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you're great. you always remeber. Tessa for president!
  
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I just have to do it!! Memory is the only real thing we got!
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... it is possible that my ancestors were Italian.
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DAY OF REMEMBRANCE: FOIBE MASSACRES
Foibe massacres
From Wikipedia,
the free encyclopedia
Location of
some of the foibe where killings took place
Foibe massacres were mass killings attributed to Yugoslav
Partisans during
and shortly after World War
II against
Italians. The name derives from the local geological feature, foiba (a type of deep karst sinkhole). This term indicates, by extension, the
killings involving also other formations, such as the Basovizza foiba, which is actually a mining
pit.
Some claim such bloodshed and the consequent Istrian exodus were a holocaust and an ethnic cleansing of innocent civilians; massacres and exodus were declared a democide and an ethnic-political cleansing by Italian
president Giorgio
Napolitano. Others
assert that the number of victims was too small for this to be true, and that
the killings were mostly restricted to fascists, both military and civilians, who might have had committed war crimes during World War II in Yugoslavia.[citation needed]
Events
Foibe are often referred to in the
context of mass killings in which the majority of victims were ethnic Italians,
though many bodies found in the pits undoubtably belonged to Yugoslav Partisans.[citation needed] Such killings were committed after the capitulation
of Italy[citation needed] on September 8, 1943 and in 1945, when Yugoslav partisans under Josip Broz Tito's command entered the Julian March (Julijska Krajina/Venezia Giulia),
the Italian occupied western Slovenia as well as parts of Italian territory along
the gulf of Trieste. Also, many dead Partisans were thrown into these pits
during an Axis
offensive in the area. The Yugoslav army (IX. Korpus) met with the British forces on the river Soča/Isonzo on May 3,
Bodies of
murdered Italian citizens recovered by firefighters and local civilians in
1943.
The number of victims is
still unknown, difficult to establish and a matter of much controversy. Estimates
range from between 2,000 and 15,000. According to data gathered by a mixed
Slovene-Italian historical commission established in 1993, the number of people
missing in the present-day Slovenian Istria and
The killings of 1943 are
considered a reaction to the Italian pre-war and war
crimes, such as concentration
camps (among them
the Rab and Gonars camps), political repression, forceful italianization and nationalistic repression of Slavs exercised by the Italian regime in the previous decades.[1]For several Italian historians these
killings were the beginning of organized ethnic cleansing.[2]Particularly tragic was the case of
the young student Norma Cossetto, tortured and raped by her
assassins before killing.[3]
The episodes of 1945
occurred partly under conditions of guerrilla fighting of Croatian and Slovenian partisans against the Germans, the Italians and their Slavic collaborating
allies (the Chetniks, the Ustaše and Domobranci) and partly after the securing of
the territory by the army formations of Yugoslavia. Killings may have included war crimes as well as civilian crimes of
private or political retaliation. For a point of view the main motive for the
mass killings seems to have been a plan of political cleansing that is to say, elimination of
potential enemies of the communist Yugoslav rule, including members of German
and Italian fascist units, Italian officers and civil servants, parts of the Italian elite who opposed both communism and fascism
(including the leadership of Italian anti-fascist partisan organizations)
Slovenian and Croatian anti-communists collaborators and radical nationalists. For other point of view the main
motive for the killings seems to have been retribution for the years of Italian
repression, that is to say, forced Italianization, suppression of Slavic
sentiments and, indeed, mass killings performed by Italian authorities during
the war, not just in the concentration camps, but also in the punitary
expeditions often undertaken by the fascists.
Some Italian sources claim
that ethnic cleansing was another motive, but many historians[citation needed] disagree with that statement because of low
casualty numbers[citation needed]. However, others point out Tito's political
aim of adding to the new Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia the Istrian territories as far as Trieste and including the city itself. The reason for
this is the fact that these territories, according to both Italian and Yugoslav
censi, had a Yugoslav majority[citation needed]. Since the Allied countries had different
opinions on the redefinition of the eastern Italian border, it was preferable
to reach
It should be noted,
moreover, that a large part of the Italian population had a very negative
opinion of the Slavs, whom they stereotyped as rural barbarians[citation needed], while a big part of the Slavic population had
a negative attitude towards the Italians, stereotyped as murderous fascists and
nationalists, so purely ethnic tensions could have played some role as far as
individual motivations are concerned.
Quote from the report of
the mixed Italian-Slovenian commission (referenced below) which succinctly describes the
circumstances of the 1945 killings:
"14. These events were triggered by the
atmosphere of settling accounts with the fascist violence; but, as it seems,
they mostly proceeded from a preliminary plan which included several
tendencies: endeavours to remove persons and structures who were in one way or
another (regardless of their personal responsibility) linked with Fascism, with
Nazi supremacy, with collaboration and with the Italian state, and endeavours
to carry out preventive cleansing of real, potential or only alleged opponents
of the communist regime, and the annexation of the Julian March to the new
Yugoslavia. The initial impulse was instigated by the revolutionary movement
which was changed into a political regime, and transformed the charge of
national and ideological intolerance between the partisans into violence at
national level."
Investigations
of the Foibe
The first claims of people
being thrown into foibe date back to 1943, when the Wehrmacht took back the area from the partisans. Thus, the first
victims of the foibe appear to have been Partisans. The number of deaths herein
has since come under certain suspicion, since they could have been exaggerated
by Nazi
Germany.
No investigation of the
crimes had been initiated either by
Italian-Slovenian relations
in the relevant period (1880s to 1950s) have been under intensive study by historians since
In March 2006, the border
municipality of Nova
Gorica in Slovenia finally released documents regarding 150
citizens of Gorizia (the twin town on the Italian part
of the border) disappeared in 1945 after being deported by Tito's partizan of
the IX corpus. The relatives had been requesting
information from the Yugoslavian and then Slovenian authorities for years. The
150 individuals are supposed to be a fraction of those who were deported from
the region and were killed later on inside
Post War
silence
The foibe have been a
neglected subject in mainstream political debate, only recently garnering
attention with the recent publication of several books and historical studies. It
is thought that after World War II, politicians wanted to direct the country's
attention toward the future and away from fascist crimes, subsuming the issue
of the foibe within this mass "forgetting".
Another reason for the neglect
of the foibe can be found in the high degree of ideology historically present in the public debate in
Reemergence
of the foibe issue
Since the end of the Cold
War, and more recently under the Presidency
of Carlo
Azeglio Ciampi, the
historical debate has begun to take on a less ideological tone. The coalition
of Silvio
Berlusconi brought
the issue back into open discussion: the Italian
Parliament (with
the support of the vast majority of the represented parties) made February 10 National Memorial Day of
the Exiles and Foibe, first celebrated in 2005 with exhibitions and observances throughout
Italy (especially in Trieste). The occasion is held in memory of
innocents killed and forced to leave their homes, with little support from
their home country. In Ciampi's words: Time has come for thoughtful
remembrance to take the place of bitter resentment. Moreover, for the first
time, leaders from the Left, such as Walter Veltroni(himself son of a Slovenian mother),
visited the Basovizza foiba and admitted the culpability of the Italian Left in
covering up the subject for decades. However, the conciliatory moves of Ciampi
and Veltroni were not endorsed by all Italian political groups. Members of the National Alliance party (post-fascist right led by Gianfranco Fini) especially took advantage of the
circumstance to promote a nationalist agenda, some even demanding the revision
of treaties with former Yugoslav countries.
Nowadays, even a large part
of the Italian Left acknowledges the violent political and nationalist nature
of the foibe killings, as attested by some declarations of Luigi Malabarba, Senator for the Communist Refoundation Party, during the parliamentary debate on the
institution of the National Memorial Day: "In 1945 there was a ruthless policy of exterminating
opponents. Here, one must again recall Stalinism to understand what Tito's well-organized
troops did. (...) Yugoslavian Communism had deeply assimilated a return to nationalism that was inherent to the idea of 'Socialism in One Country'. (...) The war, which had begun as
anti-fascist, became anti-German and anti-Italian."[8] However, Malabarba and his party
maintained that the discussion on the killings was being manipulated by the
right-wing parties and that the new Memorial day was part of a general attempt to
criminalize anti-fascism and Resistance.
Slovenian
and Croatian view
Slovenia has officially adopted the report of a joint
commission describing Slovene-Italian relations from 1880 to 1956 (referenced below). Italian authorities have so far
not reciprocated, stating that adopting it would give an official status to a
historical research, and that this is not compatible with the principle of free
research.
The Slovene and Croatian public and politics have come to acknowledge
the atrocities of the foibe and other massacres committed at the end of World War II. They recognize these events as the
result of Italian Fascism. After World War I areas later affected by the Foibe
massacres (see map) were annexed to the Kingdom of Italy. After the rise of the Fascist regime, the Slavic part of the population was subjected to a policy
of forced assimilation (ethnocide). Some incidents occurred even
before the rising of the regime, such as the burning of the Slovene National
House in Trieste by fascist supporters (1920), and many others. The Slovene population
responded with one of the earliest militant anti-fascist organisations in
Partially in response to
the new Italian memorial day, Slovenia has enacted September 15 as a national holiday, memorial day
of Reunification of the Slovene Littoral to the Homeland.
Bibliography
Many books have been written about the foibe, and
results, interpretations and estimates of victims can in some cases vary
largely according to the point
of view of the
author. Since most of the alleged foibe currently lie outside Italian
territory, no formal and complete investigation could be carried out during the
years of the Cold war, and books could be of a
speculative or anecdotal nature. Since the topic seemed
especially appealing to the far right, there is an overrepresentation of
authors that can be traced to neo-fascism. Many authors from the left wing of politics have maintained that
the foibe were either an exaggeration (or an invention) of the extreme right
for propaganda purposes,[9] since the fascist crimes in the
same areas dwarf even the most lavish of the foibe allegations.[7] Since a definitive investigation on
all foibe has not yet been carried out, and is unlikely to be carried out
anytime in the near future due to technical and political difficulties, the
subject is still controversial, and one should approach any book in this
bibliography with a critical spirit.
- Gianni Bartoli, Il
martirologio delle genti adriatiche
Gianni Bartoli was the former mayor of Trieste, with the centrist
Christian Democracy.
- Claudia Cernigoi, Operazione
Foibe—Tra storia e mito, Kappa Vu, Udine, 2005,
ISBN X001486360. (The
first edition of the book, published in 1997 as Operazione foibe a
Trieste and limited in scope to the Trieste territory, is available online)
Claudia Cernigoi is apparently a former member of the Communist Refoundation Party.
Kappa Vu is a small left-wing
publishing house.
- Vincenzo Maria De Luca, Foibe.
Una tragedia annunciata. Il lungo addio italiano alla Venezia Giulia,
Settimo sigillo, Roma, 2000.
Settimo Sigillo is a small publishing house, specialised in revisionist books.
- Gianni Oliva, Foibe,
Oscar Mondadori, 2003, ISBN
88-04-51584-8.
- Luigi Papo, L'Istria e
le sue foibe, Settimo sigillo, Roma, 1999.
- Luigi Papo, L'ultima
bandiera.
Luigi Papo has been accused by
the left of being a war criminal in
- Marco Pirina, Dalle
foibe all'esodo 1943-1956.
Pirina has been associated to the youth wing
of the neo-fascist Italian
Social Movement, the FUAN, and Fronte Delta, an extreme-right university movement.
- Raoul Pupo, Il lungo
esodo. Istria: le persecuzioni, le foibe, l'esilio, Rizzoli, 2005, ISBN
88-17-00562-2.
- Raoul Pupo and Roberto
Spazzali, Foibe, Mondadori, 2003, ISBN
8842490156
Raoul Pupo is an associate
professor in contemporary history at the University
of Trieste.
- Franco Razzi, Lager e
foibe in Slovenia.
- Guido Rumici, Infoibati,
Mursia, Milano, 2002, ISBN
88-425-2999-0.
- Giorgio Rustia, Contro
operazione foibe a Trieste, 2000.
Rustia is apparently close to Forza
Nuova, a neofascist movement.
- Carlo Sgorlon, La foiba
grande, Mondadori, 2005, ISBN
88-04-38002-0.
- Pol Vice, Scampati o no
- i racconti di chi uscì "vivo" dalla foiba, Kappa Vu,
Udine, 2005.
| Posted by asherah on 02/10/2008 8:20 AM | Visits: 428 |