In January 2021, the second edition of Walter Veltroni's book "Rome. Stories to find my city" (Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli, Milan 2021) was published. I acquired the book with great interest also because Walter Veltroni, in his role as mayor of Rome (from 2001 to 2008), had often taken an interest in the community of Julian-Dalmatian exiles present in the capital, promoting conferences in the Campidoglio on the occasion of the Day of Remembrance and supporting some very important projects to remember the tragedy of the foibe.

Among these projects, I would particularly like to highlight Veltroni's support for the design and construction of a monument to the victims of the Julian foibe, located in part of the square (named after the victims of the Istrian foibe in December 1997 during the Rutelli administration) in front of the exit of the "Laurentina" station on Metro Line B; an official visit to the Historical Archive Museum of Rijeka and the Julian-Dalmatian neighborhood; and, finally, the promotion of the first memorial trip by the City of Rome to the Basovizza Foibe.

I would like to add another important act by Veltroni regarding the history of the eastern border, dating back to 1997, when, as Minister of Cultural Heritage, he approved the allocation of a substantial contribution to support research by the Society of Rijeka Studies, in conjunction with the Croatian Institute for History in Zagreb, into the victims of Italian nationality in Rijeka and its surroundings from 1939 to 1947. This international and thus far unique research was appropriately published in an elegant bilingual volume, in Italian and Croatian, published in the "Sussidi" series by the General Directorate for Archives.

In the twenty-first chapter of the book, entitled “Travels and places of memory”, the author recalls the initiatives promoted to not forget the Shoah and therefore the trip to Auschwitz, then he focuses on the massacre of the Fosse Ardeatine and finally dedicates a very significant page to the presence of the Julian-Dalmatian exiles in Rome and to the tragedy of the foibe. At this point I think it is worth reporting in full the clear and unhesitating words of Veltroni from page 177 to page 178 of his book:

 

President Ciampi himself has spoken on many occasions of the need to cultivate, as a country, as a people, a “whole memory”. He is absolutely right. We need to read together and make known, first of all to young people, all the pages of our national history, including the most painful ones, those that have been removed for too long. No place, no event should be forgotten or hushed up. It is the best way, to not betray history, to know and to distinguish, to not obscure the differences. The journey we are making on 31 January 2005 in Venezia Giulia, from the Risiera di San Sabba to the foiba of Basovizza, starts right here. We want to bring memory to a past that is also ours. In Rome there is a community of citizens originally from Istria, from Fiume and Dalmatia, who began arriving in the city in 1947, and found an initial welcome in the so-called “pavilions” that had previously hosted the workers assigned to the construction of Mussolini’s E42, the Universal Exhibition.

It is a part of Rome to which we want to pay a debt of knowledge in this way, they are people and families who fled from a tragedy that cannot and must not be forgotten. It is a part of Rome to which we want to pay a debt of knowledge in this way, they are people and families who fled from a tragedy that cannot and must not be forgotten. A tragedy made of hatred, of persecutions that in the name of communism forced the inhabitants to abandon their land, of mass killings, of terror, of a barbaric violence contained in one name: the foibe, where thousands of Italians were thrown, in many cases still alive. For many years, this event has been substantially forgotten in our country. A part of the left-wing culture has contributed to this guilty removal, remaining prisoner of ideology, subordinate - to say it clearly - to the needs of international communism, to a presumed political realism. Now there is no longer any room for amnesia, reticence or removal of any kind: that of the exodus-expulsion and that of the foibe are shameful pages of our History. We want Rome to know all of these pages. Without forgetting or underestimating anything. 

Marino Micich
Director of the Historical Archive Museum of Fiume (Rome)