.
Let's proceed in order – First of all, these three authors, regarding the subject of the foibe, openly write about "the elimination of the victims, generally killed following mass shootings, after having tied their wrists together with wire" (pp. 35-36, note 35). Of course, there is now a vast literature on the subject, but I would like to point out that in Friuli, in the 1980s and 1990s, if anyone publicly mentioned the Porzùs massacre or the killings in the Istrian foibe, the mighty roars of the old communist partisans would rise up and, amid shouts and insults, the democratic meeting would end.
The three authors mention, in passing, the Refugee Sorting Center in Udine (pp. 21 and 38). This CSP proved to be a key hub for escapes from Istria, Fiume, and Dalmatia, as over 100 individuals passed through, to be sorted into over a hundred CRPs scattered across Italy. I know this because I grew up nearby, playing with the refugees' children. Then, as a graduate, I wrote several books on the subject, about the Italians of the lost lands, defined as Italians twice over , by birth and by choice. Many Julian refugees pass through Trieste and Udine, and end up in Laterina.
It seems to me, however, that those groups expelled from Tunisia after 1956, known as les petits blancs , are only half Italian . They had been there for at least four generations for work, not for fascist colonization. Several hundred, if not a few thousand of them ended up in the CRP of Laterina after 1960, but when it was time to leave the camp they preferred to be naturalized French (pp. 61-76). Goodbye, Italy! There are approximately 14 Italians from Tunisia who have been naturalized French (p. 69). They passed through various CRPs in Italy, especially in the South: Canzanella Vecchia in Fuorigrotta (Naples), Barletta (BA), and Gaeta (LT).
The book Tracce d'esilio (Traces of Exile) contains a comprehensive legal description of the Right of Option, exercised by the Italians of Istria, Fiume, and Dalmatia, the first settlement bonus upon leaving the camp, and the Scelba Law, regarding the provision of food in the CRP (pp. 81-85), as well as the right to a 15% share of public housing allocated to exiles from overcrowded CRPs (p. 98). The oral sources reported here have the first name clearly written and the last name dotted, raising suspicions among deniers, who might accuse these testimonies of being anonymous, but we will leave that task to them.
The volume mentions, on page 47, the Vergarolla massacre of August 18, 1946, when Tito's attack killed over one hundred people, marking the mass exodus from Pola, 28,500 Italians in eksodus out of a total population of 32,000. Is this also ethnic cleansing? This interesting volume by the three authors is enriched by about forty statistical tables, five graphs, three geographical maps, photographs, and—I apologize for repeating myself—a remarkable amount of archival research. It's a shame some of the photographs are so small.
In Traces of Exile , in short, one can find the experiences lived in the shack of hardship, the psychological disorientation, the disappointment over lost lands, and the disillusionment with the politics of a nation that emerged as a loser from a war waged by the Duce and the king. There are the privations, the queues for water from the fountain at the Laterina Camp, and the need to muster the courage to start over. The convoluted attempt to reintegrate into society is well documented, during the particularly complex period of post-war reconstruction and the vote for Fanfani's DC party. There are the controversies in public opinion, between condemnation and sublimation of the Fascist period and the colonial past, for which refugees often paid the full price, and they alone paid for all Italians.
Giuliana Pesca – Serena Domenici – Giovanni Ruggiero, Traces of Exile. The CRP of Laterina 1948-1963. Among Istrian-Julian-Dalmatian exiles, repatriates and refugees from Africa, Città di Castello, Library of the “Mario Pancrazi” Study Center, NuovaPrhomos Editions, 2021, pp. 224, euro 20.
Review by Elio Varutti, Coordinator of the historical-scientific working group of the ANVGD of Udine. Research and Networking activities by Tulia Hannah Tiervo, Sebastiano Pio Zucchiatti and E. Varutti. Reader: Claudio Ausilio (ANVGD) of Arezzo. Acknowledgements – The editorial staff of the blog thanks the authors of the volume Traces of exile for the constructive feedback received following the publication of this review.
The National Association of Venezia Giulia Dalmazia (ANVGD), Provincial Committee of Udine, has its headquarters in Via Aquileia, 29 – first floor, c/o ACLI. 33100 Udine. – opening hours: Monday to Friday 9,30-12,30. President of the ANVGD of Udine is Bruna Zuccolin. e-mail: anvgd.udine@gmail.com
