Reporting of Federici Studies Center
Istria. Because the ANPI forgets the anti-fascists massacred by the communists?
River, Dalmatia. Central ed esodo. Memories and amnesia. Il 10 February Italy remembers the tragedy of the "bitter" Adriatic. A round and fixed date but always little loved by "official" Italy.
Nothing new: it is difficult for the heirs of De Gasperi and Togliatti, Nenni and Moro, Pertini and Jotti remember with dignity a dirty chapter of the post-war period, a disgrace of republican history. Better to minimize, silence, slip. A few crowns, a few perfunctory phrases, barely a minute on the news. Then that's it. Enough with the past. Songs are better, the footballers, the fake cooks, the cute one. The eternal present.
Nothing strange: for this democracy without quality memory is unbearable. It's too tiring to explain that seventy years ago, on the eastern border a small piece of Italy was broken; too embarrassing to tell why and how three hundred thousand Italians were forced to flee their homes; impossible to honor those thirty thousand who were crushed by Yugo-communist terrorism. Better not to let it be known that an entire civilization - the small Istro-Dalmatic homeland that stretched from Koper to Fiume, from Trogir to Cattaro - was swallowed up by ideology and destroyed. Without mercy.
Luckily there are those who don't give up. These days the newspaper distributes “Foiba Rossa – Norma Crosssetto, story of an Italian", a comic album that tells one of the many terrible episodes of that madness. Without rhetoric, with balance and depth. Another step to try to shake the memories of an forgetful country. At the same time, from Trieste to Sicily, there are Italians who do not forget and remember. Here then are many demonstrations, cut, conferences, meetings.
Like every year, I will do my part too, I will bring my contribution. Tomorrow I will speak at the presentation of "Foiba Rossa" at the Town Hall 5 of Milan and I will talk about that distant time. I will remember my father, exile from Pula. But not only that. I will try not to stop at the usual narration (and inevitably limited) and I will try to explain in some way the terrible complexity of that story and the historical falsity of the schemes - fascism-anti-fascism, democracy-freedom - in which those nostalgic for hatred would like to lock up and bury the tragedy of the eastern border.
I will talk about the intertwined wars — xenophobia and class struggle, Stalinism and tribalism — which affected the Balkans and our lands. A story of horrors, ideology, betrayals and blood that the heirs of the PCI and the "deniers" of the ANPI do not want to listen to, but it's their story. Their “family album”.
With all due respect to lunatics and hypocrites, It wasn't just the "fascists" or alleged fascists who fell into the foibe. The ethnic and ideological cleansing unleashed by Tito (with the assent of Togliatti and the silence of the Anglo-Americans) he spared no one. Next to Porzus and the "white" partisans massacred in February 1945 the list of anti-fascists and partisans murdered by the Italian and Yugoslav communists is long, betrayed, informed. Among all Luigi Frausin, Trieste leader of the PCI, hostile to submission to the "Tito": arrested and killed by the Nazis on "Slavic denunciation" - as stated in the motivation for the Gold Medal of Remembrance. Others were eliminated directly by the Yugoslavian and Togliatti communists: three members of the Cln of Trieste; two of that of Fiume; Vinicio Lago, liaison officer of the Osoppo Brigade; Enrico Giannini, of the Italian Liberation Corps.
And then, Angel Adam, a historic Jew and republican who ended up infoibated after being confined to Ventotene and also having escaped the Dachau concentration camp: his wife and his minor daughter, arrested for going to ask for information about his whereabouts, they in turn were made to disappear. Teobaldo Licurgo Olivi, socialist member of the Cln of Gorizia, arrested by the Yugoslavs 5 maggio 1945 and shot in Ljubljana on 31 following December. Still, Augusto Sverzutti, member of the same CLN for the Action Party and arrested together with him, it is known that he was still alive and detained in 1949. Then, the mystery.
Il 10 February it is right to also remember all those communists whose ideology had not prevented them from remaining faithful to the patriotic ideal. Among these, the name of Rocco Cali stands out, a fighter from the Garibaldi Natisone Brigade. He was murdered in Rovinj in May 1945 Why, even after the PCI's decision to pass the unit under the control of the IX Slovenian Corpus, he had refused to remove the tricolor cockade that he always wore next to the red flag. The leaders of the Fiumano Autonomist Party were also exterminated together, who dreamed of an independent state from both Italy and Yugoslavia: Mario Blasich, strangled in his paralytic bed; Giuseppe Sincich; Mario Skull; Giovanni Baucer; Mario De Dawn; Giovanni Rubinich…
And then the non-communist Slavs: Ivo Bric, Catholic anti-fascist; Vera Lesten, Catholic poet and anti-fascist; the four members of the Brecelj family; and priests don Alojzij Obit, don Lado Piscanc, don Ludvik Sluga, Don Anton Pisk, don Filip Tercelj, Don Izidor Zavadlav di Vertoiba...
Andrej Ursic had even been a member of Tigr: armed group that had begun a terrorist fight against the Italian authorities since the 1920s, against the annexation of Trieste to Italy, Istria, Gorizia and River. But he was seized by the Yugoslav secret police on 31 August of 1947, subjected to torture, probably killed in the autumn of 1948, and his body thrown into one of the sinkholes in the Selva di Tarnova.
A sad “family album” dripping with blood. Not by chance, and 70 and over the years the left has been ashamed of it and prefers to relativise, minimize, deny. However, we remain convinced that it is necessary to scroll through all the pages and linger on each name, on each date. To avoid rhetorical and incomplete readings, to dispel the deniers, to give complete meaning and a strong thought to each 10 February.
