Italy Remembers the Foibe
20th February 2024
On Saturday, 10 February 2024, Giorgia Meloni paid tribute to the victims of the Foibe massacres, perpetrated by Yugoslavian communists during and just after WWII, in a solemn ceremony at the Foiba in Basovizza. This fact alone is newsworthy, because it is the first time that an Italian prime minister has attended a ceremony in memory of the thousands of Italians killed and the hundreds of thousands who had to go into exile. “I came here as a child,” Meloni recalled, “when few did, because it meant being singled out, accused, isolated.” The victims were forgotten and the exiles were repudiated in their own country for decades. The official remembrance came only twenty years ago. With her presence, Meloni wanted to settle a historical debt: “The homeland is the family of the heart; so you, who have defended and loved this homeland and thus contributed to building it, are our family.”
Istria, Fiume, and Dalmatia—where there was a majority Italian population—were incorporated into Italy after the end of World War I. But after the defeat of fascism, they were integrated into Yugoslavia in February of 1947 as a result of the Paris Peace Treaties. Consequently, the Italian population was forced to leave their lands and homes. In what became known as the Istrian-Dalmatian exodus, some 300,000-350,000 Italians left the region. For example, the town of Pola (now Pula, in Croatia) had 33,000 inhabitants in February 1947; but, after the exodus, only 3,000 people remained.
The Italians were well aware of what awaited them under communist rule, because they had suffered persecution at the hands of Tito’s partisans since late 1943. In the early post-war years, the partisans murdered thousands of Italian civilians in a campaign of ethnic cleansing—men, women and children, under the pretext that they were “supporters” of fascism. Figures vary from 5,000 to 10,000 killed, although some historians put the number as high as 15,000. The victims were shot or thrown alive into natural sinkholes called “foibe,” which are abundant in the region: there are more than 1,700 in the Istria area alone, and some are up to 200 metres deep.