A black and white photo of a child in a bathing suit smiling happily on the beach under a bright sky. On the back, a caption: Vergarolla, August 18, 1946, 12.30:6 p.m. It's chilling to look at today: Antonio Fortunato, the child, didn't know that less than two hours later all hell would break loose. "Luckily, I lost in the swimming competition, so we went home. As soon as we got in, we heard a huge explosion from miles away, the windows shattered..." he says today, with white hair. Meanwhile, another child from that time, Livio Rupillo, XNUMX years old, was playing in the sand with his mother. "Nothing was found of her, just a finger with her wedding ring. I'll never understand how I survived. Dad wasn't with us, he was at the town hall working because thousands of people were asking for documents to escape to Italy... even though we were already in Italy! But the situation was bad, in Paris they were negotiating our fate", he explains, looking straight into the camera...

There are about fifteen people interviewed in the documentary, including direct witnesses and historians. The last beach – Pola between the Vergarolla massacre and the exodus, directed by Alessandro Quadretti and written together with the historian Domenico Guzzo. A courageous work produced by Officinemedia thanks to the financial support of the Libero Comune di Pola in Esilio (LCPE) and with the contribution – through a fundraiser – of Simone Cristicchi and the Circolo di cultura istroveneta 'Istria'. If Guzzo is an expert on terrorism, Quadretti knows the events first hand, since his grandfather was thrown into a foiba and his father is an exile from Polesine, but the eye of the director remains equidistant and lets the facts, the words of the protagonists, the evidence lucidly exposed by historians speak (and shock). The last resort, exactly seventy years after the tragedy, it reveals to Italians what was the first massacre of the Republic and, with its at least one hundred victims, the bloodiest, more than at the Bologna station or in Piazza Fontana, and yet deliberately "forgotten".

The voices of the survivors, widely collected in recent years by Future,remained almost unheard by the rest of the media and to this day there is no school text that mentions Vergarolla, an event too inconvenient for many, the last act with which Marshal Tito, now in peacetime, aimed to de-Italianize Istria and bring its borders as far west as possible. After decades of suppression, the spotlight on the attack was recently turned on by Simone Cristicchi's civil musical Warehouse 18,while in August 2013 MEP Laura Garavini announced a parliamentary question and the president of Friuli Venezia Giulia, Debora Serracchiani, spoke of "one of the darkest episodes of the post-war period". A crowded and unprecedented commemoration followed in the Chamber in the summer of 2014, which unfortunately was never repeated, but certainly contributed to tearing down the curtain of silence.

Let's go back to the documentary. The beach in Pola that Sunday was packed with families, attracted by the good weather but also by an impressive sporting event with a patriotic flavour: the war had been over for some time, but in Paris the great powers were deciding the fate of our Adriatic regions and the population was also demonstrating their firm determination to remain Italian. "My grandfather, a paralytic shoemaker, had already been thrown into a sinkhole, like my uncle," continues Livio Rupillo. "He was never found, or his body was no longer recognisable." Then, in '46, Vergarolla, his murdered mother, but also his 4-year-old friend Fulvio, his neighbours, his world: "For years I was obsessed with disgust, until then I loved seagulls, but that day I saw them throw themselves on the bloody pieces in the sea, on the trees. For a six-year-old child it was a shock." Giuseppe Berdini and his friends wanted to see the races up close, so luckily they were out at sea on six boats. "First we heard a shot, then the explosion and pieces of human beings flew into the boat... We lost all our loved ones." Many heard that initial "shot," in reality the trigger for the twenty-eight devices scattered on the beach, as big as barrels. They had been there for months, harmless, defused under the control of the Anglo-Americans. "We always played astride them," testified Claudio Bronzin, then 12 years old, "our mothers would hang out their towels to dry." But that day someone had reactivated them to cause a massacre and convince the Italians to leave Pola.

Entire families were disintegrated, many children. These are the protagonists. But the documentary entrusts historians with the fundamental task of putting the facts into context and explaining what happened. "The Allies immediately opened an investigation," says Gaetano Dato, "the investigations were coordinated by the British police at Scotland Yard and it emerged without any doubt that it was not an accident, a theory fomented by Yugoslav circles for decades, but a malicious attack. The devices absolutely could not explode, they had been reactivated." "The Peace Treaty had not yet been signed," underlines Giuseppe Parlato, the people of Pola were still convinced that Pola would remain in Italy, which is why it was urgent for Tito to crush all hope. Togliatti and the PCI were complicit, and "in those same months they were waging a harsh campaign against the Italians of Istria, accusing them of being fascists": he was sacrificing an entire innocent population to party duty. "Vergarolla had been preceded by a series of increasingly intense anti-Italian attacks", recalls Paolo Radivo, the tragedy was almost announced. "The exodus at that point was sensational - adds Raoul Pupo -. The whole city left, bourgeois, proletarians, fishermen, even the dead".

As Tito wanted. Tito, flattered by the West, including Italy, as the necessary counterweight to the other communism, that of Stalin. Reason of State undermined justice and the dead of Vergarolla died a second time. "It was the harbinger of the massacres in Italy in the decades to come", concludes Giorgio Siboni... The documentary ends with period footage. Pola emptying. The indescribable look of the elderly from the ship as they stare at the city disappearing on the horizon. "The cemetery caretaker fills the gaps left by the coffins", says the ancient voice-over as the images scroll. It seems like an earthquake. It seems like L'Aquila. "Ours was a doubly patriotic choice", murmurs Lino Vivoda, a little brother killed in the massacre: "we are Italians by choice". And Rupillo again: "Dad sent me into exile with an 18-year-old aunt and then joined me. I missed my mother who had just died. We have given enough to our country, but never received gratitude. After 69 years, a certificate with a medal. I thank you sincerely."

Lucia Bellaspiga, «Avvenire», 07/02/16

PREVIEW ON “TERRA!” About the documentary The last beach a shortened 50 minute version will be broadcast tomorrow evening at 23.50pm, in the special of Land! hosted by Toni Capuozzo on Retequattro, two days before the Day of Remembrance. The original version will be previewed on the evening of February 9th at the Sala San Luigi in Forlì and will continue its tour in various Italian cities: it will arrive in Trieste on February 12th at 16.30:29 pm at the headquarters of the Association of Istrian Communities (via Belpoggio XNUMX). The video is aimed with particular attention to schools, for which many municipalities and institutes throughout Italy are already booking its viewing (those interested can contact info@ officinemedia. it).